This post is actually pretty pointless. I started writing about something, got off topic, and ended up writing about something else completely. If you don’t have a lot of time to spare, don’t even bother reading this. It barely even makes sense..and I reference Terminator 2 way too much.
Have you ever woken up from a night of heavy drinking and not felt like absolute shit, but actually felt really great? The feeling where you could maybe run around the block a few times, and your head is sort of empty, and your feet are light, and you are all giggly and you have dumb things running through your mind and probably even coming out of your mouth, and then you say to yourself “I’m not hung over at all..in fact, I might still be drunk. I. Feel. AMAZING!” This is sort of how I feel every day of my life. Try to follow along as I guide you through my brain on drugs.
For the past few months my brain has been so jumbled with thoughts that I blocked them all out and tried to concentrate solely on work and making it to the weekend. Letting my mind wander produced emotions inappropriate for public display and the recapping of memories I wish I could erase permanently. Lately, my mind has been wandering to someone else, and I welcome these thoughts with a smile on my face. It’s sort of funny like that, people think that when you are on ADHD medication you pop a pill and keep your head down working for the next 8 hours. It’s actually quite the opposite. I take my medicine when I get to work, and about 30 minutes later I can start to feel my heart beating in my stomach. Soon my hands start to shake on the keyboard and my brain starts jumping around like a flea on a dog’s ass. Ideas and thoughts are flying in my mind as fast as they are flying out. I start 50 things and do them all at the exact same time. I get up and grab a mountain dew, hit the printer on the way back, turn around and realize I’d like to grab something out of the break room, run back to my desk and rest for 5 minutes before I think of something else I want to do. Soon I’m surfing the internet because something caught my eye on twitter. I find a website I like and I bookmark it. Oh my god, my bookmarks..they are a mess. I make 7 different folders with sub folders within them and organize everything I’ve ever bookmarked. There is a website that does this for you, but my method is better. Although I wish I could color code them..
By now it’s 9:00 and I realize I have been organizing bookmarks for an hour and I need to do some work. I open up my email and respond to a couple, but mid-email I see my facebook flashing and one of my friends is talking to me. I start chatting them up when something on the news feed catches my attention and I end up creeping on some random person I could really not give a shit less about, but wow, I just learned how fucked up their life is. That’s cool. +3 life points for me. Back to the news feed. OH! New Thought Catalog entry. That looks interesting..open..read..BLOG IDEA! Start new word doc and get a few paragraphs jotted down. Shit..I need to do some work! Back to my email…I have a few price requests I need to type up. Open up Word..oh yeah, I was writing a blog post..jot down another paragraph. GOD DAMMIT! WORK. Finish price request. Print, head to printer, get distracted by the new highlighters in the supply cabinet. Just what I needed for the list I made yesterday. Purple highlighters..very rare find. Score! Head back to my desk and take out the multi-colored post-it notes I use to organize everything. See the change in my drawer and realize I need another Mountain Dew. Be right back. Back at my desk, I open up my file drawer to find the buying group list I made yesterday. I document every change, every email, every discrepancy, and every fart these 16 groups make, and I write them down in a notebook I made. I’d use a regular notebook, but I want to be able to add and remove pages. Also spiral notebooks give me a mental rash. Each group is flagged on the side making for easy access. There is an index after the cover that tells what each color highlighter means, but with my new purple find I can do so much more! My boss looked at me like I was insane while I was making this, but last week when she said “Did we ever take ______ off of IDC’s program?” I easily flipped to the IDC page and saw that we in fact did last Wednesday. (it’s highlighted in green. That’s the color for changes) I get bored with this notebook and throw it back in my files. Then I see all the files I keep for Industrial shows we are attending this year. Why did I make them all in the same color file folder? They should each be different. Go to the warehouse and scrounge around for 10 different color file folders. Remove and re-label all files. Happy, but realize I am wasting mega time here. Back to work..
Continue typing price quotes for customers. Actually finish something. Awesome, I did that relatively fast. Shit, I can get a lot done today..calculate a few special pricing requests, see a name that reminds me of him. Smile to myself..reflect on the night before. Laugh to myself. Put my head phones on and day dream for a few minutes. Start doodling on a notepad while I tap my foot to my country playlist. This song reminds me of him..smile some more. Decide I’m a retard and get back to work. One more price request. Order samples to photograph. Check my email. Send out a bunch of sale sheets, realize the font on one is horrible..who made this? Must change. End up redesigning entire flyer. Photograph some gloves. Photoshop photos. Start designing a new header for my blog. Decide I don’t have time for this shit and close it out.
By this time it’s 11 o’clock and I know that I only have 1 more hour of being very productive. That’s the thing with Adderall..you get your best work done the first 4-5 hours after you take it. That’s when you are really feeling it. That’s when the dopamine is overflowing and oozing out of your brain making you happy and nice to everyone around you. After 5 hours you start to come down from your prescribed high and you need to start double fisting Mountain Dews to prolong the feeling a little bit longer. By the time my lunch hour is over and 2 o’clock rolls around, I realize I haven’t eaten anything yet. The amphetamines are messing with my head. My stomach is growling for food but nothing sounds good. The thought of eating things I normally love is almost revolting. I pull a bag of Cheerios out of my desk and munch a few handfuls of those. Bland food isn’t so bad. Besides, there are so many things still rushing through my head that I am too busy to eat. By the time 4 o’clock hits I am crashing. My brain is like an earth worm that sat in the sun all day. I am mentally exhausted. Did you know that you could be mentally exhausted? People joke about this, but it’s a real thing. I stare at my computer screen and it literally takes me 10 seconds to realize what I am suppose to do next. It’s like I have 50 tabs open on my browser and my computer is lagging. Every move is delayed and everyone asks me if I’m tired. Have you ever seen Terminator 2? (If not, please just skip past this ridiculous reference. Actually, save yourself some time and skip it, I’m a retard.) You know towards the end when Arnold is down to one arm and the T-1000 is just beating the hell out of him, and finally he just impales him with that metal rod? Then he sparks real big and the “OMG HE DEAD!” music starts playing and if you are Katie at the age of 4 you start to cry, and then he shorts out and his red robot eyes power down and his body goes limp? That’s me. I have been indestructibly killin’ shit (actually just injuring it because John told me that I “can’t just go around killing people!”) all day long, but once the clock hits 4 I am toast. I am one-armed, shot to hell, and shorted out.
This isn’t the end though. I, just like the T-800, come back to life. I simply need a little stimulation. As soon as I walk out the door and get in my car, I feel less drained. I turn on my cruising home tunes and start singing along, and before you know it I’m using my only arm to pull that rod out of my chest. Backup mode, bitches. From this time on it merely depends on the day and what I do as to how drained I am. If I go home and sit around, I am done for. If I keep moving, I can ride my Adderall out for the rest of the night. If I start drinking, I am good to go. If you’ve never had ADHD or at least taken medicine for it, then you have no idea the jumbled up mess my brain is on a daily basis. With or without my medicine, my brain is off the wall. I wish I could chart it all out and show people. Actually, I wish I could just clock how many different thoughts go through my head each day. Too bad I’m not really a terminator..I bet they have extensive files on that sort of thing.
It’s almost summer and I can’t help but day dream about all summers before. I don’t know if it’s the warm weather, how the sun hangs in the sky just a little longer, or the feeling of freedom that makes everyone love this season so much. Can you even count the number of times you have started a story with “Remember that summer when we..”
I feel like everyone can pinpoint their favorite summer. We think about that time in our lives and go all Bryan Adams or some shit. The best summer of my life was in 2007. I had just finished my first year of college, and I was back in my hometown for one last summer. I worked at the local pool with 3 of my best friends, and spent every waking minute with them. My brother had just gotten a new car, and instead of driving my own I chose to drive his old ’95 Firebird Formula. Every time I see a black Firebird I am thrown back to that summer. We lived in that car. He had it all decked out with Flowmaster exhaust and a subs in the back, and people would break their necks to watch us 4 teenage girls rumble by. I can still hear the sound of that 5.7 liter V8 start up, and it gives me goose bumps to think about being behind that wheel again. We would cruise around town all night listening to our favorite songs and smoking until we were high as a kite. I don’t remember specific nights from this summer, I don’t remember any interactions, love interests, or fun places we went..but I remember our nights in that car. I remember the songs we listened to, and I remember the feeling that this time in our lives we were invincible and free. That deep-down feeling of summer. The feeling you get when you are walking out of school on the last day of the year. The excitement you feel when you break out those shorts. Smelling your neighbors grilling out. Drinking a beer by a bonfire. Riding with the windows down in your car. Tan lines & guys peeling their shirts off…
Even though I’m out of high school, graduated from college, and working a full time job, I still have expectations about summer. I still feel like a teenager when it’s nice out and I’m riding in my car. I still plan out things in my head I want to do this summer, and strangely enough the ideas aren’t much different than before. I still want to drink around a fire while getting eaten up by bugs and watching the drunk people jump in the pond. I want to take long cruises in the country with the windows down and a special someone sitting next to me. I want to go on walks when the sun is just starting to set, and swing with my best friend at the park. I want to get ridiculously drunk off cheap beer with the people I love, fall in the grass and watch the sky spin. I want to sit in the air conditioning after a sweaty day outside. Swim in a pool and not worry about how my hair and makeup look. Go fishing. Sunbathe in a boat. I want this summer to be as wonderful as the summers before I was an adult living in the real world. I want an unattainable fantasy.
It seems like just yesterday my parents were dropping me off at college, and I was absolutely petrified of what was laid out before me. New friends, new relationships, new home, new everything. Being a freshman, I was at the bottom of the totem pole. It seemed like the next 4 years would last forever, and even though I managed to stretch my college career into 5, it didn’t last. It flew by, and before I knew it I was walking home from my last class and graduating the next day. Being thrown into the real world is scary and exciting, and I’ve felt more than once like I am spinning my wheels. I get on facebook and my friends are having babies, getting married, buying houses. No one can wait to grow up. It’s like we are all racing to the finish line, because making it there first defines the success of your life. The world is moving faster than it ever has before and we are all rushing trying to catch up…but I feel like some of us are missing the point of the journey.
After college we are suppose to find a job and become adults, but who decided that’s how your life should go? Just because I have a full-time job doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy staying out late on a Tuesday. I still like drinking too much on the weekend, and laying in bed until noon on Sunday. Last month I paid my electric bill a week late, and I bought a new car knowing full-well I probably shouldn’t. I skip meals, and I have Mountain Dew for breakfast, but who says I can’t? I still enjoy flirting, and being hit on at the bar. The rush of a first kiss, and the weak knees after the second and third. A new crush buzzing around your head all day at work. Spending too much money on a top I fell in love with at the mall. Blasting my music with the windows down. Experimenting. Testing my emotions. Long conversations with new acquaintances. These past few months I’ve realized I’m not ready to settle down and make a promise of forever. I’m still testing the waters around me.
If you fell in love early and married your high school sweetheart, good for you. If you have a mortgage and a baby on the way, congratulations. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. Why should people feel like they are behind in life because they aren’t engaged, or working the perfect job? I don’t want people to look down on me because of a broken engagement or having my brother as a roommate. I’m 24 years old, and this is my life. I have no regrets, and I am going through my life at a comfortable pace. If I don’t get married until I’m 35, that’s just the way my life played out. I’m done rushing relationships, emotions, and growing up. Right now I’m enjoying spending time with a guy I like. I love the newness of it all, and the butterflies I haven’t felt in years. If it doesn’t go anywhere, that’s okay with me. Right now I’m letting everything fall where it may, and enjoying the amazing moments I’m experiencing along the way.
Sometimes it’s funny to think back to how your life has changed in the past year, or even in the past few months. It’s like you wake up one day and that weird feeling in your stomach isn’t really there..or maybe you just got use to it. Yesterday you were riding an emotional rollercoaster and fretting about your life, but today the skies look clear and you can take a deep breath without choking up. A day not long ago you were putting yourself through emotional purgatory trying to lay out the future of a relationship when people were telling you stop stop stop stop stop, but you couldn’t. Today you wake up and you can. Maybe everyone’s advice finally got to you or maybe your brain flipped on its generator and started working even when the rest of you seems to be powerless.
A day not long ago you were thinking of bedspreads, grocery shopping, and practical spending. Today you woke up with the blur of the night before and food in your bed. You have no idea where you will be a year from now, and the future is scary, unplanned, indefinite, unsure..but from this view it’s not painful. For awhile you sort of bounced around with everyone carrying on delicate conversations. People watched you, waiting for you to give up, crumble, self-destruct, leave. You stayed. You stayed, and you dug yourself out of the pile of poo you were thrown in, and now you are standing again, looking up at the summit of your life. The designated trails you once saw are overgrown, and there seems to be a lot more unknown this time..but you are standing. This mountain doesn’t seem so bad. Unknown, scary..different. But not bad. You have no idea where you are going and life doesn’t make sense, but you don’t feel hesitant.
Before you know it you’re climbing. You’re climbing a little bit every day, and there’s a smile on your face looking out at the unknown, unblazed path before you. You notice things and people in your life that you’ve always known were there, but always passed by without a second glance. This time you notice, acknowledge, enjoy. New people in your life feel good. Even if they aren’t really new, they feel new. It makes you happy, like a cheap buzz with an old friend.
Some days you may think, in passing, of previous relationships, but then realize that path was unpractical and tiresome. You understand now that it’s better to be unsure of the future than hopeful for the impossible. Today you wake up with other things and people on your mind. You go about your day without the random thoughts creeping in, and life is starting to make sense again. You’re still on that mountain, and you have a long journey ahead, but today is different. Things change, and life paths get redirected, but maybe if you stop thinking about your past fall you can focus on your new climb.
*This post is dedicated to my friend A.J. who introduced me to the metaphor of climbing your mountain, and encourages me to keep climbing when shit gets the deepest. Thanks for being a great friend.
I hate that this blog has turned from funny/sarcastic bullshit to a teenage diary of emotions. I wish I could say I don’t know how it happened, but not surprisingly I do. I am terrible at talking to people, and even worse at talking to people about my feelings. So I lay it all out here. On the internet. Where anyone could find it. Good thing only a handful of people have.
It’s no secret that this year has literally shit on my face, and these past few months have left me completely lost in my life. I have dealt with some of the lowest points in my life, and I feel like I might start to see the light at the end of the tunnel soon. People have been telling me what I need to do for weeks now, but I am not the sort of people to take just anyone’s advice. This weekend..it just hit me. This back and forth nonsense was making me absolutely miserable. I didn’t enjoy talking to him anymore, it was never about anything happy or enjoyable. It was depressing, it was bringing me down, and it made me realize I needed to quit. Quit seeing him, quit talking to him. When someone is hurting you, you need to cut them out of your life. There was never going to be a solution for our problem. I was never going to forgive and forget. There was no happily ever after in our story. That ending was trashed the moment he betrayed me. I needed to come to terms with this, and move on with my life. He could promise me the world now, but he couldn’t offer me that while we were together. He can tell me how wonderful I am now, but he didn’t realize what he had when he had it. There are other people in my life seeking my attention, and I haven’t even given them a chance. I have been sheltering myself from everyone afraid to move on and get hurt again, when what I really need is to put myself out there and give someone else a chance. I’m so scared to feel anything for anyone. I’m scared to let people in again, but I know I have to. I’m past the laying-in-my-bed-crying-because-it’s-over stage. Now I am mad. I am so mad..I have never been more mad. I am so mad that when I talk to him I start to shake and I want to hit things and then cry in frustration because of everything that has happened. I am so hurt, but all that hurt doesn’t bring me tears of pain, it brings me frustration and so much anger. Sometimes I feel that if I don’t get this anger out of me it will stay there forever. I see things in my life that remind me of him and I feel a pang of hurt, and then I am flushed with rage. Every time he tells me he still loves me and would do anything to make me happy again, I can’t even hold it back, “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! YOU DID THIS TO ME, IF IT WASN’T FOR YOU I WOULDN’T BE FEELING THIS!” He often tells me he is “ready to spend his life with me now” and I don’t think he understands why this makes me the most mad. Doesn’t he get that I was ready last January when we got back together? What was that to him? Nothing. It was all nothing, he threw it away like I am throwing it away now. Am I hurting you like you hurt me? Will you look at me years from now, when I am happy with the man who took your place, and rejoice in the fact that I have healed just fine? Or will you always look at me and see the person you destroyed from the inside out, the great thing you didn’t know you had until you messed it all up? I hope you go home each night, and wonder what I am doing. I hope you lay in bed and look at the spot I use to occupy, and self-destruct at the memory of me being there. I hope you smell me on everything you touch, and see my face in every memory. I hope I haunt your every dream, and occupy your every thought. I wish I could hurt you as bad as you hurt me, but you’ve done it all by yourself.
I know you are reading this. I know you read everything I post. I am done spilling the stale pain of our relationship over this blog, I need to move on. This will be the last time I write about you. I hope.
As with most people my age, I have a very hot & cold relationship with my mother. It could be because we are so much alike, but I like to believe it’s because my mother is literally out of her gourd half the time. My parents moved from Illinois to Arizona a couple years ago, and the move was very hard on her. She was use to feeding every kid in the neighborhood, working in her garden all day, and taking care of me and my brother whenever we were around. She was a stay at home mom my entire life, and it was common knowledge that her life revolved around my brother and I. After we left for college my brothers friends continued to stop by and hang out in the basement like they always had. Some would even stop over on Friday nights when they knew she was going to be making homemade pizza. A few even called her for rides home when they were too loaded to drive. My mother loved this. Having kids around constantly brought out her nurturing instinct she never knew she had.
Naturally, when my dad decided to sell his business and uproot him and my mother to the desolate Southwest, she was lost. Two years later, she is still fighting the move and vows that one day they will move back to the house they made a home, her children, and the kids she raised like her own. Until then, I try to visit when I can and keep in touch as much as is normal. Despite this, we still fight much more than we ever did when she was living here. I blame her unhappiness, she blames it on us being too much alike. But that isn’t even the point of my story. The point is that no matter how far away, how upset, angry, disconnected or different me and my mother are, I still value her opinion..and I seek it when I feel I really need it.
I don’t like phone calls. People call me on the phone and I just clam up. I like to think things through before I say them. I like to think before I answer a question. I like to plan what I’m going to say. So I text. I had texted my mom a few times last week and received no reply. I was pretty mad, since I felt some of them were fairly important and she had just blown me off. So last night, I told my dad that I was done texting her because she never replied! Sure enough, I get a text from my mom saying she deleted her inbox and didn’t get them. I told her I had been upset last week and to just forget about it. Immediately she knew why I was upset and started offering suggestions on what to do about it all. We wrote back and forth for about an hour, until finally she told me to just go to bed and think about it tomorrow with a clear head. This morning I woke up and reread all the texts that were sent, and I still feel what she said is right. She told me that no matter how you live your life, you are going to make mistakes. People, no matter who they are, are going to judge you for those mistakes. Everyone is always going to have an opinion. People can tell you what to do a million times, but if you aren’t ready to do it, you won’t. Someday you will wake up and realize you are over it, and you will be. You will walk away from all of it and never look back. If it makes you happy, do it. If it doesn’t, then stop.
Although she never told me what to do, and I still don’t know where to go from here, I feel a little better. At this time in my life I have a million people all telling me their opinion, but the only opinion that matters is my own. Maybe when I figure out what I want from life, I will be able to make those decisions. Or maybe I’ll just ask my mom.
Earlier this week, a couple I know welcomed a new addition into their family. I wanted to get something for the baby, but I wanted it to be something a little different..something they might keep after he grew out of it. I decided I would crochet him a hat. It had been awhile since I crocheted anything, so my first attempt was a little rough. The hat ended up turning out pretty cute, but I had so much fun doing it that I started looking for other crochet projects. Today on my lunch break, I drove out to a local park and crocheted a headband for one of my friends. It was so nice just sitting in my car, listening to music, and doing something creative. As pathetic as it sounds, I had missed crocheting. I’m actually not even sure that it was the crocheting I missed..it was being creative.
After college I moved back to my hometown and into a house with the guy I was seeing. Living with your significant other for the first time is always a big step, and you never really know how things are going to work out. At this time I was completely in love with him, and every free moment we were together. Since the weather was turning nice, we were constantly out on his bike, taking small weekend trips, or spending time outside. At the time I didn’t notice, but the things I wanted to do were being put on a back burner and I started focusing on the things that would make us happy. Thinking back, it almost angers me that we always ended up doing the things he enjoyed, but never really the things I liked. He was an outdoorsy person, and my thing was creativity. We went fishing, boating, for walks in the country, motorcycle rides..but where were the things I enjoyed? Sure, I had fun doing most of these things..but this isn’t how I enjoyed spending my time. In college I was constantly creating things. I loved painting, I crocheted small things, built & designed new websites, did random crafts, tried felting, made wreaths over the holidays, and even photographed my own Christmas cards a few years. I had expressed interest in his past times, but why wasn’t he doing the same for mine?
Almost a year later, me and my now ex-fiancé are no longer together. I moved in with my brother a little over a month ago, and since then I have been slowly trying to pick up the pieces and move on. The hardest part about a break up, besides of course the hurt and anger, is trying to remember yourself. Sometimes when you are with someone for so long, you forget who you are. You forget that you liked to sleep in on the weekends. You forget how good it feels to shut your door and be completely alone in the silence. You forget how to cook for just one..you forget that you like to crochet. I have been struggling with this so much lately. I get home from work, I go up to my room, and I sit there. I am no longer waiting for him to get home. I am no longer wondering what he would like for dinner. It’s just me. Just me, sitting alone, wondering where I go from here. Last night I dug through my “art box,” as I like to call it. I pulled out my watercolors, most of which had been crushed in the move. I painfully pictured in my head the last picture I had painted with them, the picture that no longer sits in his room. I tossed them back into the box, the memory causing me to lose any ambition I had to paint. I sat on my bed for a few minutes until I could no longer take the silence, and then I dug the paints out again.
I recreated the picture in my mind and put it on the paper. This time, I kept it for myself. This was my painting. This is what I like to do. With everything that relationship took from me, this was not going to be another. I don’t want another person in my life to dictate what I love to do. I don’t want to worry about pleasing someone else before pleasing myself. Maybe someday, but not now. Right now I need to remember all the things that make me happy. I need to remember what it feels like to be happy again, and I will. Slowly, I am. I can’t wait until the day I wake up, at the time I want, and I am happy. I can’t wait until I can lay my head down at night without the pain he caused me even crossing my mind that day. And then, I want to do it again the next day.
I woke up this morning and ripped up that painting. I’m done sharing.
Tagged with: breakups • crafts • creating • heartbreak • hurt • moving on • painting • relationships • watercolor
I came into work today to find an email announcing an employee meeting later in the day. I already knew what the meeting was about, but since I didn’t have much going on I decided to look at the minutes from previous meetings. Most of them were boring, detailing minuscule problems that employees had with one another or changes to health insurance and 401ks. When I got to a meeting from December of last year, I noticed that the company gives yearly service awards to employees who have been there for a certain length of time. A few people got 5 year awards, a few more got 10. Some people had even been there for 20 or 25 years. At the bottom of the list, I saw a name I was familiar with. It was the woman who pays me every other week. The one I give my time sheet to every Friday. The woman whose office is directly across from mine. She’s one of those people who keep to themselves for the most part, but I’m sure she opens up when she gets to know you. Sometimes she will surprise me with a smart-ass comment. It always catches me off guard, but in a good way. Her daughter stops by every now and then, and the other ladies in the office all seem to know her. I like this woman, and she received an award for 35 years of service. It literally said her name, and then “administrative assistant- 35 years.” This woman has been someone’s assistant for 35 years. The woman she works under now hasn’t even been here 35 years! My biggest fear when I accepted this job was that there was no room for me to move up. Where could I go? When you are someone’s assistant, where do you go from there? This was my answer- you don’t. With that thought, I had a new fear. I don’t want to be someone’s assistant for 35 years. Hell, I don’t want to work anywhere for 35 years. I haven’t even been alive 35 years! Trying to wrap my head around doing the exact same thing, every day, for that long is impossible. Could any 20-something do that? I know that many people take pride in the fact that they can say they have worked somewhere for any number of years, and that’s good. When a company has several employees who have been there that long, that looks good for them. Still, the thought is daunting. Do people plan to stay at a place for so long? Was this what she wanted to spend her life doing? I could ask her so many questions, but instead I will just ask myself.
After I started working here, I was happy to finally find a job post-college. I knew that I hadn’t exactly landed my dream job, and the pay was absolutely terrible, but it was a starting point. I could continue to look for other jobs, but at least I was bringing in a paycheck. After my first few weeks, I had settled into a routine. I got to know the wonderful people I work with, and had I learned the ropes of the office. I had most of my duties down, easily. The thought of finding a new job faded away. I wasn’t sure I could come into work and tell my coworkers goodbye. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have to learn the duties of a new job, when what I was doing had become so routine and easy. At my 90 day review, my boss handed me the evaluation she had filled out about me. She gave me the highest marks in every category. I looked at it, and I felt so proud that I was succeeding at my first job. The real world was in fact not kicking my ass! My boss told me that I was a pleasure to work with, and I learned everything faster than she could have imagined. She told me I made her job easier, and she couldn’t thank me enough for all my hard work. After all of this, I couldn’t wait for her to tell me how big of a raise I was getting. I figured that since they low-balled me so bad on my starting pay, I would definitely be getting a few more dollars. After all, I have a college degree, and she just told me how great I was! Oh was I ever wrong. I ended up with a $.50 raise, and she told me that I would be up for another review next year. My stomach fell to my butt, and I left her office with my tail between my legs. I cried on my 15 minute commute home. I could be making more money than this as a shift manager at McDonalds (I’m serious here people, I googled it.) Yet again, I started thinking about where I was going with this job. What did I really want to do? I didn’t go to college to do this. This is not the life I planned for myself. I cannot be someone’s assistant for 35 years..and I won’t be.
Last week I started really looking for a new job. I mean, REALLY looking. I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life- but it isn’t this. I want to be heard at my job. I want to be able to be creative, and share ideas, and be a part of something. Organize things. Make plans. Execute those plans..see things all come together. I want to be challenged when I walk into work every day. After I received my degree in graphic design, I definitely had second thoughts about whether or not I wanted to do that for a living. I still worry I picked the wrong major. Sometimes I think I should have gotten a degree in business, every job I see seems to be looking for some type of business major. I’m glad I didn’t though. My major is me; I have to be creative. I have been creative my entire life, and I shouldn’t be second guessing something I have wanted to do for so long. Design is really just one gun in my arsenal. I feel like I am capable of doing so many things, I just need to get myself out there. My dream job is waiting for me, I just haven’t found it yet. Maybe when I do, I won’t be so scared to think of doing it for the next 35 years.
In your next relationship, you won’t move backwards. You won’t be lead on by old feelings and memories. You won’t feel nostalgic about a first love. They won’t even be your first love. You won’t get in touch with someone you use to think everything of, thinking it was a good idea..you won’t let yourself fall for them again. You’ll never ask them to make a 5-hour trip to come see you, even though it’s been years since you have seen each other. You won’t wonder what they did in your time apart, because your next relationship won’t have gaps. It will be one long note, without pauses and breaks in between. You won’t lay in bed and kiss them correctly, knowing exactly how they kiss back. You won’t know what they crave. Every day will be a new discovery.
You won’t choose a song by your favorite band to make “your song.” That band will forever make you miss them. When you hear a song by them you will be pulled into the past, your head will spin and you will forget to breathe. Make it a new song..one you’ve never heard. Make it one you can’t stand. Make it anything you would gladly never listen to again.
You won’t develop new interests to compliment theirs. You won’t stop painting. You won’t stop being creative. You won’t leave your dog behind. Your next partner would never tell you they hate something you love so much. You won’t give up anything for your new relationship, because you shouldn’t have to. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice who you are and what you love to be happy with them. Your next partner will love you for who you are. Your next partner will try to love what you love.
Your next relationship won’t leave you unhappy all the time. They won’t make you feel like they are hiding something. They won’t keep their computer protected with a password because they know what you could find. You won’t have to check their phone to see who they have been talking to. You won’t check his phone and find text messages expressing how he wishes he could sleep with someone from his past again. You won’t find texts explaining the dirty things he did to girls who came before you, and how much they all turned him on. Your next relationship won’t make you feel like you have to compete with these past girls. Your next relationship will not deplete your already weak self-confidence. They will be happy with the things you do, and they will love you for it. You will be able to trust this person. Your next relationship will renew your faith in people.
You will never have that talk laying in bed with your next relationship. You always knew he was hiding something about that girl, but he always tried to brush it off. You knew there was more to the story, and eventually, after pushing and pushing, he came clean. Your next relationship will never tell you that they had been cheating on you the entire time you had been together. He won’t blow it off saying “it didn’t mean anything, I love you” because that isn’t how you treat someone you love. He won’t ignore your questions you ask, desperately trying to understand how you could have something so wonderful in your grasp, and crush it. Spit on it..burn it. Throw it out the window, you don’t care about it. You won’t have to ask yourself these questions in your next relationship. You won’t have to wonder what he saw in a 19 year old addict. You won’t have to compare yourself to someone he repeatedly chose over you. You won’t develop body issues thinking something is wrong with you. You won’t starve for compliments from him..anything, to let you know that he really does love you. He really does want you..you are his one and only. You weren’t. You never were.
The person you choose for your next relationship won’t be hated by all of your friends. You were too blinded by love to see what a complete asshole he was, but the people closest to you weren’t. They told you he never treated you right..they warned he would break your heart again. Next time, you won’t be so naïve. You will choose someone kind hearted and thoughtful. Someone who thinks of you at random times during the day. Someone who surprises you with silly little things because they saw it and it reminded them of you. Someone who gives you compliments and builds you up instead of breaks you down. Your next relationship will be based on truth and not lies.
Your next relationship won’t present you with an engagement ring to try and solve the problems you have. They won’t be hiding behind lies when they ask you to spend the rest of your life with them. They won’t be thinking in the back of their head “If she only knew what I have done to her..” Your next relationship won’t cry when he buys you this ring, because he knows that someday you will learn of his secret and leave him. Your next relationship might not even make it to this stage. It might not work out, but it won’t be like this one was. If they do ask you to marry them, your next relationship will do it properly. They will get down on one knee, with the ring that you have never seen in their hand, and ask you. They will have asked your father beforehand, because they know that’s how it should be. They would put thought into a moment that you will remember for the rest of your life. They will know that moment is something you have been thinking about since you were a little girl. It will mean something to this person.
Your next relationship will not make you think of the past. It will not make you want to go backwards and be with him again. It will make you want to stay in the present, and beg for the future. It will make you wonder why you settled for so much less for so long. Your next relationship will make you realize how wonderful you are, and how short you had been selling yourself. Your next relationship may not be your last relationship, but it will be better than the one you thought was your last. It will put the pieces of your heart back together, and it will bring a smile back to your face. It will renew your self-confidence and you will go to bed in love instead of crying. Your next relationship won’t be perfect, but it will be better…because it couldn’t possibly be any worse.
I didn’t write this. I just want to feel it.
Original article can be found here.
Moving on is not like a birthday, you can’t count down the hours ‘til it arrives and you can’t mark it on a calendar and you can’t call up your friends to help you celebrate. You can’t plan for it and you can’t conclude it by blowing out a candle. When moving on happens there will be no announcements, no notifications, no congratulations. There will be no parade; only you will know. Moving on is like aging that way, if aging happened backward. If the passing of days made you new and young, if your condition only had room to improve. Instead of a throbbing pain in your right knee forcefully, increasingly making its presence known, first with a whisper and then with a mumble and then with a shout, ‘til you can’t move, ‘til you can’t walk; moving on is gradual like that except when it’s over, you can walk just fine. You can run, even.
Moving on is like this: one day you forget the taste. The next, you forget the smell. Then the touch. Then the laugh. Then the smile. Then the jokes. Then the eyes, the hair, the hands, the feet. You forget the socks. You forget the fingers, the toes, the sex. You forget the pulses, the beats, the rhythms and how you sometimes felt like they all belonged to you. You forget the words; finally, you forget the voice that spoke them. Moving on is like one day, you’re walking or reading or drinking the sun and one of those footprints, one of those artifacts will creep into your consciousness, “already seen,” the French call this, déjà vu, and you won’t know where it belongs or how it got there. All it takes is a familiar laugh, a recognizable word and you are transported to who knows where. You are a confused paleontologist now, scrambling to make sense of things left behind, trying to reunite the right dinosaur with the right bones. The scar from his burst appendix goes here, the part of his leg that doesn’t grow hair belongs there, I think this is his morning breath but maybe it belongs to someone who came before him; some other ghost, some other relic. His taste is an aftertaste now, his crow’s feet a souvenir with no place to call home. That’s what moving on is like.
Moving on is not like beginning a new chapter, it’s like beginning a new book — with each turned page, the last story you read fades into the background. A fairy tale that becomes just another book on a shelf; folded corners and underlined words the only reminder of how you used to touch and hold and love it. Moving on is when you begin to forget the intricacies of a character you knew intimately, you forget what he did for a living and the way he prepared grilled cheese and the nickname he had for his first girlfriend. You forget how he lost his virginity, you forget his middle name.
Moving on is waking up without a sour feeling in your stomach, looking at a familiar menu and ordering something different, taking the direct route to a destination and not the one that crosses a path you once set in stone. Moving on is when you think about him and don’t punish yourself for it, when he begins to evoke more of a scientific response than an emotional one, like “This is a 6’0” blonde-haired person who exists,” and not “This is a person I wish I’d never met; this is a person who has made me less of one.” Moving on is not to destroy or to combust or to set ablaze, it is simply to move, to advance through space and time, to leave behind the familiar dull of heartbreak for the new, the unknown, the strange. Moving on is a bird flying south for the winter who decides maybe the warmth isn’t so bad, who decides maybe he’ll stay there for awhile; moving on is like freedom, is what moving on is like.
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