What I'm Learning About Frienship

In my life, I've had some really, really bad friends. Ones who steal money from me, abandon me when I need them most, and ones that just use me to get something in return.

It hasn't been until this whole Seek Healthy Relationships mission that I've truly started to see what makes friendship such a beautiful thing. Because we all know how much I love lists, here's a small list of what true friendship is (and don't worry, I'm still learning).

My sister and I. She pushed me pretty hard.

7) They push you to be better than you currently are.
My teacher friend saw potential in me and roped me into this public speaking gig. My other friends pushed me to submit my resume to the newspaper. Your friends should always seek the best for you, and if you're afraid to take the first steps, they'll know how to support and challenge you so that you, too, want the best for yourself.

Some of my very, very good friends.

6) They don't have to be remotely anywhere near your age.
I have friends who haven't graduated high school yet. I have friends who are in their 80's. I have friends in-between those age gaps. We don't have a generation gap, we find mutual ground, a mutual respect for each other, and bond over snowboarding, or our hatred of our jobs, our love of animals, or our fucked up pasts.

5) They help take care of you.

My little friend, Allie and I before I left NC

There are times in your life where you can't take care of yourself. Whether it's because you're puking from drinking too much, you can't carry your food to the couch because you're on crutches, you're curled up in the fetal position crying for days, or your dog has gotten seriously sick and you can't afford his vet bills. True friends will help you. They will spot you money, they will break and enter with you so you can get your stuff back from a creepy old man who'd exposed himself to you, they will pick you up from the couch you've refused to rise from.

4) Though you may embarrass them, frequently, they're still not ashamed to be seen in public with you.

Yep. I was rocking hooker boots at a family function.

Laura (sister) yells at me quite a bit for not having any social tact. I talk about a lot of things I shouldn't, especially at the dinner table. In recent weekends, I went to Connecticut to help my friends celebrate their new house as well as their engagement, and we went out to dinner. I talked too loud, and told some poo stories, and puke stories. Needless to say....I should learn tact, some day. But they're still my friends. It's kind of that whole "Accepting you for you" type of thing.

I see these cats less than once a year.

3) You don't have to see them every day.
Some of my favorite people to be around, I only get to see either once every few months, or once a year. Some of my very good friends (blogging friends, twitter friends) I've never even met. Many of them have helped me (especially with Baxter). Many of them support me. Many offer advice, even when I don't want to hear it.

2) They protect you.

Friends from CT. They're very happy people.

A few weekends ago, I was in CT for a friend's engagement party. I'd had a beer and minimal amounts of food. When a guy handed me another beer, my friend (also a boy) looked right at me and mouthed, "Be Careful." He spent the next hour convincing me that I needed to eat and drink water. We were told repeatedly that we sounded/seemed like an old married couple.

1) Things that are important to you, matter to them.

My friends from Ecuador and the Philippines!

Another amazing example of friendship is an example from my time in CT. When they saw me, they ALL asked how Baxter was doing. They've never met my handsome little man. But they knew he was sick and tried to help him. They asked how he was because he's my entire world. It meant more to me than I can express.
They also allowed me to talk about my organization, my writing, and my dog, over, and over, and over. They never told me to shut up (except when I embarrassed them :) )

This is only a small list, but each point has shocked me. I always imagined that you see your friends every day, or you interact with them, or you've somehow known them your entire life. I managed to forget that you can go weeks, months, years, without seeing each other, and nothing can change. I forget that they can influence you to be a better person, to stop selling yourself short.

In unrelated news, each person in these pictures has helped save my life at one time or another.

Hiking and Healing

It's hard to put into words what today has always been like for me. June 10th marks the birthday of my best friend.

October 1st marks the day she died, ten years ago this Fall. Both dates are always hard for me.

She would be 27 today. I scheduled the day off from work for a "mental health" day, and went off on an adventure. Because I love nature and being outside, I figured hiking would be the best way to honor Kellie's birthday. So I packed up the pups, and Damien, and we went to Sunday River.

The drive there, I couldn't stop talking about Kellie. The fact that she'd driven a stick shift car. The way she'd learned to drive in her yard. The fact I don't have a single picture of us together.

We stopped at the first chair lift for a water break. Damien cupped his hands while I poured water into them so the pups could drink. Then we shared the 3 liter bottle (it still was NOT enough water for two people and two pups).

There were bugs everywhere, and the grass was so tall, Baxter frequently disappeared. My knees hurt. My back was tired. Baxter kept rolling in mud puddles. We were all being attacked by bugs. But we kept on.

Sunday River has eight peaks to choose from with many trails to hike up or snowboard down. Last summer, I'd hiked with a friend on one side. Today, I'd decided to hike some of my favorite trails. When I got to the top, I sat on a stationary chair lift and looked out across the scenery in front of me. There was a gondola car directly ahead, and the number on the window nearly knocked the wind out of me.

10.

Kellie's favorite number.

I could have picked any peak to hike up. I could have taken any other trail. But I chose this one. It was like she was waiting for me at the top.

People say that time heals all wounds, but it's a lie. Time numbs wounds, turns scabs into scars. They don't bleed out, but you still see them, feel them, remember how you got them.

I miss Kellie every single day. Some days, like her birthday, or her death day, I miss her more. But it's nice to know that when I get to the top of a mountain, she's missing me, too.

Unhealthy Relationships

"You're being a fucking cunt."

Yep. You read that right. (Sorry I'm not adhering to my PG-13 status right now). But that quote is what I woke up to at 8:00am. I heard it through my ceiling in the basement. I also heard a million f-bombs, and screaming. Lots of screaming. Though I heard her voice a few times, it was mostly his, yelling f-bombs, calling her the b or c word, and it was just awful. All around.

I ventured upstairs since sleep was no longer an option, got a bowl from the cabinet  and poured some Lucky Charms cereal (because I'm five like that). Then the dude (now standing in the kitchen, too) screamed, "I'm not the one being f@#$ing inconsiderate!"

And because I'm me, I couldn't help it. As I poured the milk in the bowl, I said (not in an angry voice), "Actually, you are being inconsiderate. There were still people sleeping."

He proceeded to redirect his anger at me, and tell me to shut my f#$ing mouth. Then my older roommate (the girl's aunt) also told me to shut my f#$^ing mouth, and that I don't think of anyone else. Um. Right. Then about fifteen minutes later, she asked me for dishsoap...which I got, pissily. 

Moral of this story is, yet again, I cannot cohabitate with people and it brings us to another list.

Signs that You May Be in an Unhealthy Relationship

5) They don't support your dreams.

If you want to be an astronaut, and they buy you a cowboy hat for Christmas, things may be in the fritz. 

On my 16th birthday, the boy (who you'll read about in #1) I was dating made me breakfast in bed, and then gave me presents. There was a large pack of pretty metallic colored gel pens. 

"I saw you were running low," he said, like he wasn't sure I'd love them.

I was speechless. He knew me. He got me. He supported my journaling, my writing. Me.

He also wrote, but he was terrified to speak or read in public. By the end of our relationship, I was in attendance when he decided to read at an open-mic night. Even though he barely spoke loud enough to be heard through the microphone, I'd never been so proud in all my life.

 

Recently, I was talking to a boy (who'd been asking me out), and I mentioned being in the newspaper. I told him, "You should be impressed, I'm a pretty big deal."

And he laughed. It didn't feel like he was laughing with me.

If you think you're a pretty big deal, your SO should think you're a pretty big deal, too. Because you are :)

If this was in real time,
it woulda hurt

4) You are genuinely afraid they'll hurt you

Safety is a huge thing in a relationship. Maybe you want to reproduce with this person. Maybe you want to adopt. Maybe you want to know that when you come home there won't be knife marks in the couch and your tires won't be slashed in the driveway. If you start to feel afraid of your partner, chances are you should trust your gut instinct and bail out. 

3) Dominance

People like to say, "We can see who wears the pants in that relationship," like it's a bad thing. And it can be, if the same person is always wearing the pants. The pants should be traded back and forth. There should be an equal amount of give and take. If one makes the dinner, maybe the other does the dishes. If one does the laundry, maybe the other gets to pick the movie. If one wants to go to a club, and the other HATES clubs, maybe make a trade. Next time you'll do something you don't like because they like it. 

You don't own someone in a relationship. It's not meant to be my way or the highway. Talk things out, build a life with each other. Come to an even playing field.

2) They don't realize they've hurt you

"Hey, hey, look!" From the driver's seat, I reached behind me, and pulled out a pink covered book. My Friend Leonard, by James Frey. I'd been gushing about it for weeks, and I'd finally gotten it back in the mail. That day!

My boyfriend, in the passenger seat looked at the cover, put the book back in the backseat, and said, "Cool."

He didn't open the cover to see the signature, and the kind words James had written. He didn't act excited that I'd been checking my mailbox religiously to see if the book had come. I was crushed. I almost started crying at the steering wheel. I'd told him about that book and what it meant to me a million times. It's okay if he didn't remember why the book was so important to me, but it wasn't okay that he didn't ask why I was so excited. 

He didn't even notice I was upset.

If people love you, they'll want to know why you're happy, know why you're sad. They want to celebrate with you, they want to help pull you out of the gutter. So if they're not asking why you're beaming and throwing a book in their lap, you may want to look into why they aren't.

1) Fights.

"Maybe if you hadn't been born your father wouldn't have left."

Yep. I said that. In high school. To the boy I was head over heels in love with. And after the words fell out of my mouth, I stood there, hand over lips, with a look of shock on my face.

Sometimes fighting is fun.
Sometimes it's not.

I couldn't believe I'd just said that. It was the most hurtful thing I'd ever said....to anyone. And I said it to the boy I loved! I knew I'd hurt him (and I'd like to think I apologized, but I'm not 100% sure I did....because it was high school and it was my way or the highway).

There are constructive ways to fight, and non constructive ways to fight. If you're feeling belittled or attacked, chances are it's not constructive fighting. Once the name calling barrier is broken, the relationship is usually gone. If you're sitting there crying (like my neighbor used to do when her boyfriend insulted her and called her worthless/an idiot/etc), chances are, it's not good fighting.

Remember, if you love someone, you still want to protect them. Calling them names does NOT help put the fight into remission. Making someone cry harder doesn't help, either. Neither is helping reach the goal of the end of the fight. It's escalating it. 

Also how often are you fighting? What are you fighting about? Fighting is a normal part of a relationship, but if it's happening every day, chances are there is a serious problem that's not being addressed. If you're just trying to hurt each other, that's not a good thing.

Moral of this post is if you're being treated poorly, please remember that you deserve better. You should never tolerate being called names, being yelled at until you cry, or people saying you'll never reach your dreams. 

Keep your head up. Happy Monday.

Religious Rants: Suicide

The Bridge at Sunset

Today is October 1, which for the last nine years has been an incredibly difficult day for me. In 2003, my best friend, at the age of 17 was killed in a car accident. It only makes sense then, that I would post about something death related...

It was Winter in Maine when Laura (my sister, I'm just going to start referring to her as Laura from here on out, okay?) and I were chatting on Facebook. She was in Michigan and I was supposed to be studying for Final Exams (Organic Chemistry, to be exact), but decided to slack off a bit....as usual.

"Whoa," she typed. "Sarah Hunter (name change for respect) committed suicide."

I stared at her words, and stared at the name. Sarah was a girl I'd attended youth group with. She'd driven me a couple of times when no one else could. We were friends. And she killed herself.

"What happened?" I typed back as tears stung my eyes.

"I'm not sure, I'm looking into it."

At long last, the dam burst, and I started crying, sobbing. I cried for Sarah, who had always been soft spoken and slow to smile. I cried for me, who only a few months before had been committed to a psych ward of a hospital for "attempted suicide". She was so pretty, and so young. We would sit in her car and chat before and after youth group. And she was dead.

The Mackinac Bridge

In Michigan, there is a lovely place called Mackinac Island. I've been there once and tried a million different kinds of fudge (and got a horrible tummy ache). But to get to the island, you have to cross the Mackinac Bridge.

Just before Christmas, and either just before or after her birthday, Sarah had driven her car to the bridge, walked, and then jumped into the icy water below. To my knowledge her body wasn't found.

"Did you know her?" Laura typed, as I sat on my beaten in couch crying.

"Yes, we went to youth group together."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you knew her."

We chatted for awhile longer while I sat there crying. Eventually I made my way outside and started chain smoking. This could have been me. This could have been me. My mind was reeling. Though I'd been committed for attempted suicide, I maintained that I wasn't trying, I'd just cut myself too deep. But just because I wasn't trying that day didn't mean I hadn't tried before. It also didn't mean that I wasn't considering it on a daily basis.

Months later I was on the Outer Banks of North Carolina when PostSecret shared a voicemail. It was the last phone call a young girl made to her boyfriend before she killed herself. On it, she stated, "I'm so sorry, please know this wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could have done." Her voice cracked as she spoke, and I listened to the voicemail on repeat, fighting my own urge to cry.

The voice mail removed any doubt in my mind that before Sarah jumped she was looking at the black water, sobbing. I know this because as I walked to the beach my sophomore year of college to drown myself, I was sobbing. She might have screamed on the way down, or maybe she was quiet. She could have jumped feet first, or head first.

But the church we'd gone to told me that suicides go to Hell, and I was supposed to believe that my friend was now burning for eternity for committing this grievous act. Not only had she had a rough life and lost her battle to depression, now she was going to suffer. Forever. Even though she probably cried on her way out of this world.

My faith at that moment became something like a pencil and snapped in half.

I've known God my entire life. I've loved him, prayed to Him almost every night. And yet I was supposed to believe that this Being that I've loved would torture someone who'd already been tortured?

No. No way.

And so like my belief that Harry Potter is demonic, I stopped believing that suicides go to Hell, simply because I need to believe in something that would take compassion on my friends. I need to believe that He would understand why we made these decisions, and that He truly is as epic as the Bible tells me He is.

I think this song pretty much sums up this entire post:

"What about me and all my friends, are we all sinners if we sin? Does it even matter in the end, if we're unhappy?"
~Noah Gunderson

Happy Monday.

Maine: A Place of Healing

Life has always been a place where my arms and legs get severed, my heart has been ripped out of my chest, and I'm in the process of bleeding out...

Then I run away to Maine...and start stitching myself together. I ran away after High School to this place, and it was a hard adjustment. I thought my roommates were whores, I was super awkward (wait a second, I still am...)...and I got home sick. I missed out on Central Michigan University's Basketball games, I missed my sisters, I left Baxter with my aunt and uncle in Massachusetts, and I hated my major (medical biology, which I sucked at).

College was rough, so after I graduated, I moved to North Carolina. But last year when I found myself going through another blender (ha, that's actually kind of true), I sought one place as a refuge. The wonderful state of Maine.

In the process of dying, I chopped my hair off...
I look happy, but I sure wasn't...

For those of you who have never been here, part of the reason why I love it is because it really does get all four seasons.

Pumpkin picking!

When it's Fall, the bite in the air creeps into your bones and makes you put on a hoodie. The leaves turn neon. There are countless places that have pumpkin picking, apple picking, and overall wonderful-ness.

The smell of falling leaves engulfs your nose wherever you are.

While the stars don't quite compare to the southern sky, it is still magical to curl under a blanket with a cup of hot apple cider and watch the sky hoping for a shooting star.

I do not take pictures while driving...

Then the cold gets...colder. Suddenly, you've found yourself in a blizzard.

People who live here warn you about Winter. They tell you to brace yourself, and have warm clothes. Most of us have spare flashlights and candles, especially after that ice storm in 2008 (I think it was that year), and an endless supply of blankets (usually an emergency blanket in our car, too).

Sometimes, the snow piles will cover your vehicle. Sometimes, you'll be knee deep. Many mornings you'll have to go out before you brush your teeth, start your car, scrape off the ice that's accumulated, and then go inside to finish getting ready and pray your vehicle will be warm by the time you get back to it.

But one thing is for sure, if you're in high school or college, you'll be guaranteed at least one day off of school.

Snowball fights are magic. Snow angels are great when you're a snowboarding instructor and teaching several seven year olds.

Don't live in Maine if you don't appreciate Winter, because this season teaches you how to be a kid again, to go sledding, to throw snowballs, and get your car stuck in parking lots after a huge snow storm. Your vehicle will slide all over the road, but it's awesome. You feel like a race car driver...until you see a semi-truck coming...:/

It's warm, but not too warm

As the snow melts, you find yourself in Spring. By this point, chances are you've almost forgotten what warmth and sunburns feel like. Your memory comes back quick, though.

It rains a lot, it's still cold most nights, so while you wear shorts during the daylight hours, you find yourself in sweatpants and hoodies while you sit around campfires in the darkness.

They days smell good, like a mixture of fresh dirt, cut grass, and budding flowers. While Winter froze most of everything the grass turns green as if by magic, you see life again...and suddenly, while you thought Winter was so much fun, you start looking forward to Summer, and the beach, and running after a long hiatus.

You can swim as the sun sets, because some nights...
it's that hot.

I think people forget to tell you that Summer exists in Maine, and that it comes full force. If you don't have fans, or air conditioning, or a house that lives in the shade of a large tree, you're kind of screwed, because it is not immune to heat waves.

In Summer proper attire is shorts, a t-shirt (maybe wife beater or tank top), and usually a baiting suit underneath  because you never know when someone will say, "Hey, let's go to the lake/river/ocean." If you work in air conditioning all day, and walk outside, it's like getting sucker punched....by heat. You've got to get out of it!

But if you wait it out, soon enough an entire year has passed. Fall will comes again, and if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself itching for snow.

A very large portion of my heart and being reside in Maine. When I grew up in Michigan, I found myself wanting to go (t)here (possibly because all the water bottles said, ME Bottle Deposit, 5 cents and I thought I could get rich). So, I moved and found myself here for college for four years. Then moved to North Carolina, and when I died last year, there was only one place I knew could heal me and make me sane again.

Now a year later, I'm recovering...
And my hair has grown back :)

So what about you guys, where do you go for healing? What's your favorite season?

The New Place

There's no trace of me...

The thing that people don't tell you about your early 20s is that you become an expert at being a ghost. You move into an apartment or dorm, put down a security deposit, and then a few months later, you remove every trace of you. Hair is taken out of the bathtub, that spot on the floor is buffered out, the piles of clothes get packed away in your car. Everything you brought in here, is taken out.

By the time you take the pictures of where you'd just inhabited (just in case your sketchy landlord tries to take you to court), your essence has already been Cloroxed out. You no longer exist here. But if walls have memories, your ghost will haunt this dwelling place. I hope my ghost haunts the places I've been, because for a time I've fallen in love with each place I inhabited.

I've mentioned I'm messy, right?
This is my 'living room'

I told you guys awhile back that I moved away from the crazy neighbors, but I haven't showed you the new place, or told you much about it.

Probably because I'm still going through an adjustment period. Probably, also, because I no longer have wifi at this new place so I sit in the Young Adult section of the local library, hoping that the voices of the kick-ass authors around me will help muse me. (So far it's been working, I think.) This means the blogs you read are usually posted a week in advance now (trying to utilize my time, you know).

Well, Baxter and I live in Poland, Maine now. We live with an older woman, her son, his wife/finance/girlfriend (I'm not sure which so fill in your own blanks), and their son. (That's right, three generations in one house, and me and Baxter.)

Because I'm neurotic and freaked out when they started eating my food, they gave me a mini-fridge to put downstairs (it's the black box on the floor in the picture below). I'm now like a vampire; dwelling in the basement, getting no sunlight. I'm awake at night, mornings are still awful, and I'm still a horrible roommate. To be proactive, I'm trying to keep my head low and just hang out downstairs or go running. If I'm not around you can't fight with me, right?

Look, over there on the left. There's a bed.
Not an air mattress! 

The drive is significantly less to work, so that's nice. They also let Baxter out to pee while I work long shifts, so that's a huge help, too. But my anxiety level has increased substantially. It turns out, I don't like to talk as much as I think I do. Sure, I've been calling my sister for hours every day to chat but it's not talking. I don't like the superficial, "How's your day? How was work/school/etc?" I don't like answering the same thing countless times, "Oh, you know, I hate my job."

It taxes my energy level, and I retreat to the basement to be antisocial. Tell me about important things; politics, the fact the Shell broke the ice in the Arctic and is now helping destroy the world, religion, changing the world...Don't ask me about my day, when it's the same as yesterday.

I know at some point I'll be moving again. I don't know where (especially since I didn't get into TFA), and I don't know when. But at some point, I would like to live on my own again. In the meantime, it's nice to know that while a million things keep changing...

...Some things stay the same

**Note**
If you're a Twitter follower, I said that I was blogging today about Harry Potter. Sadly, the library I'm at doesn't seem to have any of the books, and I like to have pictures on the blog, AND my sister had some issues with getting her picture to me. Stay tuned, the blog post will happen. Sorry if that's what you were expecting today.

Fear Journal

My sister last year got me Journalation, a book that has tips and things like that to keeping a journal. I still haven't gotten very far into it, but one of the things I picked up was when journaling to write a few things at the top of the page:

Date (I always write the date. If I don't, there's usually some significance why. I'm probably hiding something)
Location (Where are you? What are you doing? Are you with anyone? Why are you here? Music on?)
Time
End writing time

And so, I kept my regular journal for a couple of months, daily lists of random crap I did through the day. Usually things of non-importance but I did like keeping track of who I interacted with through the day. (I have a really bad memory and these things would be lost otherwise.)

Then something happened and I started falling a little off kilter. I found a composition notebook that Laura had given me before I'd started college. I'd been saving it and bringing it along everywhere because I knew someday I'd need it. So, I started a Fear Journal. When I would start worrying about something, I'd write about it and specifically track what I was afraid of, possible outcomes, then probable outcomes. Entries are far between, usually once a month, maybe less. (I lost the journal in my trunk for a long while.)

Just recently, I've been writing just about every day. Today, I asked Laura if I could read her my entry from yesterday though it was a million pages long. She sat on the phone with me while I read. There's something nice about reading out loud, it allows you to detach if you just focus on the words and not the fact that something horrific has just happened to you. There was one point during the reading I almost cried, but I kept it together. Her response?

"That....was intense. I know someday you're going to write about this...."

Which I found funny, because hadn't I just written about it?

This is kind of my point. As a writer, we channel a lot of energy through our writing. I keep journals and write when things become too much because it's like releasing it. It can't eat me from the inside out if it's on paper. I try to write when wounds are fresh because it's much more honest and someday when I come back to it, I can face it again and turn it into a story of some sort. I don't have a lot of coping mechanisms, but writing is by far one of the strongest ones I have.

And so....when you're scared or overwhelmed, what do you do?

Bottom Line?
Fear. Nothing.