Words Are All Around Me

I have this project for one of my Literature classes..
We have to create a work in the language of beauty.
What?
Exactly, I have no idea either.
But she said it can replace one of our papers, which is great because I am missing one.
During class I kept getting this feeling I needed to write a poem.
I don't do poetry. 
But I began writing down words instead of listening.

Its no hope at the end of the tunnel.
Its grey.
The trees are dead.
The grass is dead.
Dead.
Depression.

I've found this subject all around me lately, only this season i'm not the one struggling.
Its in my best friend.
Its in my family.
Its in the boy down the street.
Its in my coworker.

These days i'm working retail.
I have a coworker who just got off a mission in LA.
We opened the other morning at 7:30am - no one shops that early.
We had a lot of time to talk.
She told me all about how depression was something she struggled with on her mission and it caused her to come home early. She also loves a boy. When she came home early this boys mom told him, "You can be friends with her, but I dont want you to love her. She has a lot of problems." She told me she understood because she was kinda broken and no one wants their kid to be with someone who is broken. But depression was part of who she was and it hurt that someone was going to hold her accountable for something she couldn't change.
She really loves this boy and she just wants him to love him back.

I couldn't shake the feeling I had after my conversation with her.
So I wrote this missionary and told him all about it.
Literally pages about our conversation and depression and how its real and how I know people don't understand because I didn't understand. I think the letter was more for me than for him.

*****

I have this roommate.
I think she is really cool and I really want to be her friend.
Shes a freshman, she has a blog too.
Every new year we have to fill out a survey about ourselves, we saw that she liked to blog.
We googled her.
Which I guess makes us pretty creepy..

*****
I wonder if my younger brother knows how great I really think he is.
and I really want him to think i'm cool.
I texted him the other day at 11:30
"You should cover Christina Aguileras new song 'Say Something'"
"Uh no, that by 'A Great Big World"
"You should cover A Great Big Worlds 'Say Something"
"Okay!"
He had it up that night.
I just love him.

*****

I'm grateful for people who just accept things and don't ask questions.

"I need to pay off my bill you guys, can I just do that over the phone?"
"Sure, your balance is 458.97. How much will you be paying today?"
What a nice way to put it. Really they meant, "we fixed your car over six months ago, give us our money".
"I can pay you 400 right now and 58 in two weeks"
"Great."

"Mr. G, I won't be able to finish my observation hours by Wednesday because i'm currently snowed into my apartment complex and can't get my car out."
"...Are you from here? Driving in the snow can be scary but its everyone else you have to worry about. You can turn it in on Friday, be safe driving."

*****
It snowed 8-10 inches over night.
I'm giving myself a snow day.

You're Too Sugary

It still amazes me how much the girls I nanny retain from our past conversations, this is part of one I had with the oldest one, Skylar, a few weeks ago.
The three girls and I are all laying in Skys bed, Cambree and Kylie are playing on the computer and Skylar is sitting on me at the end of the bed.


Sky, you know the grocery store Maceys?
Yeah
I have an interview there tomorrow, do you know what an interview is?
Nope.
They're gonna sit down and talk with me to see if they want me to work there.
YOU'RE GONNA WORK AT MACEYS THE GROCERY STORE?!
Maybe, they need to talk to me first.
Well, they may not think you're a good fit..
Whys that?
Because all you've done is take care of old people (cleaning houses) and answer phones (Vivint).
Well I watch you guys, and I worked at Baskin Robbins.
Right, but since you worked with ice cream you're too sugary. They might not want you to work there.
Too sugary? They have ice cream at Maceys, so I could still work with ice cream.
Yeah, but you're too sugary. If they don't want you to work there its cause you're too sugary. 

I'm still not entirely sure what she meant by that.

Skylar also recently bought a fish with her own money.
It is a beautiful purple and pink Beta fish with a small fish bowl covered in colorful rocks and a purple and pink princess castle.
The fishes name is Thomas.
(Skylar had a friend at school in kindergarden who is still kinda her friend, but not really, named Thomas. For Halloween he dressed up as a train.)
I asked her why she bought Thomas and she told me it was because he was going to be her best friend, and she really wanted someone to sleep with her.
...Thomas sits next to the sink in the Kitchen swimming in little circles in his bowl.
She always reminds me that she needs to feed him after dinner.
(Thomas recently passed away, apparently Sky really wanted to hold him...)

I was able to go to dinner with their dinner the other night and I mentioned how Skylar was going to be a heartbreaker when she got older - she looked at me with worried eyes and said, "What?! I'm not a heartbreaker!"

She will be.

I just think Skylar is so cool and I can't wait to watch her grow up.

Winter Semester, Freshman Year.

I have so many things I want to talk about.
I've been keeping this mental note in my head about everything that matters to me and why and what I think they mean.
Whenever I decide to write my thoughts down I choose to sleep instead, except these days I have a really hard time sleeping. And now its 2:30am, my stomach is full of greasy Denny's and I am defiantly not going to sleep anytime soon, so here I am.

I want to write about so many things!
About whales, or how I tore up all of our Ensigns so I could make a collage of a Volcano (it didn't end up working), or more stories about the girls I nanny because, lets be real, i'm obsessed with them.

But thats not what I want to say.
Lyndsi told me about this blog today, Hyperbole and a Half.
She has these two posts about Depression. One and Two

Clinical Depression is something that runs in the Women of my family.
In that group I am included, but it took me a really long time to face that.

It all really came forth the winter semester of my freshman year.
That part of my life has now become a joke, literally. I refer to it all the time by saying things like, "listen, that was a really dark/rough/awful time in my life." But I say it with a laugh because I don't know how else to feel about it. I look back at it and kind of scoff because I don't know how I didn't realize I was depressed, or why I wouldn't accept it.

I have few very distinct memories from that time.
I remember sitting in my bathroom and texting Dorian and telling him that I don't feel anything anymore, and all I could relate it to is being in a very deep hole, surrounded by darkness and there was no way for me to get out.
I remember sitting at my kitchen table with CJ and crying because I didn't want to be medicated for how I was feeling, I wanted to figure it out myself. But I never did anything to try and fix it, I just wallowed in it.

My mom would ask me a lot if I was depressed, I would always say no.
Corey would tell me he thought I was depressed and I remember getting SO angry at him because I didn't want people to know, I didn't want to feel weak, but I didn't want to fix it.

That was the weird thing for me about how I was feeling.
I knew I was this way but I didn't want to do anything about it, I had zero motivation.

I skipped school a lot, I rarely got out of bed, showering became even less of a priority, I didn't really sleep, I didn't eat and I watched a lot of Law and Order.  I stopped praying, reading my scriptures never crossed my mind, and I physically went to church but my head and soul weren't there, I went just so the people around me wouldn't worry.

I think I have always been a happy person, I like to laugh, I like to have friends and to know the people around me. I like the sunshine, I LOVE EATING, I hate being by myself.  None of these things mattered to me anymore. I rarely laughed, I HATED being around people, I tried to stay away from the sunshine, and I choose to be by myself all the time.

My Junior year of High School I had Mono.
My mom once told me that Clinical Depression kinda works like my Mono.
The Mono virus will always be in my body and it can attack me again as soon as my immune system gets bad enough.
The chemicals in my brain have always been unbalanced but they weren't able to take a tole on me until something big happened that made them go crazy and 'attack' or 'take over' my body.

I remember breaking up with Dorian and thinking my life was over.
I knew I would love someone else again but that thought seemed so far off in the distance, and I didn't want to love anyone else.
I remember calling him and telling him I needed to talk to him and I couldn't get through three words before I was bawling my eyes out and he couldn't even understand me. I remember hanging up and feeling like my world was crashing down on me. I wouldn't say that was the exact moment I became depressed, but I know that that is what triggered it. When the depression came I didn't realize it and I didn't take it seriously. I thought I was just upset because I was going through a break up and thats what happened. By the time I realized thats what was going on it was totally out of my control.

I told Dorian I couldn't be with him, I told CJ that we couldn't really be around each other. And I stopped feeling.

But lots of things continued to happen that Semester too.
Lyndsi came home from her mission,
Bradley got baptized,
I met Max,
I got a job.

During these few moments in my life I started to feel little bits of emotion.
I was so happy Lyndsi was home, I was so happy to see my family at Bradleys baptism. But both of those plane rides back to Utah were probably some of the worst rides I have ever had.  I didn't want to go back to Utah because I wasn't happy in Utah, all I wanted to was to be by myself but I forced to sit on this plane with many other people. These instances showed me that I really had the ability to feel emotions, but they could also come crashing down just as quick.

I was always happy when I first started hanging out with Max, it was very easy for me to be around him. We were also getting to know each other so I knew I couldn't be some sad, depressed girl. So I told myself I was going to be happy, I put a face on, and eventually I was truly happy. But the second I would leave maxs apartment and get into my car it would hit me. I remember many different times when I would drive down University in the dark and Provo below would be lit up and I could see the outline of the Mountains against the sky. That hill was always so hard for me to drive down, it made me feel so alone.

I worked at Baskin Robbins and people were forced to rely on me. I was okay when I was distracted but the second I left work it was like this feeling was waiting for me right outside the doors. I would clock out, and along with that I would put this weight back on my shoulders until my next shift.

It wasn't until September that I finally decided to do something about it. Lyndsi wrote this post about Depression and it finally made me realize that this was not something that I could keep ignoring.
I went and saw a Doctor in Utah and he wouldn't give me anything, instead he wanted me to talk to someone and read a book about Depression.  I cried, I was angry, I threw away the number of the 'professional' he wanted me to talk to and I can't even remember the title of the book. I think this method could work for some people, but I knew sitting down and talking to someone about being depressed wasn't going to make me any less depressed.  So I went home to North Carolina and saw my family Doctor and he prescribed me some medicine. The change wasn't automatic for me, I didn't wake up the next day feeling instantly better. But I did recognize little things that felt better.  I remember leaving Maxs, driving down that hill on University and not feeling sad or alone, I remember feeling motivated and wanting to do things, I remember I started feeling happy more than sad.  I was starting to feel alive again, I was starting to feel like myself.

I still have bad days, sometimes I can feel my depression creeping up on me, but the good days far outweigh them.

I do things now that I know will make me happier.
I go outside, a lot.
I don't listen to really sad music.
I pray a lot to my Heavenly Father to help me be happy.
I love the girls that I nanny and I love that I can't be upset when i'm around them.

I love how I feel now.
I love feeling alive again.
Never again do I want to feel nothing.

Depression is real.
Depression is hard.
But depression doesn't mean its the end.

Refine.

In a few days i'll move out of Glenhood for forever, can I get a hallelujah?

This time last year I was sending a good friend I had made back home to California for the summer.

I was saying goodbye to my very first roommates.

I had my first real customer service job.

I had just finished my first year of college.

All I wanted to do was fly home to a boy that I was in love with.

I couldn't imagine staying in Utah for an entire summer.

This year that same friend will leave for California.

I am still saying goodbye to my roommates.

I'm picking up my third job for the summer.

I have finished my second year of college.

There is no boy that I am in love with. 

I can't imagine leaving Utah for an entire summer.

Its crazy how things can change in just one year. 

This will be my first summer in Utah where my heart is actually with me.

I have never been so ready.

Since i've moved away from home things that I knew about myself have become much more obvious to me. 

I am ALWAYS willing to give people 3, 4, 5, chances. 

I have a really hard time believe that people make bad choices on purpose, especially when it effects me in the end. 

This leads me to letting them back in my life, continuously.

Every relationship teaches you something, and although I may have stayed in my relationships longer than I should have, I don't regret any of them.

My sophomore year of high school I really really liked this boy and when things didn't work out between us I literally didn't think I would ever be okay again.

The same thing happened my junior year, and my senior year, and again my freshman year of college.

The thing is, I will be okay. Always. 

I never understood girls who couldn't walk away from their boyfriends who were complete jerks, of boyfriends who had cheated on them.

I couldn't understand until I was one of those girls last year, and again recently. 

When you put your entire self into a relationship its hard to pull it all back out and start over.

But its not impossible.

Refine: Verb

1. Improve (something) by making small changes, in particular make (an idea,theory, or method) more subtle and accurate.

2. To make (a substance) pure by taking out dirt, waste substances. 

May 20, 2012

April 8, 2013

Boyfriend Door

People I date more than actual boys:
Lyndsi & Ken
Adriana
The 3 girls I nanny
My bed

I'm not writing this because i'm some girl who is sad she doesn't go on dates.
I'm writing this because I think boys are dumb.
Refer here to see my other feelings about the subject.

Anyways, as an apartment we made a door for Valentines day asking for boyfriends.
It was a brilliant joke that was actually pretty successful.

We had boys stopping by our apartment to introduce themselves, numbers were being written on our door, and interviews began.  Eventually we printed out applications and stuck them on or door to be taken. They were full of important questions that could make or break our relationship.
Things like:

• How tall are you?
• Will you scrape the ice off our car?
• Can we have a sweatshirt?
• Would you rather be the big spoon or the little spoon? 

And the most important one...

• Can we write about you on our blog?

One particular application is the reason for this post.
This person had great answers and agreed that I could write about him on my blog.
BAM.

It was our first face to face interview. When we were done he interviewed us. He had us hug him, hold his hand, and made us role play to see how we would greet him when we see him in public. He asked questions like, "how would you feel if the person you're dating is busy with homework or extra activities and can't see you all the time?" Its understandable that people have lives, right? We all agreed that you don't have to be together all the time, but its still good to make the other person feel important.

Anyways, this was the boy I got set up with.
I was pretty psyched, we seemed to get along pretty well.
We had a date for a Friday but throughout the week he asked me if I could hangout.
I couldn't, I was geuinely busy.
Things came up on his side and our date for Friday was cancelled.
I texted him and asked if we could reschedule.
No answer.
I texted him a few days later and made a joke about how I was going to show up to his Q&A and ask him publicly why he wouldn't text me back, but I had class.
No answer.
I noticed his name was no longer in my phone, just his number.
He defriended me on facebook.

OKAY! Thats a reasonable response, right?
No. Way to be a girl.

Heres a note to all the boys i've ever stopped answering with no explanation, i'm sorry.
Heres a note to all the boys who stop answering girls with no explanation, you're stupid.

I didn't know this boy well enough to know whether or not I could like him.
But I was excited to hang out with him and get to know him better.
Turns out he sucks.

So heres my angsty I-Hate-Boys post.
And I don't feel bad about it at all because he said I could write about him on my blog.

Jokes on you.
Sucka.

Im Grateful...But Not About The Weather

I've always had a problem with dressing for the weather.

I have distinct memories of being at the Winslow Bay bustop in the rain/winter with no jacket, or not a jacket that could actually keep me warm. Or not thinking to cover my foot with a sock when I had a cast on so my toes wouldn't freeze. This wasn't my parents fault. It honestly just didn't cross my mind to put a real coat on. Along with this, I was lucky if I didn't wear pajamas to school, or if I even brushed my hair. 

This happened to me today.

I know I live in Utah and I know its always freezing for 7 out of the 12 months and I still can't seem to dress right for the weather. I just forget how cold it actually is. This morning when I was walking to school I had on leggings and my brothers sweatshirt. These clothes would be acceptable in North Carolina weather where 30 degrees is freezing and the end of the world. Again, I live in Utah. It was 19 degrees.  As I was walking it also occurred to me that I didn't brush my hair that morning, or put any makeup on.  Hi, I am still my 10 year old self. 

************

Lately i've realized how many things I take for granted. 

I'm so grateful for the way I was raised. My parents taught me how to clean up after myself and how to care for my siblings. These lessons have gotten me the jobs I have today.

I love being a nanny, although its really hard. 

I love seeing how i've rubbed off on them, even if I don't realize it.

I love calling those girls suckas. 

"Come on suckas - Catch me suckas" etc. 

The other day I was getting all of them out of the bath and Cambree starts running around screaming, "NO PANTS, SUCKAS!"

I died, literally died. 

Cambree is also potty trained. Although, somedays I think she forgets that she is.

One day she peed her pants three times and I kept asking her if she was a big girl because big girls don't pee their pants. Later we were eating dinner and Cambree jumps down and runs away to the bathroom. A few minutes later she screams from upstairs, "Lacey! I'm a big girl!" 

I love my job. 

I also clean houses now. 

I get to lay out cotton balls drenched in peppermint to keep mice away from the food.

I get to kill bugs...lots of bugs.

Its not the most glorious job, but i'm good at it.

This also goes back to my parents.

At one point my mom went and printed out a detailed list of how to clean each room in our house, laminated it, and taped it to every door. This is where I learned. 

I'm also grateful for the people in my life.

My roommates.

The family i'm so lucky to have around.

The family I nanny for.

Boys who come and take our trash out everyday.

Boys who try to explain to me whats wrong with my car...even though I don't understand.

The friends I still have from high school. 

Im grateful for indoor plumbing.

And not having to walk in the snow because I have a car.

And being surrounded by so many great food places.

I hate being so far away, but I love my family.