Friendship.

Friends are important.  Friends, real friends, are not easy to find.  Especially in Utah.

I do not understand this place.  This is not a Utah-bashing thing, just a very honest observation... People here are selfish.  I have never met so many self-involved, detached, apathetic people.  It blows my mind because where I come from people care.  I'm pretty sure most people that I grew up associating with would give you the shirt off their back if you asked for it.  Or if you didn't ask they would still notice that you needed it and offer it up willingly.  Here in Utah I can't even make dinner plans with someone without it being pushed out two or three times and then eventually not happening.  And this isn't just one or two people.  This is pretty much everyone.

I've been here for about 4 years (holy cow, how did that happen?) and friends are something that I have struggled with.  I have felt very lonely in this desert state.  There are people everywhere.  Everyone is nice to your face.  There are lots of "we should hang out!" and "let's do this!" type comments, but never any follow-through.  I will tell you, this does nothing for one's health.  I have found myself, on many occasions, wondering why people here don't like me.  After speaking to people about this, it's not just me.  It's just a way of life here.  Do what you want, when you want, if someone else fits into that plan...perfect.  If not, no big deal, who needs friends?

Um.  I do.  I need friends.

June 2007- Rainbow Party (to rebel from wearing Starbucks black and green everyday)

I met Carissa in 2007.  She was a tiny little bird of a girl who got a job at Starbucks.  I had the pleasure of teaching her the tricks of the trade.  (You're welcome current Starbucks customers for training the best barista around!)  We hit it off instantly.  This girl was witty, sarcastic, hilarious, and just plain nice.  I am 4 years older than her.  We are very different but at the same time we click perfectly.

Halloween 2007.  Raggedy Ann and Snow White.

What do we do best?  Talk shit.  Excuse my language.  And by "talk shit" I mean sit for hours discussing life.  Boys, girls, clothes, big cities, careers, family, money... you name it.  We talk about it.  We talk and talk and talk.  And we are funny.  So sarcastic.  So honest.  Harsh at times.  Vulnerable.  We talk a lot.  Half the time I will be telling a story and she will be telling a story.  Simultaneously.  She doesn't respond about what I'm saying, I don't respond about what she's saying.  We just talk.  And I know she's listening.  She knows I'm listening.  No need to acknowledge what the other is saying.  I know that she's listening because the next time I see her is when she asks the follow-up questions.

Best Barista!

Sometimes life gets in the way and we'll go a couple weeks without seeing each other or even exchanging more than an "I just miss you" text message.  But when we finally get together it is perfect.  And I remember why she has become one of my very best friends.  A rare find here in Utah County.  A consistent, true friend.  Someone that I can call when I am having a bad day, or when I want to dance, or when I kiss a boy and I need to talk about it for over an hour, or when I feel like doing nothing but eating pizza wearing no makeup with messy hair and a child wearing nothing but a diaper... Someone to be the godmother to my baby.  Ayla adores Carissa.  Little bird already paints her nails, tells her embarrassing stories about me, and talks about when we're old sitting at a cafe drinking coffee getting ready to send a 20 year old Ayla off to Europe for a semester, and how she's prepared to deal with a child who rebels against me...she has advice ready.

Terrible dark picture... But this was yesterday, pizza night at Carissa's house!

I love her and I am thankful for the friendship that we have.  If nothing else good comes from my time here in Utah, I have found a life-long friend in Carissa Lee Fillmore.

June 2011.  Owl Bar, Sundance, UT

Dream.

Not last night, but the night before, I had a dream that terrified me.

I was with Lauren and we walked outside and both instantly noticed that the sky was completely black, not a single cloud, and all of the stars were shining so brightly and clustered together directly above us.  Almost instantly the stars formed an arrow that pointed to the right, we of course followed the arrow and looked to the right.  The arrow then shot left, we looked left.  Suddenly the brightest light was shining down and we knew that it was an angel.  A hand appeared in the sky and I knew that it was the hand of God.  The hand started gesturing and with no words being spoken this is what it said, "The world has become evil.  These are dark times and they will continue to get worse.  I will be coming in 3.2 years.  You need to make things right."  I remember running to get my mom so that she could also see this.  It was terrifying.  The reality that I only have 3.2 years to get on track and make my life right.  I woke up extremely shaken.  It was so real.  All morning I was jumpy.  I even pulled the shower curtain back like 4 times during my 10 minute shower because I was sure that someone would be there.

Maybe this is a sign that I need to change things in my life, but I tell ya, I do not want this life to end.  I want to raise my girl and watch her grow up.  I sure hope that I have more than 3.2 years left.

But just in case... consider yourself warned.  3.2 years...  What would you do with only 3 more years?

Stopping to smell the roses.

Ok, maybe not roses.  I actually don't know what it was that I was smelling, but I wish I did.  I stared at the plant for a good two minutes trying desperately to recall my two years of agricultural science in high school, just hoping that I would come up with a name so that I can plant them in my own yard someday.

I decided a little late this evening to take Ayla for a jog in the jogging stroller.  We had both been cooped up all night and if I'm frustrated with it, it's a sure bet that my little outdoorsy girl is frustrated with it.  So I packed her up and hit the road, knowing it would be a short jog because the thought of running around little Mexico in the dark with my baby makes me panic just a bit.  I am so glad that I did.  It was so refreshing and such a great way to clear my mind.  Just jogging along, the mountains ahead of me, beautiful foliage to my side, and of course my sweet girl turning up to me approximately every three minutes just to say "hiiii!"

I know that this season can be rough on people with allergies, more than rough, probably a living hell from what I've seen.  For me, it is marvelous.  The smell of pollen in the air is intoxicating.  Watching it swirl through the air is like magic.  Like a soft, warm snow on the first day of summer.  When I stopped in front of that amazingly fragrant plant that was peeking over someone's fence I stood and took deep breaths for as long as my antsy little girl would let me.  I love feeling refreshed.  I love feeling that much closer to happy.

*****

I've been called selfish a lot lately.  When you make a decision that is for you, not for someone else, there's almost no way to avoid it.  It's really been wearing me down.  Almost to the point of questioning what I know to be the right decision.  Almost.

After a lot of thinking and a lot of tears, my response to the accusation of me being selfish?  This is my life.  It's the only one I've got.  If I can't be strong enough to stand up for what I deserve then what is the point?  What kind of example will I be to my girl?  I want her to grow up strong and proud and confident.  I want her to know that it's ok to walk away when you have been knocked down.  It's ok to walk away when someone makes you feel like you are worth nothing.  There is not anything that someone can say to justify being treated that way.  I have felt that way long enough and it is time for me to move on.

It's time for me to accept the fact that I deserve more.  If there is something/someone better, if there is someone who will make me feel special and worth something, then I deserve the chance to find that.  If I don't find it, life will go on.  But I have to be able to say that I tried.  I have to be able to say that I did everything in my power to be truly happy.

If I'm not happy now, then when?

And as for broken families? It's a tragedy that has become my reality.  My girl loves her father.  She worships his every move.  I don't want that to ever change.  Not ever.  The relationship between a father and a daughter is something so incredibly special.  It's something that I want them to have.  I am very careful to make sure that she sees me building him up.  When he walks in the room we both yell "daddy!" and we talk about daddy when he's not around.  I want her to know without a doubt that he is worthy of her complete and unfaltering love.  And I hope that he always shows her that she is as well.

I want to be his friend.  I don't hate him by any means.  I have forgiven him.  I don't hold anything over his head.  The scars that he gave me are there because I let them be.  I didn't protect myself and I hope that I can turn them from pain and insecurity to a reminder of what I am looking for.  Neither one of us is perfect, I have made my fair share of mistakes.  We are only human and all that we can do is the best with what we are given.  Sometimes we are shaken and what we give is not the best.  Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

Letting go of the past (slowly but surely) has made me excited for the future.  I am excited at the possibilities and the adventures that are no doubt ahead of me.  As for now, I will take each day as it comes, working on my happiness and loving up every moment with my tiny girl.

Adventures in dating as a single mommy...  those posts will come in the future.

And what is a blog update without some more random photos?

She found my stash of jelly beans...

Sleeping with Elmo and Zoey her "babies".

Ayla at Lauren's baby shower 6/18.

Ayla and mommy 6/20.

I got some feather extensions and I'm loving them :)

Hopefully my next updates will be coming more frequently... I've been MIA for way too long!

Private!

My blog is going private so I can actually update it the way I would like.  If you want an invite send me your email!

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

New layout.

Changes make me happy.

Especially when they are needed and wanted so badly.

And yes I'm talking about more than just my layout.

:)

Still Waiting.

Sometimes I forget what I am like when I'm on my own.  These days I am feeling a little claustrophobic.  Sure I go to work everyday, it gets me out of the house.  I am there from 7-1 Monday through Saturday.  But from 1:15 PM until 7 AM the next morning I am at home.  Most days I don't have my car because I let Joseph take it to work.  It's just me and my babe in our apartment.  (A terrible, terrible rental that I hate with every fiber of my being, btw.)  Ayla and I make do.  We watch Sesame Street, we sing songs, we dance, we read books, we color, we go for walks, we splash around in the bathtub, etc.  If we're lucky, we nap.

I love my girl.  I truly, deeply love her.  She amazes me everyday with how funny, beautiful, smart, just perfect! she is.

But lately I find myself wondering if it's possible to have the "baby blues" when your baby is a year and a half.  Is that possible?  Maybe I should google it and read people's yahoo answers about this because I'm sure it would make me feel better and not so alone or like a terrible person.  I feel very shut in and I feel very unproductive and so incredibly alone.  I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel tired, I feel hurt, I feel used, I feel apathetic, I feel drained... ugh.  All of these things are getting in the way of my happiness and it is time for that to be over with.  I'm done with feeling that way, I am so done with self-pity and drowning in my sorrows and blah blah.  Yeah, life is most often not what you planned.  But you deal with it and you move forward, right?  Right.

Moving forward.

Last night I got out of the house BY MY SELF!  Not out with friends, not out with Ayla, nope, just me! It wasn't anything special, I was going to the store.  I wasn't out very long, but it was just what I needed.

I practically skipped to my car, plugged in my ipod, let it shuffle, and it played me Sum 41- Still Waiting.  I was stoked.  Like, bouncing in my seat, singing at the top of my lungs, stoked.  I drove to the store (just a few short minutes) but when I got there I just kept driving.  I thought about when I used to drive aimlessly for no other reason than to listen to music and clear my head.  I used to do this often.  I would drive up the canyon and wind up in SLC and just keep driving, never stopping or caring where I was headed.  I'm convinced now that this was my therapy.  This is how I got through any rough times I was having.

So feeling like I needed a little therapy, I kept driving.  I drove too fast.  My music was too loud.  These things were ok because there was no baby in the backseat.  There was no passenger trying to talk to me about things that would surely stress me out.

I felt fantastic.  Literally, better than I can remember for a long time.  For half of an hour last night I genuinely felt care-free.  I wasn't stressed out about boys or babies or money or messes.  I was happy.  I thought to myself, "Why didn't anyone warn me during my pregnancy that I would miss times like these?  Why didn't anyone tell me to enjoy loud music and fast driving while I still could?"  All everyone says is "Get some sleep, you're never going to sleep again! (Disgustingly true.)  "Spend time with your significant other!"  Things like that.

Advice to self:  Listen to your music really loud.  Drive really fast.  Be alone!  Clear your head!  When you find yourself a year and a half into motherhood single, exhausted, no one to confide in, and feeling like you are drowning with no one trying to save you... it can be a life raft.

It really does make me laugh to think that something so simple and so silly can make me feel so much better.  It gave me just the pick-me-up that I needed.  I recharged my battery and my outlook is good!  Thanks Sum 41 and half hour of freedom!  (Don't they have an album called Half Hour of Power?  Oh yes they do, it is their debut album.  Still Waiting is not on this album!)  I could not have started my week off any better.

Like really, today I feel free.






p.s.  semi interesting article.  "Overwhelming: A lack of routine amid the chaos of a new baby drains a mother's confidence along with extreme tiredness and hours spent feeding

As the dirty nappies pile up and a good night’s sleep seems a distant memory, it is easy for a new mother to think life will never be the same again.

But it will happen – even if it does take an average of 18 months, according to a poll of thousands of women."

I will.

Jimmy Eat World & My Heart.

Last night I got to see Jimmy Eat World perform at In The Venue in Salt Lake City.  Let me tell you a little bit about my relationship with Jimmy Eat World.  I was introduced to them about 11 years ago.  The connection was instant.  I didn't have to warm up to them or ease into anything, no, I was hooked.  I fell hard.  Sometimes you just find this perfect fit, this piece that fits right into the puzzle of your soul.  Dramatic, I know.  But really.  Jimmy Eat World is a piece of my puzzle and I am not ashamed to be dramatic about it.  When you love someone (or something?) so deeply for so long all common sense as well as fear of being embarrassed, goes out the window.

I'm on my feet, I'm on the floor, I'm good to go.

Now all I need is just to hear a song I know.

I wanna always feel like part of this was mine.

I wanna fall in love tonight.

Lately I've been struggling.  And not just recently, but for a while.  And when I struggle I don't deal with it well.  I don't spiral out of control or anything, it's actually the opposite.  I keep it to myself.  I push it away. Out of sight, out of mind.  I don't talk about it, I just don't deal.  I never have.  Opening up is not something that comes easy for me.  Letting people know that I need someone to listen or that I need someone to be there for me is not something I can really do.

The things we think might be the same

But I won't fight for more

Its just not me to wear it on my sleeve

Count on that for sure

Instead, I turn to music.  I get lost in lyrics and I find comfort, therapy, answers... I find it all in lyrics.  I pretty much relate everything to a line I've heard in a song.  When I'm really struggling, when I really am at a loss, I use lyrics.  I quote a song and I hide behind it.  From time to time someone will read into it.  From time to time someone will ask me if I'm ok.  I don't deal and I don't want to talk about it so I say, "Yes, I am great, it's just a song I love."  Most of the time I want someone to say, "I don't think you really are ok."  But I play the "I'm happy!" card pretty well so most of the time they don't.  Having been struggling for a while I turned to Jimmy Eat World's album Futures.  It came up on my iPod a couple of months ago and I fell in love with it all over again.  I really have been listening to it constantly for about 2 months.  I can't get enough of it.  It speaks to me, gives me comfort, and really does lift my spirits.

I, I always could count on futures
That things would look up, and they look up

Seeing Jimmy Eat World last night was perfect.  When my boss asked a few weeks ago if anyone wanted to see them I JUMPED at the opportunity.  Not only have I had an on-going love affair for years, they are a big part of what's been pulling me through these days.  I needed this.  When the music started and they jumped right into Praise Chorus my heart was happy.  

Are you gonna live your life wonderin' standing in the back lookin' around?

Are you gonna waste your time thinkin' how you've grown up or how you missed out?

Things are never gonna be the way you want.

Where's it gonna get you acting serious?

Things are never gonna be quite what you want.

Or even at 25, you gotta start sometime.

They were so good.  Like really, really good.  Every song was better than the last.  Even the new ones that I hadn't heard before were perfect, and I don't always like to listen to songs that I don't know at a live show.

Jimmy Eat World @ In The Venue 5/15/2011

Obviously I loved every song.  I stood there staring, practically not moving the entire time.  I stared.  I listened.  My heart felt like it was going to burst out my chest, which was probably just because of the enormous amount of bass, it's been a long time since I've been to a show.  I hung on every word, singing along in my head, but not ever out loud.  I couldn't bring myself to sing out loud.  Or to jump. Or dance.  Or show any emotion, really.  

It's funny that these type of shows used to be my life.  I mean really.  Every weekend of my late teenage years was pretty much spent at some venue in Seattle watching some band that I would have died if I didn't get to see.  If 16 year old me would have seen someone standing there in the crowd, right up front, just staring.  Not moving, not singing, not smiling... she would have wondered what in the world they were doing.  I know I would have wondered what they were thinking.  What they could have been so seriously contemplating, what could have been holding them back from jumping around like a crazy person and singing their heart out like I obviously would have been doing.   

No one else will know these lonely dreams

No one else will know that part of me

Sometimes I allow myself to grieve the loss of my childhood.  To truly miss the absolute simplicity of not having a care in the world.  To actually be able to laugh out loud and and dance and sing and live IN THE MOMENT without a single thought to what was going to happen an hour from now, a day from now, years from now...  Sometimes I have to grieve.

When the time we have now ends.

When the big hand goes round again.

Can you still feel the butterflies?

Can you still hear the last goodnight?

I needed Jimmy Eat World last night.  I needed to be reminded to feel and to open up and to grow up and to let go and to move on.  I needed my love for them to be solidified, which it absolutely was.  I needed some live music therapy, to feel the insane beating of my heart along with the bass and to hear the ringing in my ears, and I needed the people moving around me.

I need you to show me the way from crazy.

I wanna be so much more than this.

{Aaaand I realized that the reason I am attracted to skinny boys is most likely the countless boys I have adored from the crowd as they sing their heart out on stage with their guitar.  They are mostly always skinny.  And pale.  And perfect.}

They ended their set with the song Sweetness.  For the first time all night I really wanted to dance.  The music therapy was working and my heart was feeling so much better.

Are you listening?

If you're listening

If you're listening, Are you listening?

Sing it back

If you're listening, Are you listening?

I'm still running away

I'm still running away, uh oh, uh oh

Won't play your hide and seek game.

I was spinning free

with a little sweet and simple numbing me.

What a dizzy dance

This sweetness will not be concerned with me.

No the sweetness will not be concerned with me.

{The video above is actually from the Seattle Jimmy Eat World show that I was able to go to exactly one week after the SLC show.}

LA LA LA

Journal.

I am thankful that I have kept a journal.  Many journals actually.  I can say that since 2002 (at least) I have kept a fairly steady journal.  Whether it be an actual written journal, deadjournal.com, livejournal.com, or my blog, I have records of so much.  I love to read back and remember exactly what it was that I was feeling, hear the music I was listening to, and see how much things have changed.  Or how they haven't changed at all.  I'm older.  I'm old.  I don't use as many exclamation points.  I don't write down every. last. detail. of every. single. day.  I'm more subtle now, I hold things back.  I keep things to myself.  I miss the raw honesty of my deadjournal.  I said anything and everything that I was thinking.  EVERYTHING!  What happened between 2002 and 2011 that makes it so I sensor myself with my own journals?  The line "It's just not me to wear it on my sleeve, count on that for sure" comes to my mind.  Except, it kind of is.  At least it used to be.

I found a paper journal yesterday from July 08 through February 2009.  It's only half full, of course.  I buy blank notebooks like they're going out of style.  I LOVE THEM.  There's something about a blank notebook that screams, "POSSIBILITIES!"  It's a story waiting to be written and a story waiting to be read.  Writing and reading.  Two of my very favorite things.  So when I find a beautiful blank book I buy it.  And I write.  And years later I find it in a closet at the bottom of a storage bin, half filled with the thoughts, lyrics, and drawings of a younger me.  They are never finished.  Except one.  I filled one entire journal in 2003.  Where is it? I would love to know.

Some time later, getting the words wrong

Wasting the meaning and losing the rhyme.

Nauseous adrenaline, like breaking up a dog fight

Like a deer in the headlights, frozen in real time

I'm losing my mind.