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| It's my last night in Deer Valley, and most likely the last night of the last family vacation I will take for a long, long time. I've had so much fun. I'm not ready to leave, which I think is a sign of a successful trip. I only busted my ass twice, and I didn't break any bones so I did pretty well. Lily is the cutest thing I have ever seen. Her little goggles smush her face and she screams the entire time she is flying down the mountain. And Sam is a little kamikaze. I'm glad I got to go. It's kind of serendipitous, kind of makes me thankful that Dad disowned me. This is my family. Real family doesn't love conditionally. I'm happy with my choice, even if it's going to make life a little harder on me in the long run. He was mad because I wanted to spend Christmas morning with Mom, since Lily is still little and Santa is still a big deal. He put conditions on whether or not he wanted to spend time with me over the holidays, and that's not right at all. He kicked me out on the 23rd. When I got back to Mom's on Christmas Eve and looked at Lily, and she hugged me and looked at me with those huge blue eyes, and told me she missed me when I went away, it broke my heart. She would love me no matter what... if I was an axe murderer, if I took her night night and set it on fire, she would still love me. That's unconditional. That's family. That's Christmas. It hurts, and my Dad expects me to apologize, but how could I accept what he did and said when I have this little girl and this little boy who are just thankful to spend any time with me at all? I won't do it. I cut the strings, and he's not the puppet master anymore. And I'm happy about that, even if it means losing my father. Maybe when he grows up a little, he will realize that everything he talks about, everything he says about alienation... it's all him. Anyway, the point is that this trip has been amazing. There's no stress, no pressure to slap on a happy face all the time. I can just be, and Mom and Dan love me just the same. I've been waiting to feel that way for a long time, and all I had to do was remove the poison from my life. It feels amazing. I'm going back to Texas on Sunday, and for the first time, I'm not ready to go.
While I wish I could stay a little longer, I am a tiny bit excited to get back to my own space, my own life, my own schedule. I can't wait until Sarah gets back because, as always, we have perfect plans for a perfect Thursday night. Fire on the Mountain? Yesss...
I'm also excited to get back to see someone. Someone exciting, who has made me laugh more in the last few days than I have laughed in as long as I can remember. I love meeting new people, but I get so scared that the event won't live up to the expectations. This could be good, or it could blow up in my face. Either way, I love laughing.
It's been a perfect break. I saw everyone I wanted to see, some people I didn't expect to see for years and years, and some people I thought I didn't want to see... but it all turned out so well. I've had a lot of time to myself. Summer was a break from a constant cycle of indescribable grief. Fall meant putting my life back together. Christmas meant finding out what and who is important to me, defining who I am and who I want to be for my last year of college. Getting back to normal wasn't hard, it was just weird. And I still think about her every day... what she would say, what she would think, what she would become. But after a semester of remembering and forgetting and remembering again, I feel peaceful about it all. The book I was just reading, My Friend Leonard, talked about the five stages of grief, and when I break down the last year smaller pieces, it makes sense. I accept things that I can't control. I miss her, and that's not controllable. And that's ok. I'm so happy I've had so much time to think, and so many people to listen to me and to tell me that my thoughts are ok, even if they aren't necessarily normal. I've been lucky, so lucky. This year is going to be amazing. | | |
| First, I'm going to say that I love love love my life. Second, I'm going to say that little surprises can tilt the world off its axis, but usually it's not worth noticing. This time, it might be because it's really funny, because I think I am just sooo smart about the ways of the world. It's funny to me that less than a week ago, I had it all figured out. I was completely confident in where I was going, where I would end up. And a simple click, click, surprise changed all of that. I talked about it on New Year's Eve with an old friend, a very old friend, who still knows me well enough to say something meaningful. He asked me, every time it happens, doesn't it hurt a little less? And he made me think. The first time, I was devastated. The second time, hurt, but I had other things to worry about. The third time, fourth time, fifth time, the time we actually sat down and talked about it... all the girls that have come and gone since I came and went... it hurt. This time, I'm floored. Completely in awe of his audacity. I believed I was enough for so long, and I never was. But who was I to believe that? From day one, the day I threw away everything I was completely sure of just to take a chance on someone who, at the time, only had a first name as far as I was concerned... I wasn't enough. I'm upset, for sure. But my friend... and if you know me, you know exactly who I am talking about because he is the one person whose opinion I hold higher than my own... was so right. It has to hurt less and it has to be getting easier to accept at this point. In a way, I feel like I disappointed him. My friend, I mean. I know he has his life and he is so so happy. And I love that. But three years ago, I promised him I was done, and then the other night I expected him to sit there and listen to me wail about the same situation that he listened through all that time ago. And he did it gracefully because he is kind, and he has a beautiful soul, and I'm so thankful for that. He, like everyone else in my life, expected more from me and I didn't deliver. But I will, I will. Who has their life figured out at 22 anyway? I don't want things to be simple, but it was nice to have something that was even somewhat clear. I used to tell people that we needed to live for a couple of years, let the dust settle and get college out of our systems. It made me feel better to say that, because it seemed like I had some control over the situation. Actually, I said that very thing to Sarah the other day, and she made her disgusted face, and said she wanted me to do something that I could talk about with pride, something that would give my friends a reason to be happy for me. She asked me if I regretted telling them everything that's happened. I would never regret being honest, and I don't necessarily regret the decisions I have made, but I also don't want to give myself the opportunity to do something I might regret... like stick around, accept things like that, slap on a happy face. Besides, talking to some of the people I have been around in the last week made me realize something. I need intelligence, spontaneity, ambition... more than a pretty face. I blame pheromones, or something like that because I could make a pro/con list that would make things more than clear to me, but I still hold out in hopes that things will change. The reality of it is, I know what a soul mate is. I had one once, and it wasn't... well you know who it wasn't. I used him to fill a void that is no longer there. But, it's a new year. The beauty of college is that every four months yields another opportunity to start over. I've had enough time to train myself not to think about it, but I have to get rid of the mentality that I can just let life happen to me. Life doesn't happen, and time doesn't stop every time I need to put myself back together. It never has, and it never will. And certainly not this time. Haha, I just laughed out loud when I thought about the absurdity of this whole thing. It is pretty funny when you think about it. No, time doesn't stop, and neither do I. Hahaha...
"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her." -Counting Crows
Speaking of winter... Utah is fabulous. I am leaving Texas for sure. Not necessarily for Utah, but for somewhere. The Christmas lights are still up, and everything is so snowy and beautiful. I do miss the days when my skis did the work for me. My ankle is killing me, but I've been calling Sam a pansy all week so I can't give up because he will make fun of me. Haaaa... I love family vacations. | | |
| It's the new year! It's been a really fun weekend. We had an alumni event on Wall Street which was so fun. I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in forever... Meme, Adi, Zach, Catherine, Fulton... so many people. Last night I went to a party, drank until sunrise, probably did and said some regrettable things. I had a terrible morning yesterday, so I didn't want to think. I successfully made it through 12 completely thoughtless hours. Now I'm at home, packing for Deer Valley in the morning. I'm thinking a lot. Maybe too much. Nothing has changed in the last few days, I have just become more aware of things I already knew but failed to truly acknowledge. I do love New Years though. It's not that I won't still think of those things, but it's no longer the year this happened, or that happened. Nothing is monumentally different than it was 24 hours ago, but like Sarah told me, maybe some of the things that happened were fate. Maybe I was destined to remember some things and some people, to remind me of what my standards used to be, and to show me what used to make me happy. The same things that used to inspire and thrill me, make me whole, are the things I thought I wouldn't find in anyone else. So I stopped looking. And ended up getting more hurt than I would have if I had just rode it out for a couple of years. I am really thankful for the reminder, regardless of how hard it was to accept. I had a hell of a time and it was a million times more fun than I thought it would be.
New Years is pretty intense. You stay up all night, you drink until the sun comes up, you pass out next to people you haven't seen in years, and you wake up and face the day with the expectation that this year will bring something more amazing than you can possibly comprehend in your drunken stupor. The people you spent the night with, the people who laughed at the guy who couldn't play flip cup to save his life, the people who challenged you to stay up until 7:17, the people who were there at midnight, that knew what you were thinking but didn't ask you to explain or defend it, the people who kept you from saying something that would ruin what took years to build, the people who answered the phone every hour on the hour and who talked you out of crying when you didn't know what was going on, the people who rubbed your back and made you laugh about your facebook surprise, the people who had no problem wearing your clothes, the people who passed out entirely too early, the people who were there for the first minutes and hours of the year will set the tone for the next 365 days, until you do it all over again in a different place, with different faces and different experiences to forget about. You walk out with them in the morning, squinting toward the sun and praying that the gods shower you with advil, and although no one acknowledges it, you know you have conquered the night together. You establish a camaraderie that will last until you do it all over again next year. And while it's no big feat, it's something worth remembering. Every New Years Eve is the same, but the people change and you drink to remember or drink to forget a different year. I love endings and new beginnings. I also love beer, cigarettes, lake smell, all the guys from Windermere, making peace with ancient history, and looking forward to things you can't yet fathom.
I'm leaving tomorrow, and in a week I will be back at school. For the first time, I am kind of wishing I could stay at home a little longer. And that's saying something. Happy New Year!
"It's been a long December and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last." -Counting Crows | | |
| I'm home for Christmas, dealing with the same family debauchery I deal with everytime I come home. You would think that now that I'm 22, old, not a child, I would no longer be a pawn in the whole divorce game. I guess that will be going on as long as I still come home. On that note, this is the last time I will come home for an extended period of time, unless I move back here. But again, the more time I spend here, the more I am reminded of why I moved so far away in the first place. We've had fun so far. The friends, I mean. I'm comfortable here. I know where I'm going and how to get places and where to eat and who to see and what to do. There's something nice about familiarity. There's something nice about waking up in the morning because someone is breathing in my face and poking me in the forehead, and that someone is Lily, trying to make me make her some waffles. And there's something nice about coming home in the middle of the night and having someone there to make sure I made it safely, in one piece. Having that kind of security somehow makes me feel grateful for what I have at school. My family there, I mean. My sisters, in the non-sorority sense of the world. I miss Brynne and Sarah, and everyone else. But I like being away from them because it makes me appreciate them even more. Happy and merry, I'll write more later on. | | |
| "The loss inhabits, fills and overwhelms me. It is the loss of childhood of being a Teenager of normalcy of happiness of love of trust of reason of God of Family of friends of future of potential of dignity of humanity of sanity of myself of everything everything everything." -James Frey | | |
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