TRIPPY!

My roommate just got MARRIED! It's so crazy and she just came back from her honeymoon, which is so awesome! I'm so happy for them and I can't even express it! It's ridiculous how happy I am about this! She is my first friend to get married though! I know Melissa's sister got married and I went to her wedding, but she was more my friend's sister and wasn't as big of a deal for me. My cousin got married, but it's different with family. I was IN this wedding and I LIVED with her before and she's such a good friend of mine I am just overflowing with happiness.

Secondly, my friend Alysha from high school is PREGNANT! We aren't very close anymore so I had to find out about her getting married from Facebook, but it trips me out to see her with a belly and a baby on the way!!! I'm so happy for her, yes it's crazy because she is younger than me, but she is happy and I'm happy if she is! It is such a blessing to bring a baby into the world. I couldn't believe it when you got married and now I can't believe she is pregnant! Now I have all these images of my cousin Michelle getting pregnant, my cousin Jana getting pregnant, and my ROOMMATE Jasmine getting pregnant! AHHH!!!!! I can't even express the excitement and the shocked feeling that is circling through my body right now. Friends getting married is a big step for me during this time in my life, but it's an exciting time that I am gladly relishing in. I know there are other people I can't think of right now that are also married, like my friend Sarah who lived on my floor my freshman year and my RA from my freshman year, but I wasn't at those weddings so that is more surreal. I'm not close to either one of them really either so it doesn't bring the same feelings for me as my roommate or a high school friend. Though Sarah and I still talk (she just commented on my status about my incredible boyfriend surprising me with flowers at work today), and I miss her but I haven't seen her in years. I wish we could though! By the way, the thing about my boyfriend was so sweet! I could not stop smiling, I was so thrilled! All my co-workers happened to be girls and "Awwed" forever, but it was so sweet and wonderful of him to do. They kept asking what they were for and he just said "Because I love her!" Doesn't that just break your heart?!?!?! (In a good way!) Ah, that boy- sorry, man- really knows how to pull at my heartstings and make me fall for him all over again! Anyway, I look forward to more happy days to come and lives to be conceived and born!!!! Who's next?!?!?!

Write It, Love It, Sing It!

I want this! I want this! I want this!!!

The more I watch country music videos, the more anxious it makes me. Have you ever watched someone perform and just though to yourself, wow, they are INCREDIBLE!?! I literally think that as I watch my idols strut across the stage. Shania Twain, Martina McBride, Gretchen Wilson, Carrie Underwood, Reba McEntire, and all the many talented vocalists out there. They all have their own style, pizazz, elegance, and flare that they bring to the stage through their heart-pumping, butt-busting music! As a jump around my room to songs like Party for Two, Findin' a Good Man, Redneck Woman, Last Name, and My Give a Damn's Busted, I think about how fun it would be to be the person on the other end. I want to be able to sing my own songs and have girls, just like me, dance around their rooms to something I wrote. I want to be able to write my own songs and sing them. I only have one song that I have ever written and I don't even know how good it is. Writing poetry, papers, and journal entries has always been something I was good at, but a song.... never my thing. Now if only I had a daddy like Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) to do it for me! I know, however, this is something I have to do for myself. So, songwriting, country singing, album getting woman, here I come!!!

The Battle

As I sit here contemplating what my life is going to look like over the course of this next year, I wonder what I will do in the many situations that will be placed across my path. Will I do the right thing? Will I know what the right thing is? Will I struggle in my attempt to maintain my personal and professional relationships? I worry about myself and my job. I worry that I do not have as strong of a grasp on this situation as I had originally thought. The pressure, though great, is not exceedingly overwhelming, but I fear that the worst as yet to arise. I wholeheartedly believe in the democracy in which we are currently involved, however, I am questioning the trust that I thought was once so strong. I feel the strings of trust and dedication are withering away like scraps of paper in a roaring fire. I want so badly for this all to be set right. A decision must be made either way, and I believe that the only way to maintain the relationships that I have spent the past 3 years developing, is to embrace the truth despite the feelings of betrayal and set forth into this new idea. Though I believe that maintaining this trust with those whose opinions and suggestions matter, the includer in me worries that this will push the others away. This is not my intention at all. As a leader I must do what is best for the ones with whom I lead, and I feel this is a part of my job. You must take the good and the bad with a grain of salt, so here goes my adventure into the world of politics; oh how I never saw you coming.

Strange to say the least

Dream time. So just woke up from one of my stranger dreams and I need to write it down so I don't forget. I always feel that when I literally write it down, I do not write as quickly as I type and I seem to leave essential details out and since it is on paper I find it more difficult to backtrack. Anyway, I had a dream that my friend Ashley got married. Now normally this would not be seen as an odd dream, but the difference is, this is not a friend that I ever talk to. Ashley O. was my good friend in high school, but freshman year of college we had a major falling out. It was rough for awhile, but I have since recovered. We also attempted to make up, but nothing ever came from that except for the acceptance that we are comfortable with how our relationship is, though neither of us has ever said that. We message each other on Facebook just to say hi maybe once every six months or so, but aside from that, we don't ever talk. Anyway, it starts out with me arriving with my friend. Sadly enough, I cannot remember who I was there with. The first person I see is Nicole. This is also a girl from my high school, we used to be best friends my freshman/sophomore year, but then she discovered much cooler people to befriend and ditched me. Anyway, her and Ashley are not even friends (nor have they ever been) and neither are her and I so it was strange to see her there. I do, however, still have a picture in my room of the two of us so maybe that's why. In my dream, though, I was not bothered by her presence, I did not find it odd, it was completely natural and I approached her as if I were looking for her. Turns out she was one of the ushers for the wedding. She was dressed in a prom type dress, as were many of guests, at least the young people, and shocked by all this I followed them. After I entered this giant, beautiful church (also strange because Ashley is Jewish) that had stairs that went up to the stage, a large podium off to the right vaulted ceilings, chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and all these other gorgeous details I do not think I have seen before. Honestly, without all the glam, it kind of reminded me of the church attached to my elementary school. It was bigger than that, but during the service we could here clapping from another room, and I assumed it was from the conference room across the hall. This made sense because though we did not go to the same elementary school, Ashley and myself, being a Christian school and all, but we had talked about how funny it was that we were so close to each other our whole lives but never met until high school. Anyway, I walk in and now I'm in an equally gorgeous dress and I'm walking to my seat in the back. We did not enter because they were taking people in the church in some sort of order and so we were trying to wait our turn. Then the choir starts singing, and we realized we needed to go in and Stefani had just run by to go tell Ashley they were ready for her. So then, we picked two seats on the end, on the right side, in the second to last row. Behind us, was Ashley's dad. He could not figure out the camera and was talking about it out loud as the choir sang, and whoever I was with (this was a girl by the way, one of my friends whose face I cannot picture now, but I guess it wasn't important) knew a lot about them so she helped him. So I move to the back because that way I could take better pictures. The choir had stopped singing and moved to the ends of the stage and now all these other people were on the stairs in some sort of formation and I had not even realized that Ashley had already made her entranced, I missed it! For some reason I was not that upset about it, very shocking for me, and Ashley's dad, not being able to work his camera, asks me to remind him who everyone is. This was the weird part, the people on stage. So I use my camera to zoom in on people's faces to make it more clear for him to see. I tell him the whole first row was the year before us in high school or more. There were our freshman that Ashley, Ashleigh, and I claimed our senior year, except they looked exactly the way they had when we met them. This girl I was in jazz choir with for a little while before she dropped, can't remember her name but she was blonde, and other people I recognized from our Chamber Choir in high school and other places around campus. Then I looked around and noticed that the bridesmaids consisted of Shiloah, the accompanist for my college choir that Ashley does not even know, Michaela and Kelsey were there as well. Lisa was there also which was very shocking because all those people are from my college and she does not know them. Then I Can't remember if Stefani was on stage, but I know she was there. Then I spotted Ashley. She looked SO incredibly beautiful her hair was blonde on top with her brown roots coming through, but in an intentional manner, the bottom underneath was her natural brown and the rest highlighted dirty blonde made her hair shine! She had this diamond necklace that started in a circle shape like a typical necklace then came in like a "V" to a point. It went well with her V neck dress that had lace sleeves in some sort of design in a creamy type white and it came over forming into the dress that had buttons attached to the dress with the lace, that came down the middle then spread out in the bottom forming the trail. It was beautiful. It is much better in my head though. The bridesmaid dresses were somewhat similar, but nothing in comparison to how beautiful her dress was. They had on knee length dresses that were a dark violet color (had a blue under tone to it) and they had shawls over them that were lace like her dress. It was a different lace of course, there was not white, but more a cream/tan type color. There's did not shine either, hers sparkled, I think because she always had that sparkling personality. So the shawl's sleeves came to their wrists and it went almost all the way down to the bottom of their dresses, but you could see the dress through them. They had a bouquet of white flowers, but not a daisy just something like that with purple roses that matched their dresses in the middle mixed in with the white. So pretty! Anyway, her little sister was her maid of honor. None of Ashley's friends that I knew were there because I do not know them. Anyway, Ashley and all those people were up there singing something. Then they step down and Jonte, another person from my college, gets up and starts singing. He walks over to the keyboard and plays something fabulous and sings. I remember being jealous that all my friends were in her wedding, but that passed as I thought it. I noticed to the left of me way in the front a dog was there, a giant dog. Super cute, but he kept climbing over people in an awkward manner, that was when I woke up. Weird right? I feel like I was thinking about weddings because I talked to my soon to be married friend Jasmine before bed, and I was thinking about having married friends, but it does not add up to why it was Ashley in my dream and not someone else, someone I talk to more or spend time with.

So Much To Do, So Little Time

In one week and two days I will perform my junior recital. The chaos and stress that is bring to my life is not something I am thrilled about. I am excited to perform, I'm excited so many people are coming, and I am excited that I finally get to do something just for me that shows how far my voice and talent has come in the last 3 years here at APU. I'm so nervous though. I want everything to go so well. I finally picked out my dress, my mom is picking it up tomorrow. It is gorgeous and I want it to look beautiful so I have spent three weeks eating right and exercising. I feel I am doing really well and am losing weight, but better than that, I feel healthy. I printed my poster up yesterday and will be putting them up today. Everything is basically prepared. I need to make sure I have my songs down and the words and meaning all align. I hope everyone enjoys it. Things have been so crazy lately with school and work. Teachers seem to think we have this endless amount of time to devote to their specific class. I made a page and a half list of all the things I need to accomplish. It sounds doable, but on the down side there is so much that goes into each of those things that I'm very nervous about it. Tonight I have work at Jamba Juice, then tomorrow morning as well. Then Chris will come get me, I will go home and get my dress and shoes and take a load of my stuff home. I will spend some time with Chris for a change which will be nice and then I have to be back at school by 1230 on Sunday for the two shows I have that day. It is such a busy weekend that I am NOT looking forward too. I honestly don't want to go to Bel Canto on Sunday because I know I really need to work on my homework and papers and recital pieces. Anyway, thinking about all this is stressing me out. I am now going to spend the remainder of class looking over my French pieces. Wish me luck!

All is Well

It has been so nice getting to spend some quality time with my best friend. I've missed her so much and we spent all day yesterday together just being us. She brings out a different side of me and I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful friend like her. There are so many good times between us and so many memories. I really think that part of who we are and who we once were are still apart of each of us in the memories and times we have shared together. 6 years is a long time to spend as the best of friends and it's funny to see how much we have grown, but better yet, how much we remain the same, especially when we are together. We made a bunch of fun videos on our Macs last night, something we haven't done for a couple years. We laughed so hard and that was really good. I'm happy I stayed the night, we had a blast. I love that she is so happy, I feel she is happier here at JC's then she was the past few years at home with Tony. She loves her dad, but it got to the point that she couldn't live with him and I feel that has really let her come into her own and be herself. It's like she was finally free, free to be her, free to do what she wanted and needed to do, and to grow into the incredible women sitting next to me aimlessly staring at her computer. I'm so lucky. JC is great too. I think he is so right for her and they bring the best elements out in one another. They fit together so well, I love them, individually, but even more together as a loving, content, and happy-go-lucky couple. They make me smile. It's funny, I am writing this as I talk to both of them. I love how he makes her laugh and how easy-going his personality and humor is. They just go hand-in-hand so well and I love that. It's right, this is right, they are right, we are right, ALL is right.

Don't Give Up on the Lost, the Meek, the Small

I came to you tonight in search of the missing link. I wanted to finally hit that mark, score the winning goal, and meet my maker. I wanted to finally reaching the point of no return where my constant thirst would be met and once and for all, satisfied. I, however, revealed more truths about myself that my self-conscious has quite possibly been mulling over for sometime, but has refrained from sharing with my conscious. I was completely blown away at every word that spilled out of my mouth, yet as you already know, not surprised. It is not surprising that as a reenterd my apartment I sub-consciously did everything I told you I would do. The difference was, after it happened, I noticed I had done just that, nothing. As I went to close my computer I noticed the song title on my iTunes: "God Don't Give Up On Us." It hasn't hit me as you probably assumed by my intro that it would, but more likely grazed my cheek like a feather in the wind, evident yet transparent. One side of me knows what these means, is intended to give me hope, the other end can't make the connection with the rest of my brain, at least the part that controls anything coming remotely close to life and living. It is something I am working on and as the song has so kindly pointed out, so is God. I walked home, not thinking about much of anything, but at the same time everything, and the only thing that came to mind and I inevitably asked You or myself outloud, though which one I am not quite sure, was "Who am I?" I cannot answer that question for you so don't expect to discover the answer sometime in the near future, it will come to me when I let it, when I let Him, until then I am drifting along mindlessly, numbly, and sadly incoherent. Do I want to come out? Yes, I believe I do. I want to understand again, feel again, know again, but I know that today is not that day. Tomorrow very well may not be that day either. I do, however, have high hopes for Friday. It is probably one of those rare moments you hear about in books and fairy tales where one person is looking forward to being broken. I have learned how much my emotions so effect me and ultimately mean to me. They make me who I am, and I love that, if only I could get it back then I would be happy, or at least knew what it felt like to be happy. Thank you for my needed talk, thank you for sharing, caring, loving, praying, understanding, listening, laughing, and being the gift and grace I needed at that moment. I went to you looking for nothing and something all at once as we have noticed has recently become my theme, but I received so much more. You gave me back a piece of me, and I thank God for you and for that. I'm smiling, in my case, that's a step. Though I feel that loving tear in the back of my eye that will (not anytime soon i.e. tonight) come to surface, know that the warm thought is there and that is progress my friend. I hope I can give you all that you have so unselfishly bestowed to me this evening. I needed that and I did not even know it. You know how did though? Thank Him for me will you? I will too, the next time we talk. I did, however, just sit here saying, "thank you, thank you," over and over again in my head feeling nothing but air and hearing only the grumbling of bipolar stomach. I hope you know I mean it from my heart, on the positive side, I know it knows.

I love you, both of you, all of you.

Sincerely,

Your soon/striving to be broken friend