Unnamed

To those of you who have never been in love. To those of you who want so badly to be in love. To those of you who feel as if you will never be loved. To those of you who have never been kissed. To those of you who feel as if no one could love you. Yes, this is for you. This is for me. I'm 21 years old. 21 as of September, 2017. I have never been kissed. I have never dated anyone. I have never had a boyfriend. I have never been romantically, truly, in love. I want you to know that you are not alone in your loneliness. You are not alone in your stark and silent singleness. When the world seems to be in love, and everywhere you go you see pairs, know that you are not alone. There are many who are experiencing or have experienced what you're going through. They say that love will find you, yet here you are... Still waiting. Yes, I feel your aching heart. But I want you to know that you are whole by yourself. You do not need a single person to comple...

Who am I. Who am I? This is a question that I'm sure we have all asked ourselves at least once, if not more. As a young adult, in the beginning years of her second decade of life, I'm discovering who I am more and more. They say that your 20s is the decade of "finding yourself." Discovering things about yourself and finding out who you are and who you want to be. I've been growing into who I am my whole life. You form your view of the world and yourself all the time. Whether you realize it or not. This is what I believe, anyway. As I learn things about myself and about the world around me, I am shaped and I change. I looked in the mirror today and realized how my outfits change all the time. I used to think that you needed to fit into one or two "styles." You dress classic and clean, or pink and girly, or all in black... But now I realize you can do all of the above. I'll dress like a free-spirit with printed flowy dresses one day, and sk...

Today I gave myself the first challenge; Make eye contact with as many people as possible. If you read my last post, I was talking about how one of my words in 2018 is Courage. I want to make that happen and I was going to start giving myself challenges to grow my confidence and courage. Well, here we are. The first challenge. Small, but significant all the same. I had class today, and even though my second class was canceled, I made eye contact with about 10 people before going home. Later I went to the bank, Target, and a few other places. In total, I made eye contact with about 27 people today. I didn't count the people who checked me out at the stores, or my professor, because you kind of have to look at each other. I didn't want it to be that easy. So I made eye contact with 27 strangers. Some smiled, a few said hello, one lady even started chatting with me. I was feeling so good when I got home that I even said hello to my neighbors that I don't normally speak ...

WHY do we care what people think so much? This is a question that I think about all the time. Why do I care and what can I do about it? I suppose I'm afraid of being harshly judged. Maybe I'm afraid of being laughed at or ridiculed. Perhaps I fear being ostracized from certain social circles because I'm "that weird girl." Not caring what people think is a lot easier for me to put into practice online. You can rehearse, you can post things that disappear in 24 hours... There's this barrier between you and the rest of the world. You aren't face to face with someone. You aren't out in the world, you're behind a screen. You have some level of protection. It's "safer." I've been fighting with myself and my own self-consciousness and fear for a long time now. I have really good days where I feel free from the judgement and opinions of others. But I more often have regular or bad days where I'm held down by what I believe ...

I think about the future a lot. All the time. Too much. And not just next year, or the next decade, or the next 20 years. While I do think about that, I go as far as thinking (and worrying) about being old. Like, really old. Like, 90. I'm 21 years old. I'm not going to be 90 for nearly 70 years! And yet... My family and I went to my aunt's house today for a late Christmas. We picked up my grandparents (both in their mid-80s). Now, a word about my grandparents. I am so blessed and so grateful to have both sets of grandparents still alive in my family. Do not get me wrong here. These particular grandparents are very challenging. They are your stereotypical grumpy old people. They bicker, they mutter, they share opinions loudly and proudly. There's not a lot of love there. There's not a lot of patience. There's not a lot of joy. There is a lot of arguing. There is a lot of illness. There is a lot of bitterness. There is a lot of unhappiness and...

I start class again on Monday, and I'm getting that usual pre-semester anxiety. In honor of my second year of school and my anxiety, I want to share a poem I wrote in 2015, on July 23rd. There's a lump in my throat, A hand closing tightly. It's not mine, but I'm doing this to me. An unknown worry, a faceless fear, Squeezes my neck, brings me to tears. I choke on my own anxiety, My heart tries to tear out of me. Sweat on my brow, Breath shallow. I lie on the floor. A faceless nothing. What will become of me. This always gets the best of me. I am choking on my own fears, It's not safe here. I feel like this will be the death of me. It doesn't have the most uplifting ending, but that's life, and that's poetry. Some seasons in life are ugly and difficult and heartbreaking. That's all for now. See ya.

Hello. Welcome to... whatever this is. I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of things I want to share. I like to write. I also have way too much free time on my hands. A lot of my words already have a home on Twitter. That's my most used medium for my thoughts and other things. Yet here I am. I'm used to keeping everything to 140-280 characters, so it'll be odd and perhaps refreshing to stretch out more. I don't know what else to say. Maybe no one will ever see this anyway. I'll just chat away into the abyss. Or perhaps someone will stumble across this somehow. I do not know where this is going, but thanks for tagging along. See ya.