Freshman Reflections

9 months ago I moved into Maria Glenn Hall naive, excited, and 15 pounds lighter than I am today. Today I hugged my roommate goodbye and for the first time all year sat in my empty dorm room. All of our personal touches and cozy additions are gone. It's just me, a MacBook, and a box of cheez-it's (okay that's an exaggeration, but those are the essentials). I've spent the past few minutes reflecting on this year and all of the emotions from it hit me faster than I could ever imagine. Auburn has nurtured me and taught me in so many more ways than academically this year. I will never, ever be able to fully put into words the transformation that has happened in me this year or all of the lessons that I have learned. However, being the writer at heart that I am, i'm darn sure going to try. 

You've got to keep going.

I was taught this by a few really, really good friends of mine. You will get hurt. You will get kicked to the ground and picked back up only to be kicked again. And you will want to give up. You will shut everyone out and start to self-destruct. But if I've learned anything this year, it's that life goes on and so do you. In my case, I just had to realize that sometimes I'm a little (lot) bit dramatic and I way overthink things. You've got to let it go and move on with your life. There are better and brighter days ahead and you'll forget about all of the hurt.

Sometimes, all you need is your mom (or dad or whoever).

You're going to have those days where you cry while you're walking home from your geology class (side note: GEOLOGY ISN'T ROCKS FOR JOCKS IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY HARD OKAY) where all you want to do is talk to your parents. Call them. I promise, just hearing a loved one's voice is enough to help you get through a dark time. And if you're me and take every breakdown to extremes, some good quality time with your parents will completely change you. A trip home will completely refresh your outlook and get you reenergized, which leads me to....

SLEEP.

You will lose your mind if you don't. Just trust me. 

It's okay to change. It's okay to drift from people. You shouldn't have to apologize. But you should explain.

Friends come and go, especially as a freshman. It's the age old tale of latching on to some of the first people that you meet because you're all just starting out. You all want friends and a social life. And you WILL have some of the best (and most embarrassing) memories of your year with these people. Whether it's late night runs to McDonald's or that unfortunate time on the front steps of your dorm or that time they LEFT YOU ACROSS TOWN (I'm still salty @samantha @andrew. Kidding. Kind of.) you will look back on these fondly and laugh for a while to come. But as the year goes on, you'll all make new friends and find yourselves and branch off. If you're the result of someone drifting from you, it can hurt. It can make you mad. It can upset you. Until you realize that you've been doing the same thing to someone else... You're allowed to make new friends. You're allowed to slowly transition some people out of your life. But do it like a good friend of mine did. Explain yourself and your reasons. Don't just shut someone out for no reason. They may not understand at first, but I promise, it will all come together for the better. 

Boys/relationships/whatever aren't important. Like at all.

I don't even know if I have the accurate amount of words to stress this. Don't let a boy make you cry. Don't think that you know someone because you've known them for two weeks. This year, I found myself and it took a lot of alone time and soul searching. To be honest, I don't think I would be at the place emotionally that I am today if I had been dating someone. But on that same note, I would be so much further along if I hadn't worried about trying to date someone. You have 4 years and all of your life beyond that. Give it time. God has a plan. 

Ask for help when you need it. Don't be embarrassed.

If you're struggling, tell someone. Get help. I cannot stress this enough. Do not let it build up and do not try to self-medicate. There are so many people who will rush to get you whatever help that you need, you've just got to take that brave first step and ask.

Finally, make mistakes. Live your life. Make memories. Regret nothing.

Go to that social even though you don't have a date, you'll have more fun getting dressed up and dancing with your sisters anyway. Go on a milkshake run at 1AM just because. Get a study room in the library with your friends and laugh a little bit more than you should. Take the spontaneous road trip for doughnuts. Go get pizza in your pajamas when your friends call you at 9:30. Cry when you need to. Laugh when you're happy. Love every moment of your life and take it all in. Before you know it, you'll be sitting in an empty dorm room, wondering where the time went. 

"I look around myself wildly, my heart bursting with grief and fear and joy. I am leaving, but I will take this place and its stories with me wherever I go." - Jennifer Donnelly

One More Trip Around the Sun{Shine}

A lot has happened since this date a year ago. I started college, gained friends, lost friends, and had some of the best times of my life. But i've also had some of the worst. If you know me fairly well then you know that in the last 365 days my family's had to go through more than we were honestly prepared for. If you would've asked me on the night of March 10th, 2014 if I would wake up the next day to my mom telling me that my grandparent's house had burned, I would've stared at you like you were an idiot. In fact, I tweeted "I think a trip to see my grandparents in PCB is due soon." at 3 that afternoon. But, I guess God had different plans. I woke up to tragic news and was in Atlanta that afternoon sitting in a waiting room with the rest of my shell shocked family. No one knew what to say. No one could say anything. That morning we lost a member of our family that was so very precious and a long, hard month later we ended up losing my grandfather as well. It was a lot and it was hard.
But in the 365 days that have followed, I've learned more than I ever have and grown from what has happened. I am blessed. Life sucks sometimes, but I've got more blessings than I could ever imagine. I've got a happy and healthy family that loves me. My grandmother is still here and even though it's been a long year, she's done so much better than what was initially expected. I've also learned to cherish what I still have in my life. If I could've done my life differently, I would've actually gone and visited or even just called instead of tweeting about it. You never ever know what you have until it's gone. I've made sure that my loved ones know how much I care about them more now than my "busy" mind would let me prior to that. Most importantly, i've learned to cherish each day. We're not promised the next one. A house could burn or a car could crash. And as morbid as that sounds, it's the truth. You never know when you're never going to hear someone's voice again. You never know when the last time you roll your eyes at someone asking if you've been "swimming with bow legged women" is going to be. Cherish it. Laugh a little louder and cry when you need to. Live life to the fullest and do everything big. Make sure that the people who matter to you know it.
And with all of that said, I want to say that I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud to be the granddaughter of a man who went above and beyond anything that he had to do. I pray daily that I find someone that is even a quarter of the man that he didn't ever have to be. He was selfless and loved everyone that he met deeply. He never met a stranger and would give someone the clothes off of his back if he could. I'm proud to share his last name and I miss him every single day. Life's hard, but every time I catch a western while i'm channel surfing or catch a ray of sun coming through the window on a hard day, I know i'm not alone.
We all miss you PawPaw and Teddy, but I am so thankful for the lives that you lived. You both helped teach me how to love others. You made me smile a little bigger and laugh a little harder. Thank you. 

A Fork in the Road

Take a moment and imagine that you're walking down a road with someone. This person may be a friend or significant other or honestly anyone who is in your life. You're both walking together until you hit a fork in the road and for whatever reason, you decide to go separate ways. Your paths cross occasionally and you both meet new people on the separate paths that you've chosen. You both keep walking, mostly without each other.
This, as i've come to realize with the help of some friends, is exactly how life works. Everyone changes. It's a fact and it's human nature. And more often than not, some people you knew before don't fit into who you have become and that's okay. It's okay to tell someone that they no longer fit who you are and the life that you're living. Your paths are still going to cross, of course, you just won't be as close anymore and that's okay. You don't owe anyone any explanation for how you chose to live your life. On the other hand, if you truly care for the person, you'll give them an explanation. Because trust me, it SUCKS with a capital sucks for someone to take a fork in the road while you think they're still next to you. But other people change too and guess what? That's okay. They're allowed to do it just like you are. Sometimes, you have to get rid of people to become yourself. You have to take some time to yourself and shed things that you think are keeping you from doing that. And so do other people. So next time you find yourself at a fork with someone, do what you feel. Explain to them the situation and keep walking until your paths cross again. And when those paths cross, smile and say hello. Maybe walk the next few miles together, until something in your life makes you branch off again. There's a bigger plan and there's someone making sure that the right people are put into it at the right times. So, keep walking.

Walking Alone

If you know me at all, even if we've just met in passing, then you know that I love John Mayer. Actually, no, I don't love John Mayer. I LOOOOOOOVE John Mayer. So when I came across this picture with these lyrics from "The Age of Worry" on it, I knew that it needed to serve as a daily reminder to me. I am terrified to be alone. I hate feeling abandoned or like i've been left. When I lose friends, it hits me on such a deep emotional level that I am literally not myself for months. I do everything in my power to make people happy, even if that means compromising my own happiness. All of that ultimately comes down to the fact that I am so scared of being left. 

But where does that leave me? Emotionally spent. I am the queen of giving and giving and giving in relationships until I have absolutely nothing left to give. I am also, unfortunately, the queen of not really getting anything in return. Now don't get me wrong, I do have some awesome friendships that I have a great balance in. Those are honestly what keep me going. But I also have people that only keep me around because they know that I'll be the person to come pick them up when they need it. Obviously that's not okay. Obviously that's toxic on such a high level. But i'm terrified of losing these people, so I continue to give. 

This week, I've realized that I can't do that anymore. I can't pour myself out without getting even the smallest bit refilled. I can no longer rely on people who center their worlds around themselves. I have to lose my fear to walk alone. It's a scary thought, but it's also the only way that I can really find who I am. It's okay if I don't always have someone to hang out with. I will be okay if i'm not going to dinner with someone every night. Losing friends is worth being in a better place with myself. People leave and that's okay. It's a natural part of life and it happens to everyone. Bad people leave to make room in your heart for the better people that are going to stumble their way into your life. So I'm learning to just embrace walking alone. I'm going to embrace finding my worth in myself and not in people who see worth in no one but themselves. 

It's Okay. I'm Okay... Or I Will Be.

As I sit at a desk that's actually clean enough for me to put my laptop on, drinking water instead of Diet Coke and coffee, next to a bed that's cleaned off to the point that i'm not sleeping under clothes, I am actually caught up on all of my reading for my classes, have a few volunteer hours under my belt already, and seemingly have my life together. I got 10 hours of sleep last night and woke up early enough to go get breakfast and have a little bit of leisure time before my first class. On paper, i've actually got my life together (or as together as a 19 year old can get), but as I was sitting in class this morning I realized that I don't have anything together. At all. This semester has hit me like a freight train, and i've just kind of been laying on the tracks trying to figure out how to stand back up.
If you know me pretty well, you know that i'm pretty honest. You also know that I had a super rough month long patch in October last year that culminated with a doctors visit on Halloween last year. In the name of honesty, I have to talk about that experience. I left that doctors office with a Prozac prescription and a complete feeling of defeat. I hadn't felt as bad as I did at that point since I was in the eleventh grade (which we just don't talk about. Ever.). I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of being stabilized by drugs and took them for two and a half months before deciding to come off of them cold turkey. If you know anything about this, you know that sometimes it's not the easiest thing to do. I'm in a much better place than I was in October, but it's still not the easiest time of my life. Sometimes things happen with friends that freak you out and kind of turn you into an anxiety ridden psychopath for a month. Sometimes you make a 30% on a Geology quiz and decide that rocks aren't your speciality. Sometimes you sit in Starbucks for hours overanalyzing everything. And then sometimes, you cry in your bathroom floor over pizza.
Life hits you hard sometimes. You make realizations that hurt you so much that you can't breathe and make you feel like less than dirt. You lose friends and it honestly feels like you're going through the hardest breakup of your life. People drunkenly admit things to you and then seemingly forget about any semblance of feelings that they had. Guys leave and then come back and then leave and the come back AGAIN, and you let it happen even though they've hurt you repeatedly. Vases break and Chick fil A forgets your Chick fil A sauce. Life pushes you down and keeps you there. In the words of my friends about me, "It's like that day that you wore your John Mayer shirt and you had a test and it rained and you cried for 3 hours. But that's life."
So what am I trying to say here? I'm not okay. And that's okay. My life has been a mess lately, and that's okay. Why do we all try to act like we've got it together? No one has it together! I promise you that no one that you know has it together. That girl that keeps everything clean and organized and is involved and has a boyfriend and a 4.0 GPA? Yeah not even her. So I say it's time that we all say that we say that we're not okay. Our Instagrams may be happy and smiling, but what does your Tumblr look like? What do you actually feel on a day to day basis? Embrace that and realize that other people are there too. You will be okay eventually. And so will I. Life will come together. You will keep walking and kick life's ass after it has kicked yours. So hold your head high and keep walking. It's okay to not be okay.