barbies & ninja turtles.

Growing up I had two different options. I could either stay inside with the girls and play princess, or I could run around outside and roll in the mud with the little boys up the street. My decesion making process was a combination of personal taste and convience. True, I did enjoy the company of male friends more so than my female friends, but I also happened to live around 4 little boys who were consitantly wrecking havoc around the neighborhood. Polly pocket just couldn't hold a candle to that kind of fun, so it wasn't long before I wanted to join forces with the 4 boys. I was already friends with Jake and Thomas, so it was pretty easy for me to fit in. Like a pack of wolves I was adopted in as one of their own, and we were like one big happy family.

Once I started 2nd grade I started getting my first real exposure to the other girls. I made friends with a few of them, but never hung out with them in a group. Not that it mattered, I had my pack...the boys.. and I never got invited to any of their stupid tea parties anyway. My distaste for playing "house" at recess and choosing to play tackle football during touch football always got me into trouble, and the other girls cringed when I shoveled mashed peas and ketchup into my mouth at lunch to gross them out while making my friends roar with laughter. 

Yes, my place has been determined, (despite the fact that between the ages of 3 and 5 I loved all things girly) I had a reputation among my 'dudes'. I was treated as an equal...sometimes they even forgot I was a girl. I liked it this way...and I was careful to never draw any attention to myself that might remind them that I was different. Most of the time I was happy with my lifestyle. I miss those days of ninja turtles, Nintendo 64, spontaneous wrestling matches over the red controller, and all the unorganized kickball games we had.

But to be honest, deep down inside...I still freakin' loved tea parties. I had dolls too...and barbies...lots and lots of barbies. I secretly would hang out with my new found girlfriends and we would play with my barbies. But I hid this from the guys. Last thing I wanted was for them to make me be the pink piece in all the board games and laugh because I'm a cooty infested girly girl who only pretends to be tough. Even though deep down I wanted to trade in my blue game piece for that pink piece so carelessly tossed aside!

I remained a tomboy until I was in 4th grade. It was then that I discovered Bonne Bell lipgloss, The Spice Girls and glitter gel pens. Maybe I wasn't a TRUE tomboy. Sure I was always picked first when we played tackle football cause I could hit hard as a 9 year old girl, but really I was just a rough and tumble kind of girl who still wanted to hug a teddy bear at the end of the day. By this point I had found 3 girls that I had become best friends with. They liked to play with my new Barbie and Ken dolls but they also liked to tie a rope around Barbie's neck and bind her to the treehouse in the backyard. Looking back there was nothing wrong with me for wanting a barbie dream house AND a nerf gun 2000. The older I got, the more I (with acceptance from both guys and girls) became less of a tomboy and more of a girly girl...but still clung tightly to some of my "boyish" ways. Now as a 23 year old little girl...I love to watch football on Sundays, sit nosebleed section of a UK basketball game screaming at the refs "YOU SUCK!", beating my dad in burping contests and I love wearing basketball shorts past my knees...but just as long as my nails are painted hot pink. 

unorganized rant.

I've been taking online classes for the past 3 and a half weeks and I have had to go to my campus' library to research. The campus is totally empty, with everyone being gone for the summer. Directly after work I end up at the library, alone and being alone a good portion of the day for days at a time has really caused me to be still, think, pray and search my own heart. The "reality checks" I have been experiencing don't seem to stop since I've been here. Up until a couple of days ago, I was walking an empty campus in the dark... utterly alone with my thoughts and prayers. There have been several times where spiritual slaps in the face have left me in tears. Tears of joy, tears of regret, tears of guilt and tears of forgiveness. He knows what it takes to get my attention...He has it. Something that has been heavy on my heart has been differentiating who I am vs. what I am as well as others.

When does someone with cancer suddenly become a cancer patient? Or how does someone who eats too much suddenly seem fat? Where does our society decide that an individual's actions or traits define who they are or what they want to be? In this world, how can one look at another and decide "what" they are, rather than who they are?

No one wants to look in the mirror and see an object looking back. I would never wake up one morning and go to my bathroom to see a "failure", "student", or "ex-girlfriend" looking at me through the mirror. Since i know myself well enough, i know that there is more than that to me and that these nouns are only part of a pool of words that can be used to describe maybe a small aspect of me. (i am forgiven, i am HIS, i am blessed..) I'm sure anyone else could agree - they don't look at themselves as a collection of words, but a person.

When i look at other people, why do i still see "students", "superiors" or "crowds" looking back. No one is an individual, and its my goal to function beyond this. Why is it one person's right to decide who another person is, or should be? 

So, to overcome this, i sometimes try to make up stories about the people i see. Maybe that girl eating too much is really a recovering anorexic, and this is her taking power over herself. Maybe that person with cancer has decided not to let their disease control them, but rather move forward in life. I'll look at a distressed man in a suit walking across the street, and instead of deeming him a high-powered "jerk," he might just be a student on break from a part time job, in a hurry to catch the bus or meet his girlfriend for lunch.

By giving depth to people, whether its true or not, the urges to want to decide who someone is without their consent becomes more difficult. I can look at them as if they were human beings, too - even if it means lying to myself. I don't want to keep skimming through a crowd and deciding "who is what" without knowing who they are. I'd rather just believe that everyone is fighting their own battles and working towards their own goals - individually, separately, and with strength. 

I don't ever want to be just a face to someone else, so why am I? ...how else can you overcome the mindset of a people without starting with your own adjustments? 

have you ever been deemed as something you wouldn't consider yourself to be? Do you do this to people without realizing it? Why do you think we, as a culture, do this? And for the record... don't just call it human nature...thats just the excuse to continue our actions and call it an instinct.

Neverland (English paper rough draft)

Do you remember being a kid and learning for the first time that flying was really possible? That a cow could jump over the moon and that you really could follow the second star to the right, straight on until morning, that there was a place in which you could see a day without a night and a night without a day, hover over entire worlds made of pink seas, and know the full power of a promise, to throw a memory as far as the east is from the west? I had forgotten that sensation. It happened too long ago. I’ve lived with it all my life and taken it for granted, but I got to watch it come to life again in the mind of a six year-old autistic girl. She watched wide-eyed as a tiny boy floated in a sea of stars and said, for the first time, what she was going to do when she grew up. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a fairy and fly!” She had found a world with real fairies and little boys who never grow up and lost boys who could fly. And there it was-the magic, all over again. Like the first time, even though I had forgotten it. I looked into her eyes and believed again, and I believed in the magic that she had found. I understood the power of Neverland. Neverland itself is not magic. It has pirates, indians, devilish mermaids and all sorts of creatures. No, the magic is getting there, “with a little faith and trust and a little sprinkling of pixie dust” (Peter Pan), and, once there, the magic of Neverland is that it makes me, at last, brave enough to grow up.

I know that even while I am paying off those school bills, or making that Monday morning stop to Starbucks after a half-slept night, somewhere out there, Peter Pan is crowing. While I fight the temptation to wallow in self-pity, He is fighting pirates. While I feel the gravity of life and its ups and downs, real men and women fly. They touch stars. They feel and see more of life in a single morning than most of us see in a lifetime. This moment was and is still so significant and powerful to me-remembering that magic is true. I am talking about finding out that magic is true enough that I can chart my courses by it, just like Michael, John and Wendy. To me magic is finding out that life is unbounded, mysterious, lurking and calling. Neverland is true, but it is still Neverland. Narnia exists, but it still just happens-when you least expect it. Ever since that day I try to live my life knowing it is there. I believe, and I cast my ever-watchful eyes on the stars, on portraits, on wardrobe doors-just in case.

I think that while my nature thirsts for knowledge, deeper down, in the middle of who I really am, my thirst for mystery is even greater. If I know everything, if I ever open my eyes and see all that there is to be seen I think I would feel naked and vulnerable. Isn’t that what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? At the same time they sought after the forbidden fruit they also feared it just as I will not read too quickly the final books of C.S. Lewis, or I refuse to give away the last of my childhood Barbie collection, all because I know they are the last. They are the end. I need a part of them to remain childlike. The day the little girl’s belief in magic reminded me what it is to believe, I also found that aside from Neverland, there is another star. It draws me to know, to explore, and to seek, to name, to find-a star that I follow with almost obsessive thirst because I know I will never reach its end. I do not fear the last page because I know there is not one, and if I do fear then I don’t really know Him at all.

I honestly believe that magic is medicine. It heals my sadness of a broken heart and the sorrows of broken promises. It brings me back to the place where I can, if only for a few moments be a child again. With this magic, all things are made new, especially me. God knows how much I need it. He knows that Neverland, and Narnia’s magic is essential to my believing, because, while my body lives trapped in a place that is not true, but real, the true places can by seeking, become not just the places that live inside of me but the very life inside all of us. As I lay upon this little girl’s bed after tucking her in that night, we watched the planets which dangled from her homemade solar system, and chose, because it is blue, Neptune as the first planet this tiny six year old would fly to. I did not tell her how far away it is, how small she was, or how having wings made of pink pixie dust only exists in stories. Like her, I just admired its shade of blue, dreamt of fluttering there with my pink wings made of pixie dust, and marveled at everything I did not know about this beautiful blue foam ball.

“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Neverland.”(Peter Pan)

psychotic girl.

oversized sunglasses.

my favorite tye dye shirt.

yellow walkie talkie.

silver-metallic snow boots.

gummy bears.

purple nail polish.

when the lights go out by: the black keys...on repeat.

transformers coloring book.

"non toxic" crayola markers.

ultra slouchy toboggan.

"rebelling".

bear hugs from strangers.

living in the boons of Kentucky for an edumacation.

2 hour naps.

polka dot themed dreams...2 nights in a row.

=)

there is significance for me in all of these. 

ugh.

no profound thoughts or words today & probably won't have any for a few more days to come.

i just want to be back on campus at school. 

the break has been so wonderful. friends. family. lots of sleep.

but..i'm ready to go back.

questionable faith (?)

i fell a little more in love with Jesus yesterday. he has this way of loving me. i can't help but fall head over heels in love with him a little more. amazing how a little can go a long way, but it's never enough. and i like that. i always want to be wanting more out of this relationship he and i have. (i keep getting cold feet...i am yet to have gone in head first.)

it's good to remember the reasons you fell in love in the first place, typically aids in the process of growing closer.

i tend to find myself at a loss for words when someone asks me about my faith, God, Jesus and the church. words don't seem to form, and when they do...they don't make sense. i can't make sense of God. i can't make sense of the church. i can't make sense of my beliefs sometimes or how the way that i live my life is different from what my parents believe. i can't explain how and or if my actions are the "right" way vs. the "wrong" way. all that i do know for certain is that i am loved. and sometimes...love doesn't make sense to anyone but the persons involved. i feel passionately. i feel loved. i feel loving. and yet...i don't believe that love is based on feeling. it is so much more than that. feelings can come and go just as easily as a spring rain. "here today, gone tomorrow."  there is uncertainty in feeling. the love i know/knew is abandoned. not self seeking. it is raging. sacrificial. i am no where close to BEING any of those. doesn't love work best when both are loving the other?

my uncertainties are countless. i am uncertain about almost everything. life. love. hope. happiness. too many questions and not enough answers. or it may be that there are answers to my questions but i'm not ready to know them. ? again, i don't know. but somehow, i am content with not knowing...for now. [see. i. don't. make. sense!!!]

he knows how to capture my attention as well as my heart. he has done it in the past. i pray he does it again.

the burning of the bras.

i'm tired of putting time into applying makeup. 

or as most girls say, "i need to go 'paint my face' on". 

that sounds disgusting. which is appropriate because makeup feels disgusting. 

i am not defined by my makeup. 

i'm not a fan of my mascara smelling like beer.

[not that anyone is going to be sniffing my eyelashes anytime soon.]

part of me WANTS someone to come up to me. sniff my eyelashes and agree that they do, in fact, smell just like beer.

so begins my own personal challenge...monday through friday...no makeup.

i realize that for some women this is hardly a challenge. but for me, it is.

who knows. maybe i'll burn my bras next & invite all the women i know to join me.

"when everything was made to be broken"

post-our night out on the town =)

30 reasons to run the opposite direction.

After being reunited with some dear friends of mine, we got to talking about relationships, lack thereof and the everythings in-between. Long story short...myself & another girl became the butt of the jokes going on in the circle. Typical...yet comfortable. I am not easily embarrassed and everything said over sushi & drinks sadly, had a great amount of truth to it. They told me to make a list. 30 Reasons why I am not in a relationship [committed, that is]. Here is what I came up with. & so far, at least up to this point in my life...according to my cherished friends...I hit the nail on the head.

1. I am terribly honest.  I can't lie and will probably tell you things you definitely DON'T want to hear.

2. Loyalty, I've got it in spades.  Once I decide I actually care for you, that's it. It takes a lot for me to stray even after I know the end is near or that you aren't exactly in tune with the same level of loyalty.

3. I have a hard time trusting people.  If I don't think I can trust you, I'm sure you're hiding something and, therefore, cannot be trusted.  If I get a red flag saying not to trust you, I'll find a reason to make sure you have earned my trust.
4. I'm disgustingly social and have a hard time being alone.
5. You will find me terribly cold, especially if I actually do care about you. When I care about someone, I tend to become rather unsure of myself and go into "emotional lockdown".
6. Emotional lockdown...I'm usually pretty closed in the "feelings department," but I become even more so when I do care for someone.

7. I handle rejection flawlessly, but it's acceptance that freaks me out.

8. You are looking at the antithesis of hip. But I'll pretend I'm the hippest girl in the room.

9. I'm obsessed with children. Not in a creepy, 'I want to kidnap your child' way...but I'll spot 10 adorable kids in a room in 30 seconds flat. 

10. I sing all the time...& loudly.

11. I come with baggage, past relationships being the proverbial suitcase. At least for now.

12. Do you like hearing random stories about people you don't care about?  I love telling them. 

13. My idea of good music is the kind you can't find on the radio. 

14. I don't like wearing a bra, and I shouldn't have to. 

15. It's entirely probable that I will never be able to have kids without a decent amount of fertility drugs.

16. I don't smoke. 

17. If you don't like my effort to be grammatically correct, buzz off.

18. I swear sometimes. Which I hate. Hardly classy.

19. I love movies, and by that I mean, I spend most of my paycheck/hard earned money investing in movies. The good & bad alike. My idea of a date is a movie. Screw dinner or horse drawn-carriage rides.

20. I like to flirt.

21. Saying I am inexperienced with the opposite sex is definitely an understatement.

22. Despite the above, I'm pretty open minded.

23. I'm a sucker for "doing the right thing," 99% of the time.

24. You will be expected to have a love of Disney movies.

25. I don't like hunting. However, fishing I like and can be tolerated if you throw them back. (Unless its a huge bass. We are takin that sucker home!)

26. Driving scares the bejeezus out of me. But I would die without road trips and traveling.

27. I fear nearly everything in the appropriate dose.

28. I think in long term, not short term.

29. Tie-dye is great and novelty socks rule, and that's just a snippet of my colorful wardrobe.

30. The expiration dates on well...anything...are merely suggestions.

I'm only 21 years old. Only time will tell if I will change. Who's to say I will? Who's to say I won't? I'd like to think that I will...at least for the better.

Ha.