Elvis Christmas

Ok so I have decided I HATE Las Vegas… like legitimately. I went shooting at the machine gun range which was pretty awesome seeing as I have never shot an M-4 before. I also went to Cowboy Christmas which was LEGIT. I had never seen so many country things in one place that was not the south. They had ropin’ lessons and boot fittings and cowhide carpets and chairs. It was so cool to see so many people have a passion for things that I love. I got to get all dressed up in my cowboy boots and horse hair belt. I had so much fun walking around with my dad that day. All that being said Vegas still sucks. I got out of there in two days and I am now staying with a friend for a week before I fly home. Her mom and my mom have been friends since high school so I basically grew up vacationing with her. AAAAND I LOVE her to death. She is just the greatest. They have so much planned for the week that I am here. One of those things being a Christmas party that has a talent show. He dad LOVES Elvis and he actually kind of looks like him so he always does something crazy when ever there is a talent show. Since I am here this year he got all excited because I sing and he wants me to back him up in Blue Christmas while he sings it “Elvis style.” Oh boy is all I had to say. He is so excited I do not want to let him down but I kinda had never heard that version of the song. Soooo I got some practicing to do. Man I love those families that you can just plop yourself into and you feel more a part of their family then you do your own. I am so glad I get to start off my Christmas break with amazing people like this.

360 turn around

Wow… it has been a while since I have posted. So much has happened. Life is good. It is amazing what faith can do. I have fully surrendered to God in every situation that has been going on and I am actually able to truly be joyful. It has been a rough semester at college and I am not sure if i passed some of my classes but I am praying I do not lose my scholarship. Statistics definitely kicked my butt but I think I may be able to pull out of that class with a B. My Business Math class was a nightmare and I honestly would not be surprised if I did not pass. I am hoping I did. It would totally ruin my break if I did not. I am sitting in an air port right now waiting to fly to Vegas and I can’t help but mull over everything that has happened. A couple of days after thanksgiving I had a chat with my “country boy.” We decided it was in our best interest to not talk for an entire year. No texting, no calling, no skyping, and no seeing each other. I was devastated, but I took it much better than I thought I would. Losing him as a friend is going to be very difficult because I have already lost him once… but you know what makes it better? There is this guy. I told you about him in my last post. He is… just so so amazing. I have so much fun when I am around him and he can somehow always make me laugh. I am not really sure what is going to happen between us, but I am definitely enjoying the time we have been spending together. My sister thinks he is just great and having him here at college is so so great. Since I connect with guys better than I do girls it totally makes sense that we clicked so well. He wants to do the same thing with his life that I want to do with mine and he comes from an amazing family. He sings and loves Jesus. His parents are the sweetest people and so supportive. I am positive you don’t want to hear all about this but it just feels good to write it out. I was NOT looking for a relationship or a guy or anything, but he just decides to plop himself into my life and it has been so fun since. I actually was friends with him all last year and thought he was hilarious and fun but I had my guy back then. We talked all summer and he helped me through a lot of the crap that was happening at home. oh and he happens to be three years older than me so it is SO refreshing to have a man in your life who acts like a man and knows what he wants out of life. Now that Christmas break is starting I am excited to be home but itll be hard to be away from him for a whole 5 weeks. LIFE IS GOOD. GOD IS SO GOOD.

Help Me

It is one of the hardest things in the world to ask for help. For some people it is not a big deal and for others it would never occur to them that asking for help is even an option. I am somewhere in the middle. I don’t like to ask for help because I like to think that I can handle it on my own and I don’t want to appear weak. But the truth is… I am weak. We all are. I don’t really know how to say that I am not alright… it is not exactly my strong suit. I just want to feel supported. And praise God I do. Being here at school is such a blessing because I am surrounded by people who love me at all times and then I stay in contact with the ones who do back at home. But the past couple of weeks I have just felt… like the “problem child.” I mean people ask me how I am and I say “Good” and put a smile on, but the ones who know me a little better just kinda give me that look like they know I am lying. Things were going so well. I was just having fun and being care free and it was awesome. Then one of my closest friends here told me he liked me. He basically gave me an ultimatum and told me I had to tell him right then and there if I liked him or not. I felt like he should understand what I have just been through, and that he should know that I don’t know what I am feeling. I am in such a confused state with my feelings that I couldn’t tell him if I liked ice cream much less a person. So I did what I thought would do the least damage on his end and just told him I was not interested. He didn’t talk to me for almost three days. And I was kind of devastated and it hurt more than I thought it should. Ok so maybe that sounds pathetic but him and I hung out in one way or another every day since I got here. He is such a great guy and I didn’t want to hurt him. I feel like I don’t deserve him after everything that happened… I feel like I don’t deserve anyone. Who would want me? And if they did… I wouldn’t want them to waste their time… because that is all I am. A waste of time. I didn’t want things to get all complicated. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I don’t want to have to deal with this. I just want to be friends. I can’t handle another year of hell at home. I need a break from the yelling and the restrictions. I don’t want to bring someone into that environment. I can’t do that to anyone. I am so frustrated and I just don’t understand why he wants me. Is it so wrong that I don’t want to complicate things? I don’t know how to express that I need help, but not from a boyfriend. I need help from uplifting friends. I feel great when I am with my friends here because I feel wanted and needed and like I add to the fun. But I guarantee that I wont be able to do that in a relationship. It just isn’t worth it.

What’s On The Inside?

I was in class the other day and we got on the topic of dreams. I thought it was interesting because of my dream situation. Sigmund Freud came up in the discussion… he had a theory on how dreams come from within us… our deepest secrets, darkest fears, our most sincere wishes. Everything our insides try to scream at the world that we suppress comes out in our private dream world. It was too much for me to take in. I don’t want these things inside of me, and yet they are there. Creeping up inside me… torturing me. And just when I think I have forgotten them… my dreams attack. Ripping me from the inside out. A lot of the time I can’t keep them private because I wake up screaming or so afraid I can’t sleep so I need to talk to someone… anyone. I think too much before I sleep. I am alone for too long and I mull over my actions. Past and present. Wondering what I could have done to make things different and then mentally kicking myself realizing that it happened for a reason and I got to see people for who they really were. Do I really desire to be shot and killed and broken-hearted? Of course not… but I fear those things. I never thought I feared being shot. I have been around guns for most of my life. I am comfortable shooting and handling them. That is why I am going into a job that involves them. But my mom keeps putting these thoughts into my head… SHE is afraid of me being shot and killed. SHE doesn’t want this for my life. SHE thinks I am the one who needs protection. I am sorry if I want to protect not only people in general but the people I love. And by doing this I will learn all of the necessary things I need to know to protect myself and my family. Family is number one for me… I want kids and a husband who loves me for me. Why am I so afraid this will never happen for me? I have to stop thinking about this if I ever want to move on with my life. I don’t want to sleep because I don’t want to dream. I don’t want to dream because I don’t want to be afraid. I feel like a little five-year old… it is ridiculous. I just have such a hard time believing that all of these things are inside of me. Maybe Sigmund was wrong?

Hard To Come By Part 2

Have you ever noticed that as you become closer and closer to people you learn more and more about them? I am sure this is common sense to most people but others just don’t get it. When you get closer to a person you learn more about them. Not only secrets and facts about their lives but quirks about them. You learn who you can trust over time and who you cannot. You learn who will be harder to love anyways no matter what they say or do to you.

In my previous post I talked about how I have some trust issues, and how I have them because a series of events that upset my flow of life, one right after the other. Well I had been at my new church for just under a year, when the next thing happened. A friend of mine that I had known since I was born was at this church and we got really close all over again. But she had other friends and she was very frivolous in the usage of the words “best friend.” She was a good friend and a fun person so everyone would always fight for her time, attention, and friendship. One girl in particular that we will call Nicole for the sake of the story was very pushy in that area. Constantly fighting for my friend’s attention and always saying that they were best friends. Nicole was just a plain mean girl. So sweet and nice to the parents faces, but had a wicked tongue that would tear you down so fast. I was about to go into the 8th grade and my best friend was too. Nicole was going to be a freshman. Nicole was so mean to me and would say things like “You will never be as good as me” or “Stay away from MY best friend.” I finally worked up the guts to talk to my best friend about it. I told her that Nicole was being so hurtful and I didn’t know how to handle it. She said she understood and knew exactly what I was talking about. About a week later I started hearing about birthday parties and sleepovers that I was not invited to. I figured it was just people I didn’t know so it didn’t really phase me, but being a junior higher not being invited to things like that is a big deal. You need that acceptance to know that you are worth something at that age. My friend that we will call Allee came up to me that next sunday and told me something very disturbing. My best friend had gone to Nicole and told her what I had said… Then Nicole blew up and told all the other girls at church that I was this horrible person that spreads lies and rumors about people. My best friend stabbed me in the back… and I no longer had any friends because they all believed her. Except Allee. Allee knew how Nicole was and we became super close through that experience but it still hurt that my best friend would betray me like that.

Nicole would tell me things that people said about me in the years to come… A new guy came to the church. He was the pastor’s son and drop dead GORGEOUS. We had very similar interests but being freshman in high school we were both were pretty immature. He would be super mean to girls because they were always all over him so he wanted to repel them in that way. It didn’t really phase me because I could see through it. So him and I talked for a while but Nicole one day told me that he called me a freak. I was totally caught off guard and for some reason I believed her… so I stopped talking to him. Nicole used that to her advantage so she could sink her talons into him and they ended up dating about a year later. After they had dated about 6 months he confronted me. He asked me why I dropped off the face of the planet and stopped talking to him. I told him that someone had told me he thought I was a freak. He got a little frustrated that I did not come to him and ask him about it and he asked who told me. And I told him his girl friend did. He just looked at me in disbelief and just smoothed it over by saying that he never said that and he would like to become friends again. Of course I agreed and we started to hang out and talk more. My dad and him got really close because they both like comic books and shooting, as do I. Around this time Allee had told some people little secrets I had that I had intrusted to her. Obviously they weren’t a huge deal but it really made me trust her a lot less. She loved to tell people things for shock value and it really started to wear on me. It got to the point where I felt like I really didn’t have anyone I could trust except this guy. And as a young girl in high school you never want anyone to know you aren’t ok. At least I didn’t. I didn’t like the attention or the pity people gave me. I never cried in front of people because I always wanted to make sure I looked like everything was fine. It was my sophomore year and out of the blue my favorite uncle decides he is not happy in his marriage and leaves my aunt. That story is in my post “I Still Remember.” Basically I had no one to turn to. The first night I was out of the house since I found out I was at youth group and I couldn’t control myself and I began to cry. I hid it as well as I could and I am more of a silent crier so no one really noticed. Just when I thought no one would notice he looked over. He gave me this look that totally sent me into tears all over again and he came over and asked what was wrong. I explained the situation and I told him that I didn’t expect him to understand and that I would be fine. He just looked at me and began to tell me about a very similar situation that he had gone through about a year earlier. He was so easy to talk to and he made me feel so much better about everything.

After that we continued to get closer and hang out and honestly I could say he was my best friend. I decided it was time to talk to Nicole about his and my relationship because knowing her she would rip it from me just so I would be hurt. So I didn’t want to create this relationship if I would lose it. I was done with losing my friends. So I talked to her and asked he if it made her uncomfortable that I was friends with her boy friend and if it was alright that we were as close as we were. She told me that she was uncomfortable with it at first but after talking with him she felt a lot better about it and that it was totally fine. Just to be clear, I had NO feelings for him other than as a friend. Yes we had everything in common and if he did not have a girl friend I may have liked him but I definitely saw him as a brother at the time. Him and I were really close over the course of the next year and I liked a guy that he told me was BAD NEWS and he ended up being right. The second semester of our junior year we were going to snow camp with my church. We were all in a big bus and Nicole was being RIDICULOUS so he came and sat next to me. He taught me how to play Prince of Persia and we talked for a bunch of the ride. That night Nicole came up to my bunk at the camp in front of 10 other girls and yelled at me. She told me that he was her boy friend and that I was stealing him away and that I had no right to do that and that our relationship was completely inappropriate. I was so embarrassed. She talked to him the next day and told him he had to choose. A relationship with me or a relationship with her. Obviously he chose his girl friend but it was so hard for me. I lost my best friend that day… again. He sent me a letter because we weren’t allowed to talk apologising for Nicole’s actions and hoping I understood his decision. I told him that I understood but it didn’t make things any easier. I had this amazing friend and to this day we have only talked a few times since then. Him and Nicole broke up a couple of months after and I later found out he had wanted to break up with her for a long time because she was so emotionally unstable, but he was afraid she would commit suicide. I also found out that he told her that he thought I was the prettiest girl at church except for her (of course) and it made her so jealous and that is why she blew up at snow camp… Why do things have to be so complicated? Why do people have to be so mean and hurtful? This girl really hurt me for an ongoing period of time and it just got to the point where I can’t even speak to her. I have now made more friends at church because people started to realise I wasn’t who they thought I was but things were really hard for a long time. And this was only the second thing that made me lose trust in people as a whole.

Hard To Come By Part 1

Good friends are hard to come by… I am not saying a friend that you hang out with or a friend that you do stupid things with. I am talking about that friend you can tell absolutely anything to and you know they will not judge you, use it against you, or tell a soul. How many people can you say you honestly trust 100% without a doubt? If I am honest with myself… I can really only think of two maybe three people. One of those people I just became friends with this summer, which is an oddity because I don’t really trust people very easily or quickly. There was just something different about this specific situation. Maybe it was because I wanted so badly for someone just to understand what I was going through and to tell me that everything was going to be alright. I was given that peace in my heart by the grace of God, and through this experience I have grown so much closer to Him, but without certain friends in my life… I am not sure I would have made it.

In the past I have had HUGE issues with trust. Just because of several things that happened to me one right after the other. Those things really made me doubt humanity and if there is a single honest person out in the world. It all started when I was in the 6th grade. I was a HUGE tomboy and only wanted to do guy things. I did not own a pair of fitted jeans or a fitted top. Everything I wore was baggy and masculine. I wore baggy jean shorts every single day and I just loved who I was. My best friend was the pastor’s son at my church and at the time we were building our new house. We stayed in our back yard for the first 9 months, but when we realised it was going to take a little longer than we expected we decided to rent two rooms from the church. On our church campus there was an old convent. The first floor was offices and the rooms we rented along with a big kitchen and common area. The second floor is where the senior pastor lived with his family, which was my best friends family, and the youth pastor lived on the third floor with his family. So my best friend and I lived in the same building and basically hung out every day. He taught me to skateboard and helped me ride my first ramp. We played football in the parking lot every weekend. One day my dad was at work and all of us kids were at the church with our mom (I have an older sister, a younger sister, and a younger brother) when suddenly there is a banging at our door. My mom goes over and opens it. It was my best friend’s dad, in other words the senior pastor. He started yelling at my mom. Legitimately screaming in her face. I was only 11 at the time and really didn’t understand what they were talking about but my mom went outside and closed the door behind her. My younger siblings were crying and all my older sister and I could do was hold them and tell them that everything was going to be ok. I heard my mom ask our pastor if the conversation could wait until my dad got home and he said no. I found out later that he was yelling at my mom about an email that was sent out to many of the church members about a very large issue. My uncle and grandfather had written this letter, but somehow he was holding my mom and my family responsable. The issue discussed in the email was huge. It was about selling the church. Our senior pastor had gone out behind the congregation’s back and sold the church property to a housing developer for 1/4 the price it should have been and the housing developer promised him one house in the deal they made. So basically the Pastor of our church sold the property so that he and his family could have a house. Sounds pretty messed up right? Well it gets worse. He started preaching from the pulpit that my family is full of liars and deceivers and no one should listen to anything we say. He had been caught red-handed and to cover for himself he had to make up more lies. My family was asked to leave the church. So many people believed the pastor and what he had said because people tend to put pastors on a higher level than “regular people.” The truth is… pastors mess up to. Pastors can cheat and lie and deceive. It does not mean that it is ok that they do it but it does mean that we cannot base our faith on the actions of one man who is a so-called “Christian.”

Remember my best friend? I was never allowed to see him again. I have not spoken with him in almost 8 years. He was so much of who I was and I was so young I just didn’t understand why things had to be the way they were. We moved churches that summer and I did not really know how to deal with it… out of all of us kids my sister and I had the hardest time. We could not trust pastors for years. We didn’t even want to be baptized by a pastor because we were so afraid of being hurt and lied to all over again. Then we met the high school pastor. He was the most amazing, understanding person I have ever met. He was so unorganized and spontaneous but he had such a good heart. My sister and I really bonded with him and his wife and to this day they are my most trusted mentors. I love them dearly and I love talking with them. The only problem is… I can’t fully trust them. All it took was one slip up and I could not tell them everything I had been telling them. Yes they still are my most trusted mentors, but they still are not fully trusted. Friends that you can fully trust are hard to come by.

DEAR NEGATIVE BLOG READER

You know it kind of pisses me off when people say blogging is for people who are dying for attention… I post what I feel anonymously for a reason. I am not looking for attention. Of course this comment was not made on MY page but who are you to judge?? What I am looking for is someone somewhere out there to be there for me and tell me that I am not insane. Someone to tell me that other people go through hard times as well and I am not the only one. I also write things down to vent and just let negative things out of my brain that I seem to be holding captive. It eats me up inside so by blogging I can tell the world without telling a soul… If you understood that you understand my brain. HA. And of course just writing about things good and bad in your life is a HEALTHY OUTLET. Much better than many other things I COULD be doing. So please take your arrogance and your negativity and LEAVE. The fact that you are even saying anything about people who blog, young bloggers in particular, says that you are insecure about something in yourself. People like you tear others down to make yourself feel better. Please grow up and come back when you have nicer things to say.