Fearful Falls

It's been a really difficult year since I last posted on here. I just reread my "Upbeat Updates" post and almost started crying.

One of the happiest summers of my life was followed by one of the saddest falls and longest winters I've yet endured...

My dad died suddenly from an aneurysm in October 2014. I was sitting in my boyfriend's apartment on an early Sunday afternoon frantically studying for a tax exam I had the next morning when I got a phone call from my brother telling me that Dad was in a helicopter being flown to the hospital, but he didn't know what happened, just that Mom and my little sister had found him unconscious on the floor when they went to check on him after he didn't show up to church. My brother told me he'd text me with updates, but that I shouldn't worry and everything would probably be fine, he was just letting me know.

I couldn't study anymore. I just sat there and stared at my phone... waiting... Even though I didn't know what was going on, I still knew somehow that this was serious. After a while I texted and asked if I should head out and start driving home, since it's about a 2.5-hour drive.

"No, it'll be okay, no need to rush home," he texted back.

Not even 20 minutes later he texted again, "You should come home Juby."

He didn't give me details or say why I needed to be there, but I knew it was to say goodbye.

My boyfriend drove me back to my dorm room and I frantically threw some clothes into an overnight bag, not really thinking of what to pack or for how many days, and I ended up forgetting some simple essentials. The thought of bringing some black clothes in case of a funeral crossed my mind and I started sobbing.

My boyfriend started driving and at some point I must've stopped crying because I remember feeling completely empty and numb, staring at power lines and trees as they whizzed past. A different brother called me and asked if I could stop by the VA mental hospital on my way to pick him up. It wasn't really on the way, and I was a little annoyed at having to waste time getting him, but I agreed and gave my boyfriend the directions to his ward.

It was getting near dinner time and my boyfriend and I hadn't eaten anything yet, so we stopped quickly at a Taco Bell to get some food. I wasn't hungry, but I ordered something anyway, and an extra burrito for the brother I was picking up. It just so happened that that day Taco Bell took forever and the employees were goofing off in the kitchen. They weren't really busy, but it was a longer-than-usual time to get us our food. Part of that might have also been because every second counted to me and I was in agony waiting to see my Dad.

We picked up my brother and continued on our way to the hospital. When we got there, my family was nowhere to be found and nobody was answering their phones, so I explained who I was and who I was looking for to the hospital staff and they took me to the ICU to see my dad. When I entered the little curtained-off room, I saw him laying in the bed, unconscious, with dirty, greasy hair, tubes up his nose, a large hose down his throat, and monitors everywhere. I thought maybe he was sleeping or sedated, so I went over and grabbed his hand. It was exceptionally cold for a man whose large, calloused hands were always very warm. His arm was limp and he didn't squeeze back or react at all. I tried talking to him, but he didn't respond. I burst into tears again and we were shown the way to the waiting room where I found some more of my family sitting around.

Not long afterwards, the doctor came in and explained that Dad had an aneurysm and the blood put so much pressure on his brain that he was comatose, brain dead, and probably wouldn't hold on much longer. My mom begged him to try to keep my dad alive just a little longer so that more of my siblings could get to the hospital to say goodbye (several were still driving across the states or flying into airports). The doctor said he'd do his best, but there was no telling when my dad's heart would give out.

The rest of the day dragged on with bouts of crying and irritability among family members, rotations in the ICU visiting my dad and talking/singing/praying to him, and trying to take unsuccessful naps in the waiting room.

That night was a blur and I didn't really sleep at all on my brother's couch. I cried so hard that I started hyperventilating and I thought I was going to choke. I'm not sure when it really hit me that my dad was already dead, but when we got an urgent phone call very early in the morning to come back to the hospital because his heart was failing, I felt like I was in less of a hurry to see him again. Why bother? He couldn't hear me, see me, feel me. He was already gone before I even got the text from my brother telling me to start driving.

Two of my siblings (my older sister and my oldest brother) didn't make it in time to see him before his heart stopped and he was pronounced dead. Death is an ugly thing, and not at all like it seems in the movies. It wasn't peaceful or tragic when his heart gave up, it was just gross and weird. We were all huddled in a room that was far too small for a family as big as ours, ugly crying with snot dripping down everywhere, and it smelled horrid. My dad's lifeless corpse was expelling gases (and defecating) as he lost control of his bodily functions. Slowly we watched the blood pressure numbers tick down and his heart rate fade out and then stop as the obnoxious alarms on the machines went off. A nurse came in and turned off the monitors so we could stand around his dead body in silence and stench not knowing what to do.

One by one we left his side and went back to the waiting room. Once we were all gathered again, someone came in to explain how the morgue worked and that they would refrigerate his body until we had chosen a funeral home. I started Googling and calling different places in the area to ask about their availability and prices. My dad was very specific about how he wanted to be buried. He didn't want to be embalmed or preserved, and he wanted a coffin made out of biodegradable materials, and he wanted to be wrapped in a wool blanket and buried on the farm, on top of a specific hill that overlooked the valley.

Over the next few days, I was the one who somehow had the most composure and organizational skills to find out about the legality and procedures needed in order to give my dad the unusual burial that he wanted. I arranged and planned the funeral, mostly by myself, and it was awful.

We dug the hole in the hill ourselves, using a combination of machinery (Unimog) and hand shovels. The sand and stones were difficult to cut through and it took us a long time to dig a hole deep enough. Some of my brothers started fighting during the process, as they're prone to doing.

The funeral itself was relatively uneventful. We didn't have a service beforehand, just a burial, as my dad requested. There was no priest. There was no scripted eulogy. My family took turns going around and saying a few words, and then some neighbors and friends of his that showed up said some words, and we put the dirt on top of him.

Aunts and uncles flew or drove in the next day since they couldn't get there in time for the funeral, and we had a small gathering together and played board games and cooked and ate food and tried to cheer each other up. A little while later, we bought a bunch of plants and flower seeds and a maple tree sapling, just like my dad wanted, and we planted it all on top of his grave.

I never went back to work at the city as a finance/accounting intern for the rest of the fall, since I had already been planning on leaving, they said they'd just consider the week before and the week of my dad's funeral as my 2-weeks notice, so I went in later to drop off my name tag and fill out some paper work and I was done.

The rest of the fall semester was pretty rough and I had a really hard time concentrating or getting out of bed to go to class. The holidays were also pretty sad without my dad.

My aunt was diagnosed with cancer for the last time and was told that it was untreatable and she only had a few months left to live, so my boyfriend and I flew out to visit her in early December, just after the semester ended, to help out my uncle and to visit her one last time before she died. She held on until April of 2015.

As much as I loved my roommate, we both decided that we would move out for the spring semester so that we could work our full-time jobs a little easier and not commute as far. So in December I moved back in with my boyfriend and his roommates.

I was lucky enough to land a great full-time internship opportunity for the spring semester and get credits for working instead of doing classes. I worked at a top-10 national accounting firm (CLA) and did taxes and audits for up to 70 hours a week from January through April. It was a lot of work, and I was pretty depressed a lot of the time because of the stress of work, winter, and the loss of my dad and my aunt.

My aunt was cremated and the memorial was delayed until May, so I flew back out to Maryland to see my uncle again and attend my aunt's service.

Summer of 2015, I was even more fortunate to get a full-time internship with one of the big-4 global accounting firms (EY). I moved down to Milwaukee from June through August and traveled to Madison a lot for my auditing clients. I was pretty lonely a lot of the time since I don't know a ton of people in the Milwaukee area and my boyfriend was an hour and a half away.

Somewhere along the way from November 2014 to August 2015 I packed on 30 pounds of weight (stress and depression eating, office work?).

I got 3 job offers over the summer, one from the city government, one from CLA accounting firm, and one from EY accounting firm. CLA's offer was the best, and I didn't want to move to Milwaukee for EY, so I signed my offer letter and will start working for them full-time when I finally graduate in June 2016. I will be working for them part-time starting in January as I finish up my last classes.

I guess this long-winded rant brings me to today... Things are starting to get better, I think. It was really rough for a long time, but there have been ups and downs, and I'm back on my antidepressant medication and I've started eating healthier and even took a 7-week jogging class and lost 10 pounds so far. Sticking to diets is really hard for me when I get under a lot of stress, especially with school, because then I start making bad snacking choices and stop going to the gym so I can study longer.

I'm still really critical of myself, and I've been trying to bring my GPA back up because I want to graduate with summa cum laude (3.9) but I'm only at a 3.876 right now (the fall semester that my dad died didn't help my GPA). It doesn't really matter since I already have a career lined up for post-graduation, but it's one of those little goals I set for myself back in high school and it would mean a lot to me if I could graduate with a 3.9 GPA.

My boyfriend and I are still going strong, and I love him to the edges of the universe and back. I don't think I could've made it through this past year without him. We got our first one-bedroom apartment all to ourselves in August. In September we adopted a cat. Her name is Inara, she's about a year old, and she is very cuddly and adorable.

My boyfriend has been struggling with his own problems a lot lately too. His parents have declining physical health and his dad may have to get a knee replacement surgery, which would mean that his carpeting business would be out of the question and he would have to go on disability. His mom has something wrong with her back that makes her doing her hospital/nursing work difficult and they might have a hard time support themselves and his autistic brother in a few years.

It doesn't help that he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life for a career. He has a bachelor's in criminal justice but after all the ride-alongs and job shadowing, he doesn't want to be a police officer. He's been working part-time at Best Buy since early this year, and he went back to school in spring to pursue finance and actuarial science, but then decided that wasn't for him, so this fall semester he switched to a math major and looked at secondary education, but now he withdrew from school and is working full-time at Best Buy. He's apparently always top in sales performance at the store and is doing really well there, so I think the current plan is to try to work his way up through the ranks to management, or just keep working there at least until he's figured out what he wants to do. Retail hours kind of suck, though. He has an unpredictable schedule and holidays are the busiest time for him.

I miss my dad, and I wish I could be as optimistic and happy as I was last year during the summer, but I guess everything takes time. It's just that right now it feels like I might not ever be that happy again.

I hate fall. I mean, don't get me wrong, pumpkins are great and I love the changing colors of the leaves and the moderately warm temperature that isn't so in-your-face humid as summers in Wisconsin, but I hate the dread that I feel during fall. I hate daylight savings time and having sunsets at 5pm. I hate feeling tired, cold, and groggy all day long from November to early April. I always fear the end of summer and beginning of the season changes. I need more light in my life. I can't stand being in darkness for so long. I'm pretty sure I have seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in addition to regular depression. I've never specifically been diagnosed for it, but I've also never really tried talking to a psychiatrist about how much I hate winter.

Anyway, I will just sit here with my SAD and depression and try to chug through the rest of the fall and my last year of school before I start my "adult" career...

Upbeat Updates

Summer is almost over, and it's been one of the happiest summers of my life!  My new boyfriend has made sure of that.  Well, he's not exactly a new boyfriend; we've been together for about five months, but with how infrequently I write on my blog (and the fact that the last post I made was about my ex), he's new to anyone who reads this (HAH, as if anyone actually reads this blog).

Honestly, I didn't think I'd find him so quickly, and I wasn't trying to start a relationship, but I guess I can't really help the fact that he turned my life around and made me a much happier and positive person.  I can be my goofy self around him and he makes me feel special, cute, and all the other silly things that people say love is but that I've never really experienced before.

Against my inner voice telling me it was a bad idea, I moved in with him and his two roommates over the summer and started paying part of the rent/utilities.  Surprisingly, it has turned out better than I ever imagined.  His roommates and I are pretty good friends now (we all went to Renaissance Faire together last weekend and it was awesome).  It's been wonderful cuddling to sleep every night and waking up next to him every morning.  I'll miss living with him when summer is over.

Anyway, enough mushy gushy stuff. My boyfriend is amazing and I adore him... now on to the rest of the update:

I got to meet my new sister in law earlier this summer.  My oldest brother got remarried at the beginning of this year (right around when I got dumped by my ex).  They live up on Lake Ontario in New York.  I spent a week living with them.  It was really relaxing... and they have a hot tub!  My new sister in law is really nice and I think she and my brother are a great match.  

I've been working for the city government for the last couple months as a finance/accounting intern.  It's been a great opportunity and it'll look pretty sweet on my resume.  I also got invited to a special young professionals career dinner/meeting with the City Manager, so I'm super excited!

I'm kind of bummed that there are only a couple more weeks of August left...  I'm nervous about going back to school in the fall, but I have a lot to look forward to.  My new roommate is a good friend and fellow accounting major.  She is such a sweetie and I think we'll have a fun year.  I'm also the new president-elect of our Accounting Club and there are all kind of events planned this semester!  Hopefully I won't get crazy stressed out like I have been about school in the past, but I've felt so much better about life over the last few months that I think I might finally be getting a grip on things (see my previous post about Lonely Latenights). :)

My 16-year old sister just had a baby a couple weeks ago!!  I was so worried about my little sister, but my new niece is adorable and so far my sister seems to be handling everything well.  My boyfriend went with me to meet my family right after my new niece was born.  It was really nice.  My mom, dad, one of my brothers, and my little sister all like him so far.  (I met his family over Easter and a few times since then, and they seem to like me as well.  We're going to see his family again this weekend since they live closer than mine and there's some sort of fair/festival going on in his home town.)

I'm so proud of my lil' sis!  I don't think I could ever be that strong.  If something like an unexpected pregnancy happened to me, I'm pretty sure I'd just fall apart.  Speaking of my little sister, tomorrow is her 17th birthday!  I remember when I was 17...  Jeesh, things were way different for me than they will be for her.

My childhood friend, Colleen (whom I wrote the For a Favorite Friend post about) just got engaged a few days ago.  How crazy is that?  Colleen and I haven't really remained close over the last few years, but she's still a special and important person to me and I can't wait to meet her fiance and be one of her bridesmaids.

Hm... what else...  I can't think of a whole lot... but I'm going to go make chocolate chip cookies! :) 

Veracious Valentine's Day

When a relationship ends, it's easy to run through all the what-ifs and regrets and imagine how it could have gone differently and how you wish you were back together with that person. I've found it's harder to look back honestly and learn from the relationship. It's hard to stop romanticizing the person you loved and see them for who they were and how the two of you just didn't belong together. It's not really anyone's fault. Some people just don't fit... So this is my honest reflection of the longest and most serious relationship I've had so far...

I dated a boy for the last two and a half years. I knew him for a few years before we dated, and I'd had a crush on him before, but we didn't really talk much during high school. The whole relationship started one night because I was lonely and he was on Facebook and I hadn't heard from him in a long time. It was the summer before my freshman year of college (2011) and I reached out to him, and we stayed up late chatting. He was drawn to me because I was a "damsel in distress," and from right there we should've known the relationship was doomed. I was unhappy, unhealthy, and suicidal, and that's not the time in your life when you should try to start a relationship.

I fixed myself as best as I could. It only took me a few months of my freshman year of college to work on myself to the point where I was "okay" (through tons of therapy and medication). We started officially dating in October of that year, but we'd been very close for a couple months before then.  I thought he was everything I ever wanted. Of course it turned out he wasn't, but it took a lot of heartache before I understood that.

I would say that the first few months of our relationship were pretty good.  We went on a few dates over the summer and had a blast.  We decided we weren't going to rush into anything until we knew we really wanted to after we started college, because hey, we were going through a lot of changes. We were long-distance for several months because we went to different colleges. He went to Cleveland State University and I went to UW La Crosse (600 miles apart). We Skyped almost every night and texted during the day. I saw him during holiday breaks and vacations.

We started having problems around our first Valentine's Day (about a half a year into our relationship). See, he'd only had one other girlfriend before me (I'd only had one other boyfriend), and he dated her for about two and a half years and then started dating me less than 6 months later, so he hadn't really been single for very long (meanwhile I'd been single most of high school and for over 2 years before he and I dated). He said he felt like he needed to experience being single, and he needed to date other girls before he could be happy staying with me.

Of course, I was very hurt by this. I didn't understand why he didn't think I was enough.  He did stuff with another girl around my birthday, we broke up, we got back together, and for a little while things seemed good again. What I didn't realize then was that our relationship would be a never-ending loop of rejection, inadequacy, depression, and tumultuous breaks and reunions.  He would continually cycle through needing "space" and needing to see "other girls," but he never wanted to break up with me permanently; he just wanted us to "take a break" now and then and have me wait around while he figured it out. Except he never did figure it out, no matter how many breaks we tried to take...

When freshman year of college ended, we decided to transfer to the same university because we figured it would make things easier not being long distance.  I moved in with his family that summer because apart from living with one of my brothers (who had a new fiance and was going through his own changes), I didn't really have anywhere to go.

Our relationship turned toxic very slowly... There was never a singular point that I can blame for our unhappiness, and I think that's why it was so difficult to leave even when I was fed up and hurt and hating myself because of it.

All I ever wanted out of our relationship was to make him happy, but I couldn't.  He had depression as well, and it would rear its ugly head in powerful waves that made him cruel and heartless and cold to the people around him, and especially me.  I hid my own problems and spent most of my time trying to do whatever he wanted, but it was never enough.  I begged him for months to get back on medication, to go to therapy, to do something... and eventually he did, but it never really got much better.

Plain and simple, he got sick of me. When we started sophomore year of college together, he no longer found me attractive in any way.  He was embarrassed to be with me in public.  He criticized my appearance, my weight, my makeup (or lack thereof), my hair, my clothes... We stopped being intimate for months. He didn't want to hold me or kiss me. I tried to initiate intimacy, and he'd turn me down. He was tired or not in the mood, or he just wasn't "turned on."

I don't think he was trying to make me hate myself, but that's what happened.  I dieted, I lost weight, I cut my hair, I bought new clothes, I wore more makeup... but it wasn't enough.  I tried breaking up with him, but he swore that he loved me and he wanted us to be together, so I stayed... and I stayed... and I stayed some more...

Eventually we just got "comfortable" in our unhappiness.  I always tried to make him happy, but he just settled into his depression and became poisonous, but I didn't want to give up on him.  After all, for whatever silly reason, I thought he was the guy I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and we were just going through an extended "rough patch" as I called it.  He would get better, I would get better, we would be happy again, wouldn't we?

During Christmas break of 2013-2014, I went home to my family without him (for the first time in our relationship, we spent that holiday apart).  I had a great time with my family, and my siblings and I went down to Florida for a week.  I barely talked to him during that time, but we texted a little, and he seemed to be down in the dumps one night, so I suggested that he could call me and we could talk.  He called, we talked for a bit, but he was in a very bad mood, and he ended up being very rude and mean to me and we got in a fight. He apologized via text after we hung up, but I just tried to focus on my family and forget the negativity in our relationship.

His family celebrated Christmas later than usual that year. In fact, their Christmas party was after New Year's, and after I got back from Florida, so I came along to his family's Christmas party in early January. His family loved me, and I got along great with all of them. We had a great time together at his grandparents' house, and he seemed more affectionate toward me than usual. We took a selfie together even though he always hated taking pictures with me.

That night, when we got back from the party and we sat in his parents' house, he said he had to talk to me, so we went downstairs to a spare bedroom, and he grabbed my hand.  The look on his face told me everything I needed to know before he even said it.  I knew he was breaking up with me.  My mind raced through all the typical questions wondering what I'd done wrong and why he didn't love me and what other girl he was seeing...  I didn't really bother asking the questions out loud, and he didn't bother trying to answer them.  I pulled my hand away from him and sat there numb for a little while as he said the words.  My ears must have been ringing because I know he dumped me, but I can't remember how he said it.

I asked him to leave me alone in the room while I cried.  Then I walked outside without a coat on and stood in the snow as the January air chilled my bones.  I could barely feel it.  It felt like a bad dream.  As my nose went numb from the cold and my fingers and toes burned like dry ice, I waited for him to come outside and hug me and bring the feeling back to my body because all I could feel was my stomach dropping and my heart pounding.

I don't remember how long I was standing outside, but eventually his dad came outside and found me standing there and asked me what was wrong.  I told him I just got dumped and he muttered some curses about his son under his breath and wrapped his coat around me and brought me back inside.  I was handed a box of tissues and I called my friend and asked if I could spend the night there.  I packed up my belongings and his dad gave me a ride to my friend's house.

My friends came over and we played board games and they tried to cheer me up. One of my guy friends (who was also close friends with my ex), got a bit too affectionate and cuddly trying to comfort me.  That caused problems later.  Almost all of my friends were shared with my ex, so when we broke up, they inevitably picked sides, and most of them chose his side.

I think the first month was the hardest.  Now I think I'm turning the corner.  There was quite a while where I felt very alone and I couldn't eat or sleep (heck, I've always had trouble sleeping, so that wasn't new), but now I think I can see that I'll be okay without him.  I still miss him sometimes.  I made the mistake of staying close to him after the break-up.  I made the mistake of trying "friends with benefits."  We're still trying to be friends, but I know it's a bad idea and I know we'll fall apart for good eventually.

I've been on a few dates already.  I'm not looking for another serious relationship right now, and I want to stay single for a good long time, but I want to distract myself and I need to feel special and attractive.  For so long I've felt like nobody could love me and that nobody else would ever want me if he dumped me, but I'm starting to realize that I'm valuable on my own.  I'm a kind person, and I care about people, and I deserved to be cared about, and I deserve to be loved, even if it's not by him.

My prince is out there still, and I'll find him someday...

Happy Singles' Awareness Day (i.e. Valentine's Day)... and goodnight.

Lonely Latenights

It's 1:03AM as I start writing this. I don't know why I'm still awake. I don't know why I'm writing again, or what possessed me to find my blog after two years of absence. I'm not even sure how I remembered the password.

I know nobody will read this (at least not anyone I know). I know writing this won't make me physically any less lonely, but maybe it will psychologically fill some void in me. I just have to believe that the internet is a very big place and given the laws of probability, somebody, someday, somewhere, will probably stumble onto my blog (just as I've randomly stumbled upon other blogs), and maybe they'll read this and it'll echo something within them that I think we all feel from time to time - insignificance.

I'm not talking about the good kind of insignificance that you feel when you gaze up at the beautiful stars and realize how big and wondrous the universe is. I'm talking about the kind of insignificance that starts as a creepy little voice in the back of your mind that tells you nobody will miss you if you kill yourself. That is the kind of insignificant feeling that consumes me now and again. I know the little voice is lying. Even though I lack a lot of friends, I still have family, and enough people that I know and who like me reasonably well and would miss me if I die.

I'm not talking about wanting to kill myself. I don't want to do that (not right now anyway). I don't advocate suicide EVER. If you've Googled suicide and come to my page, I can only hope that you realize these feelings of emptiness and void will pass you by and the world will be right again. I can't tell you it will be easy or that it will happen soon, but staying here is the much better option if you're looking to be happy again. It's a very strange and irrational thought process that depression forces people into. All you or I want is to be happy and to feel loved and important, but somewhere along the way the pain twists that desire into the urge to stop existing altogether. It's wrong and your psyche is lying to you. Please don't listen to it.

Anyway, I just felt obligated to put that blurb in there just in case somebody stumbles onto here looking for guidance (not that I'm a great resource).

How serious is life? This is a question I'm faced with often. On the one hand, it's just life, and it's been around forever and we're all just little blips on a gigantic timeline (see insignificant). On the other, life ends in death and it is the most serious and real thing that any of us will ever encounter. Should we face life like the insignificant and fleeting thing that it is, or should we reconcile with how real and serious it is for each one of us?

Terrible things happen all the time, but I've heard some people tell me that the only way to get through it all is to keep lighthearted and keep laughing. Maybe they're right. Maybe dwelling on the darkness and shame of it all is too much for any soul to bear and maybe that's why I find myself struggling to crawl out of the dark abyss and back into the daily motions that keep me from completely going insane.

Wonderful things happen too, but for some reason I can't shake the feeling that there aren't enough wonderful things to justify the level of disgust I have for the crimes of humanity. Shouldn't all those things that we take for granted (butterfly wings, sunshine, rainbows, etc.) be the norm? Why shouldn't we take those for granted? Am I just too greedy that I want it to be nice all the time, and therefore, when it's nice I kind of expect it to be that way. I mean, I'm happy about nice things, for sure, but they don't demand my attention. They shouldn't demand my attention; I don't have to do anything about them, or worry about them, or try to fix them. Terrible things, however, need to be fixed, and so they draw our focus.

Focus. This is something I think I've lost in my life recently. I'm more than halfway through college with a double major in two subjects that I don't really care much about (accounting and finance, if you must know). I don't regret my majors; they're both very practical business majors and will serve me well in getting a job that pays enough. I just don't have any passion in my life anymore. Then again, it's been so long that I can't remember a time when I had passion for anything. Maybe it's just an illusion. Maybe I'm just not a passionate person by nature and I need to reconcile with that.

I'm so alone and so lost. I don't know where I'm going and I don't know who's going to be there when I arrive. I don't really have goals for my life beyond finishing up my two degrees and passing a myriad of certification exams (CMA, CPA, et al.) to get further credentials in my fields. I'm terrified of not making it, of being a big fuck up. I don't want to be a failure. I don't want to be the girl that "had so much potential" and then never amounted to anything. It's frustrating because I'm not motivated by a desire to achieve or succeed, but instead I'm motivated by the fear of failing, of not being good enough. For what? I don't know. I don't know who I'm so terrified of disappointing. Myself?

I'm not a competitive person. I don't like to compete or race against others. I don't like to try very hard for things because I feel like I lose more when I try than if I can just shrug and say to myself, "well I'm not surprised by that outcome because I really didn't put in much effort." I want to be the best, and I get upset when I'm not automatically the best at something. It makes no sense! Why do I have to be the best when I don't even want to compete or put in effort? I can't possibly be naturally good at everything. Nobody has that much raw talent, and that's okay. I shouldn't punish myself for not being an Olympic gymnast. I just wasn't cut out for that and I didn't have the same opportunities. Not that I want to be an Olympic gymnast, I was just using that as an extreme example, but it applies to everything. I'm not the best artist, but I can sketch okay. I'm not the best pianist, but I can play some music. The best artist trains her hands and mind to put the correct brush strokes on the canvas. The best pianist practices hours every day to improve her skills. I don't do either of those things, so why should I expect myself to be the best at them? I think I just like disappointing myself. I set myself up for failure and then I hate myself for failing. I have unreasonable expectations about who I am or should be.

Sometimes I feel like nothing I know about myself or about my life is true or is going to last. I've changed so much in the last 5 years that nothing feels permanent. I guess it really isn't permanent, but it's hard to get used to that. I look around and I don't have many friends here at college. It's hard for me to make friends in the first place, but then I start to think about the pointlessness of it. If I made friends now, it's not like they'll be my friends in another 5 years. We all will have moved away and spread out again. We'll get different jobs, we'll stop talking. I'm not naive, I know the routine. Maybe if I get married I'll invite some people to my wedding, but I wouldn't consider all those people my friends.

Fuck it all. I know I didn't wrap this up very well, but I need to have a good long therapy session with my pillow, cry it all out, and get some sleep.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I really should find things to be thankful for.

Goodnight, internet. I hope you aren't as lonely as I am.

You're in Europe!

If you haven't noticed by now, my blog follows the flow of alliterations.  The title of my blog is an alliteration of j's, and the titles of my blog posts follow alliterations of different letters as well.  I intend to keep this practice going.  However, this particular post merely sounds like an alliteration, although the main words start with different letters.

As you might've guessed, this post has to do with Europe.  Yes, that's right, Europe: that wonderful blend of foreign, exotic, and romantic countries located in the Northeast hemisphere of this grand globe.  For those of you who are reading this (Who am I kidding?  Who would read this?) and didn't know, I recently toured a few countries in Europe.  It was definitely an experience to remember, which is why I am going to try and record it here and share it.

I will try to dedicate my next blog posts to recounting my adventures in Europe.  I plan to call the next article "Desire for Distance," "Instant Itinerary," or "Tips to Travel," then probably followed by "Madness in Madrid," "Zany in Zaragoza," "Being Blissful in Barcelona," "All Awry at Avignon," "Pallor of Paris," "Lost in Lausanne," "Found in Fribourg," "Regal Rapture of Rome," "Vehicles in Venice," "Frenzied Florence," "Askance of Ancona," "Frothy Foam From a Ferry," "Puzzling Patras," "Appalling Athens," "Sunburnt Santorini," "Again in Athens," "Brought to Bari," "Bucolic Bologna," "Trilingual Train," "Manic Munich," "Serene Psychiatric Setting," "Perdition or Paris?," "Mañana Madrid," "Landing in La Crosse," "Safe at Slattery's."

Yeah, a bunch of random alliterative (see what I did there?) titles for stuff I will probably never write.

Be brave, bearing blunderingly batty blog bits.  Bye-bye! :)

For a Favorite Friend

This is a very long and sappy Facebook wall post that I sent to my best friend in the whole world, Colleen Rose Slattery.  I had to chop it up into portions and send it separately because Facebook didn't want to post more than 1,000 characters at a time.  It's the late-night ramblings of a lonely, sad, and nostalgic girl.  It lacks any real structure or direction, but I thought I would put it here anyway because it qualifies as Juby's Jargon. 

The problem with people is that we don't like change. Except, I want things to change, and I don't. I kind of can't wait for college, but I'm scared of what it will do. I'm going nuts. I need more friends, which means more people to talk to, because currently whenever I want to talk to someone, it's either you or... well, mostly just you, and soon you'll be gone. Then I'll be alone, talking to myself, and that's never healthy. Also, you're not a late-night person, so when it's about 11pm and I need to talk to someone, I have to write on your Facebook wall, like I'm doing right now. That's okay, though. I know you have a life, and tomorrow you're going to wake up early to spend quality time with your family and their... vegetables. Then you'll go for a crazy run because you're awesome like that. I have nothing important to say. I'm just saying stuff to give me something to do. Blah, blah, blah, just writing on here so I don't feel so alone.

I feel I will implode. You are great, though. I will miss you very much. I already miss you very much and I just saw you recently. You aren't even gone yet, but you feel so distant. Why is the world such a big place? Why are all of our favorite people so far away? Across the state, across the country, across the continent, across the ocean, across the great big world... I've seen a bit of that world, and now I don't know where I belong anymore. When we were little, I used to think that you lived sooo far away from me. A whole hour's ride in a car. Funny how an hour seemed like such a long time... I only saw you about once a month, if that often. I remember there were times when we went more than a month without calling or talking to each other, but I always felt like I knew we'd still be friends and we still existed for each other, even if we weren't in constant communication.

When you leave for Texas, I will treasure those days when we were young and you were ultra-competitive and liked to beat me at everything. I'll remember the fights we had and how foolish we were. I'll remember how I was always so jealous of you, your life, your family, your good-looks, your athletics, and the fact that you'd spend so much time with other friends (and the fact that you HAD that many other friends). Yes, I'll admit, I coveted your friendship. Sometimes I still do. I'll remember the King Gregory fight, the Alabama Trip (Eureka!), the Great Brownie Battle of 1.5 ratios times 2/3rds of a cup, using Matt as the Designated Dancer at prom, our failed attempt at becoming blood sisters on New Years that night...

I'll remember the funny sayings we had, all the funny things we did and promised we'd remember, but in the end the fact that we forgot was just as funny as whatever had happened in the first place. Do you remember being 10 years old and how we used to talk about growing up and going to college and we thought it was going to take FOREVER? I thought we'd never get here. Now it seems it went so quickly. I know it sounds cliché, but I don't want to grow up. I want to lie on the trampoline with you again at night and stare at the stars and talk about where we'll be in 10 years. I want to talk to you about the boys we liked, the boys we currently like, the boys we will like, and the boys we think we'll probably end up with. I remember how we used to talk about buying houses next to each other so that when we grew up our kids could play and become best friends like us.

Truth is; I know that over the next few years we'll grow distant. We'll have separate lives, very far away from each other, doing separate things. We might end up in different countries. You might even get a new best friend, but I'm okay with that. We'll always have our childhood and our goofy, quirky memories that nobody else can ever understand. We know what it's like to evolve and change together. New people in our lives from now on will only see the more mature version that we've become, but I will know how you were, who you were, and what you've grown to appreciate that you didn't before. Maybe someday we'll stop talking, and then one day we'll look back and say, "Oh, yeah! I remember that girl! She was my best friend..." We'll have stories to tell our children and our grandchildren.

Just know that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I will be with you in mind, heart, and spirit; laughing with you, crying with you... acting absolutely immature and ridiculous with you just so that we feel better... I love you, my gorgeous soul-sister. Take care at Dallas and live it up without me! :)

Time to Talk

To whom?  I'm not sure yet... but there has to be somebody who will listen...

Lost in Limbic Layers

The human mind is an amazing and formidable organ, with the ability to create entirely separate worlds and realities.  That being said, I've always appreciated the fact that I have a discursive and digressing thought process, which is able to tie things together and correlate seemingly unrelated events.  I also have an active imagination.  Normally, these are all good traits.  My imagination has gotten me out of more than a few pickles during school when I'm at a loss for what to write for a required 10-page paper about something as redundant as... moss (my apologies to any moss-enthusiasts reading this - I merely meant it as an example). 

My imagination also serves me well when I am bored.  In fact, sometimes my favorite pass-time is just to sit around, preferably outside, and create a new life in my head (yes, I daydream).  Often, I like to think about the future, and where I will go and what I will do in my life.  I create fabulous adventures that I know will never happen, but if I daydream hard enough, once I return from my mind trip, I feel contented having experienced the idea so that I no longer actually crave the adventure.  It's hard to explain how this works, but it's similar to thinking about a delicious food for so long and in such detail that you are no longer hungry and instead feel satiated.     

There's really nothing wrong with having an active imagination.  It makes me creative and resourceful.  Fortunately, I also tend to have a strong focal ability, so that I can continue to concentrate despite (or rather along with) my thought processes.  It's not like I suffer from ADD or anything.  In fact, the only real problem I've ever encountered in regards to my creativity dwells in the unconscious realm.  Yes, that's right - dreamworld.

I'm not sure how it is for other people, but I'm sure that to some extent everyone can relate to my experiences in dreamworld.  Dreamworld, for me, is a rather scary ride through all the twisted little pieces of my mind that are probably better left unexplored.  Essentially, my unconscious self is untamed, untempered, and free of any of the restraints I maintain while I'm awake.  My mind is also allowed to delve down deeper than it could during the day because it has to pay absolutely no attention to any external experiences, forces, thoughts, or general daily activities that keep it in balance with reality.  This is why, for the most part, I don't like being asleep.

Ever since I can remember, I've struggled with nightmares.  Even when I'm unconscious, my mind is incapable of slowing down or turning off, so that I never have an uneventful sleep.  I never fall into that black abyss that I've heard people talk about.  I always dream, and it is more common for me to have bad dreams than it is to have nice ones.  It is also more common for me to remember these dreams, so that through the years I can actually recall those vividly terrible nightmares that have become a part of my catalogue of experiences, sitting right alongside memories of a first bike ride, milking cows, playing with baby chicks, going swimming, getting sunburns, and much less pleasant memories I don't care to mention. 

My least-favorite type of dream is the multi-layered dream.  What I mean by multi-layered is the type of dream where you wake up (or you think you do), but you're still in dreamworld telling yourself you're dreaming.  I think double-layered dreaming is a pretty common thing for most people.  I wouldn't know because I'm not most people, but I know that I absolutely hate multi-layered dreams.  The reason I bring this is up (and the reason I'm writing this post) is that I recently had a 5-layered nightmare, and I wanted to share my experience, analyze it, and ask if anyone else has gone through something similar...

After struggling with trying to get some sleep last night, I finally conked out early this morning - around 3 am or so - for a brief nap of about an hour.  I had to get up at 5:30 am to get ready and drive my brother, Peter, to his new job at Gundersen Lutheran.  Needless to say, after the nightmare, I woke up around 4 am and couldn't even imagine sleeping more, so I just stayed up. 

My nightmare seemed to last several hours, and I hypothesize that this is due to the complexity of multi-layered dreaming.  It started out as a benign and realistically mundane dream, very similar to an average day in my average life, and then it quickly morphed into a horror film with me starring as the main victim and all of my worries, problems, and bad memories augmented into "monsters."  Fortunately, I realized I was dreaming, and woke up (or so I thought).  I had a conversation with a family member, who also assured me that I was awake.  Then the second layer of my dream started to haunt me (or should I say "hunt" me), as well.  Almost consumed by this second layer of terror, which was made worse by the fact that I thought I was awake and experiencing reality, I felt as though my body were actually collapsing, and my heart was going to stop. 

When I woke up again, I was sitting on a wooden chair with my head propped against the armrest.  The pastor was rambling on about The Good Shepherd, and I instantly felt ashamed that I had fallen asleep in church.  I felt a bit disoriented because I remembered that my family was Catholic and this was most definitely not a Catholic mass.  I looked around at the people.  I knew most of them.  They were friends and acquaintances.  I saw my family, the Slattery family, and the families and friends of some of my brothers.  Then I noticed something that startled me... many of the people were crying, or at least had very sullen faces.  I looked back towards the preacher and started to comprehend his words.  This wasn't just a service - it was a funeral.  My eyes automatically darted to the center of the front of the church where I noticed the simple, black box.  I turned back to look at my family, trying to piece together who had died based on who was attending the funeral.  It was Joe.  Joe had died. 

I gasped and felt confused because I couldn't remember when or how he had died.  I asked a few people around me, but they just looked at me with pity because they believed the grief had been too much and I had lapsed into denial about the incident.  Nobody wanted to tell me what was going on.  I kept begging and telling them that this couldn't be true.  He couldn't be dead.  I would've known about it.  I slowly walked over to the coffin to raise the lid.  A few people grabbed me and pulled me away.  I told them I needed to see him because I didn't believe he was dead.  I told them I knew it was a dream, but they argued with me.  I collapsed on the floor and started bitterly weeping, regretting so many trivial things, and my gut ached horribly.  I tried to scream, but I my throat was blocked by the anguish until the point where I could no longer breathe and I felt as though I were suffocating.  The funeral faded to blackness around me and the choking sensation increased...

I was relieved when I awoke again, and was able to sit in my bed telling myself that I was alright, and I survived the multi-layered nightmare.  However, I was distraught when I realized that I was, in fact, not in my bed, but in a strange bed in a strange place.  I scanned my memory trying to remember how I had gotten there, but before I had time to reason with myself... the torture had resumed in a new dimension.  In an attempt to escape - hoping that I was dreaming and the jolt would wake me up - I threw myself from a balcony the strange building possessed.  I felt the wind whipping past me quickly, and as I looked up, the balcony got farther and farther away.  I wasn't afraid at all, and so there was no jolt to wake me up. 

At this point, I started thinking that maybe I wasn't dreaming this time and I had actually just jumped off a balcony.  I pondered the consequences briefly and then decided that I really didn't want to die just yet.  To my surprise as I look back, my list of reasons for living had nothing to do with my love of life, my family, my friends, or any fear of what follows in the afterlife, but instead I was worried about a multitude of tiny tasks that I had not yet completed - bills I had to pay, people I had to call, forms I had to fill out, etc.  I became frantic and started flailing in the air, and when I tried to scream, it was as if someone had stolen my voice from me.  I remembered that you can't scream in a nightmare, so I relaxed and waited to hit the ground.

I don't remember if I made earthen contact or not.  Supposedly, you can't die in a nightmare.  Or maybe you can, but you just aren't allowed to remember it.  I'm not 100 per cent sure how it all works.  Anyway, the next layer blurred into existence.  There was no abrupt awareness that I was awake or asleep.  I determined that I was lucidly dreaming.  I had purposely dreamt myself into a green meadow to calm myself down.  As I looked around and thought about what I wanted, it appeared before me.  If something happened that I didn't like, I reversed it and redid it in my mind until it became the reality of the dream.  I moved hills, created mountains, and invented new species of flowers.

I sat down and tried to enjoy the serenity and peace I had created, but I couldn't.  It was too quiet.  Where was the gentle breeze?  Where were the clouds and the sun?  Where were the birds and wild rabbits?  They seemed not just absent, but dead.  The thought that my paradise wasn't alive and happy deeply troubled me and I began to fear that if something didn't change or interact with me, I might not be able to ever wake up.  I sat there for a long time trying to remember who I was, how I got there, or when I had fallen asleep.  For some reason, I couldn't remember if I had ever had another life, and if I did, what I looked like, or what I sounded like.  I tried talking, but I had no voice.  I walked over to a pool of water to peer into my reflection, but there wasn't one.  I looked down at my feet, but I had none.  I felt frustrated as if I were going to explode, but there was no way for me to release my tension.  I couldn't beat against a tree because I couldn't feel the tree.  I couldn't stomp on a flower, I couldn't scream, and worst of all... I couldn't cry.  I was just there, in a beautiful abandoned meadow, trapped and alone, feeling only emotions and nothing physical. 

Finally, I heard a song, a familiar and haunting song.  I realize now that what I was hearing was in fact my phone playing it's alarm jingle; a jazzed-up version of "The Pink Panther."  I jolted awake and grabbed my cell phone, which I keep underneath my pillow.  It wasn't ringing.  I checked the time.  I still had an hour and a half before the alarm went off, so why was I awake?  I looked around, saw my little sister sleeping in her usual dead-to-the-world, potato-sack kind of way, and I remembered that I was in my mom's new apartment in Holmen.  I stepped outside the bedroom and saw that Peter was sleeping on the air mattress in the living room, just where he should be.  I looked for any sign of things out of place, not yet quite believing that I was actually awake this time.  I thought about trying to take another nap, but decided against it.  Instead, I gathered an outfit from the bedroom by the light of my phone's LCD screen, and locked myself in the bathroom to take a long, hot shower, trying to forget about my multi-layered nightmare...  

Just a Jot of Jargon

I doubt this blog is going to be successful, even amongst my friends (I haven't even told anyone it exists yet).  That's okay.  Chances are that after a little while I will forget about it, as I do with most other things.  See, to me, a blog seems like an Internet-based public journal, and I can't even keep up with writing in my physical journals.  I have many of them, but they always start off with motivated intentions and end up withering away in a drawer, collecting dust on their immaculately empty pages.

You might think that at least an important journal - like the journal I took with me on my European trip this summer of 2011, which was a beautiful birthday gift from my best friend, Colleen - would receive some attention, but I have this terrible tendency of getting overly obsessed, picky, and thorough with my journals, and then I eventually realize that I cannot cover every aspect of everything.  I simply do not have the time, nor does any human being I know.  Inevitably, I get discouraged and quit writing altogether.  It's all or none with me, and that means that it's none.  I can't seem to settle for a bit of something, I need all of it.  I can't talk about a part of something...  I must define, explain, examine, and analyze every tiny little fiber until my heard hurts and the article becomes so long that nobody in their right mind would even attempt reading it.

I don't fancy myself to be much of a writer, but it's a good creative outlet.  I constantly think about a lot of things, and sometimes just the process of trying to organize those thoughts into a somewhat organized and cohesive language helps to relieve some stress and mental tension.  Also, there are so many things that I am able to communicate through writing that I know I never could say otherwise. 

I know I will never be successful as a writer.  I won't win awards or even get published.  Essentially, I'm not my older brother, David (a real writer), and I never hope to be.  I'm okay with that.  Still, I do enjoy splattering a few pages with my thoughts, if not for anyone other than myself. In fact, that's why I named this blog appropriately.  This blog is not meant to be an organized journal, an account of every detail of my life, or anything that would seem remotely interesting or intelligible to anyone else.  This is meant to be a blog dedicated to the nonsense that floats around in my head and my fleeting motivation to record it in print...  This motivation I have now lost.

Welcome to Juby's Jumbled Jargon.  :)