Category: heartblog

waking up on a rainy day

you roll yourself out of bed and you crave a coffee or a tea, something to warm up your chest against the chilly air.
you get dressed carefully, delicately pulling layers on like petals against the elements, keeping your warmth to yourself like a secret.

the daylight creeps in gently, and you are gentle with it. it’s the best time to be silent and the best time to think.

you open the door and feel the rush of cold air hit your skin. your breath comes so easily, and rushes in so deeply.

the rain droplets hit your palm two baker’s dozen at a time.

waking up to rain feels like the earth is saying be new today, start fresh. today especially has so much in store for you, but you must first brace yourself against the cold. baby steps for giant leaps.

what other time do you begin your day by hugging yourself so closely and trusting so much to keep yourself warm? when else do you rely on your heart to beat steadily against the outside world?

I love waking up to rain. I love starting my day by myself and loving that I can do it.

give yourself a time out.

a metaphor using a shattered jar of pickles, and feeling bad about bad friends.

I have to give myself a break sometimes. I work hard, take on big projects at work, and I still make time for my friends.

But not everyone is going to do that for you! Read it again, with the exclamation point. Yell it a little in your mind.

Let it sink in like a little piece of glass from a jar of pickles you dropped three weeks ago and thought you had cleaned up completely until you decide to go to the kitchen and get a lil snack and a microscopic shard of glass stabs you right in the middle of your foot.

You can’t even get mad about it because at the end of that day, the only person that is affected is you. You dropped the jar of pickles. You didn’t clean up enough.

You picked your friends and asked them not to bring up a stupid guy you kissed or asked them to be on time but you know when you picked them to stay in your life that they liked to heckle you or were not the most reliable.

So instead of getting mad or getting hurt, give yourself a time out. A period of time, maybe a week maybe a month, where you grow a little. Spend time with other friends, with family, take a weekend vacation by yourself, buy yourself the kind of wine you would give to your boss for a holiday, and bench yourself.

In that time, grow. Choose something else to focus your energy on.

There’s still a chance that you’re going to drop another jar of pickles, but I promise that you’ll always be more careful when handling glass. And that’s just how it’s gotta be sometimes, but at least you’re prepared and hopefully it doesn’t bother you as much next time.

on being spiteful

The thing about being spiteful is you really only end up hurting yourself. Put down the can of Spite.

I think one of the main reasons why I have achieved what I have achieved is not something to be proud of. I am a person who works better when I am trying to prove something. I am a person that works harder because I don’t ever want to be a victim of anything.

I am a spiteful person.

When somebody does something to you and you get hurt, I think you get to choose whether you use that moment to propel you forward or to set you back.

I, like most people, have been burned a lot. By friends, by boyfriends, by coworkers, and family. But I don’t know whether how I handle it is entirely healthy. I tend to internalize things and out of spite I decide that I need to work hard to prove that I didn’t deserve that treatment.

I have a family member that lives to bring people down. They don’t put any effort into their own wellbeing or personal growth but they love to bash everyone else and judge everyone else for their actions. They lie, cheat, steal, and use other people and never care at all about how it effects the people that love them.

You could get recognized for something cool at work or at school, and they’d say it only happened because you’re a suckup or you got lucky. They know how to push your buttons just right because it’s the only thing they’re good at, the only skill they’ve applied themselves to. And I could write a whole other essay about how shitty saying someone is only successful because they “got lucky” is.

My response to that kind of behavior has been to prove that I can and will be better than that. I worked twice as hard, literally at two jobs, while they did drugs and insulted the family members we lived with. I got accepted to every college I applied for while they got denied, and I felt good.

I know you aren’t supposed to compare yourself to other people, and that’s my biggest flaw. For all of my virtues, for every time that I don’t lie, cheat, or steal, I make myself feel empowered by comparing myself to the people I know that do.

I dated someone that struggled to get a career doing what he loved, and my response after he dumped me was to get my dream job. Instead of working through the pain of a breakup, I worked for an entire year to make sure that I was nowhere in the same league of success as him. I wish I would have taken the time to grieve, to be sad and angry, because those emotions came later. They all flooded back like fresh wounds after I got what I wanted, and I kept cyberstalking him to make sure that he was still a loser and that what I did was worth it.

I thought that if he ever saw me again or looked at my social media profiles, he would see how much better I was doing and it would hurt and annoy him. I want my family member to look at my life and see that their life doesn’t shine as brightly because they are a pitch black pit of negativity. For all the pain they cause my family and me, I want to send it back harder with my success.

I hate flakiness and when my friends don’t follow through with their plans, so I set weird timelines for not looking at their snapchat stories, not replying to their texts, and not making plans with them. I asked you to go with me to an event two weeks ahead of time and you cancelled the day of? See you in six months, and don’t expect a text back from me until after I went to that cool new place you’ve been wanting to go to.

If I wasn’t so spiteful maybe I could stop and slow down and enjoy the life I have built. Maybe I would have more friends and be less successful, and maybe that would be okay. Maybe I’d be happier?

I’ve been trying to work on finding other reasons to push myself. I have been trying to stop comparing myself to other people and make time to stop and appreciate what I already have.

Being a spiteful person is mentally taxing. Because I don’t say spiteful things, or lash out at people to hurt them, in fact I really don’t think anyone would call me a spiteful person at all. But I do it all internally, and at the end of the day the only person who gets harmed is me. It’s very passive aggressive.

This is hard to write, and harder to come to terms with. I hope someone else out there feels like this and has a strategy to battle it. How do you deal with comparing yourself to others, and how do you motivate yourself in a healthy way?

on pink coffin-shaped nails

I think, like horoscopes, that there is a little bit of all of this in every woman. What part of your personality do your nails highlight?

Getting your nails done gives you control, power, and a show of your individualism.

You pick the color, the shape, the length, the medium. You pick based on how you feel, what you want the world to know about you, what you want the cashier at the store to see when you hand them your payment.

What do your nails say about you?

Image courtesy of Mashable Infographics.

Let’s start at the beginning. What shape are you going for today?

Square and squoval nails are straightforward. I see them on a businesswoman with a family, someone who cares about herself but doesn’t want to sacrifice the functionality of her hands. A mom who wants to be able to play catch with her kids without breaking a nail, and types on a keyboard all day on the office without drawing too much attention to the clacking of the keys.

Round, oval, and almond nails are for old souls. A girl that wears a red lip as an accessory to any outfit. She’s refined, well-spoken, and always orders the same drink at the bar (with a straw of course). She has an animal that she’s very close to, and animals like her. She likes when things look nice, and comes off as organized and put together but her car is a mess.

Coffin nails are for women who talk with their hands. She gets excited easily, and has a few things that she is very passionate about. She likes to show off a little, can be called dramatic, but she makes the best secret keeper. This is the girl that breaks hearts but only a little bit on purpose.

Stiletto nails are for that bitch. She watches beauty tutorials on YouTube, or maybe she has her own content channel. She always smells good and gives everybody advice that she never takes herself. She’s always aware of the newest trends, but she only chooses to follow things that suit her. She definitely has a tattoo somewhere, and it probably has a cool meaning behind it.

Image courtesy of COSCELIA Nail Varnish.

Time to pick your color. There’s always a big book or key ring of plastic nails to flip through and this decision has heavy implications about who you are.

A solid red is sexy. It says everything you need it to. There’s a power behind every hand gesture, and a promise. Red reminds me of the lady from the movie Holes that painted her nails with snake venom.

A solid white is for a girl that is funny on Twitter, but pretty calm in real life. She takes a lot of pictures. White nails look good every day of the year, but they also need to be refreshed more often. It’s expensive to keep up but it’s worth the luxury.

Fun colors like teal, purple, color-changing show that you like to have fun. If you can get your nails done every two weeks you might as well try every color. You probably get the newest drink at Starbucks just to try it. Fearless.

Getting one sparkly nail evokes a little bit of fun, but it’s like a little secret. Catch me if you can. Getting a full set of sparkly nails is wild and I don’t trust you but I bet you own either two disco balls or two diamonds. The B.D.E. of a woman with a full set of sparkly nails is off the charts.

A girl that goes in with a design has anxiety. She took a screenshot of nails she spent an hour going through Pinterest choosing, but she didn’t trust the internet connection in the nail salon to pull up her picture so she screenshotted it and while waiting for her name to be called she had the picture pulled up and made sure the screen wouldn’t lock when she showed it to the nail tech.

Who are you this time? I think, like horoscopes, that there is a little bit of all of this in every woman. But what nails you choose say a lot about what part of your personality you want to highlight at that time.

This week I am medium-length, pink coffin-shaped gel acrylics. And it feels good.

sudden repulsion syndrome

Sudden Repulsion Syndrome is what happens when a small decision or behavior puts an abrupt end to a budding relationship.

I get fight or flight but for relationships.

Like I loveloveloveloved maybe one or two people in my life, and out of nowhere I’d wake up one day and be so disgusted by them. The day before I was writing them in my diary and daydreaming about their cologne, and then suddenly I would gag at the thought of one guy’s laugh, at another guy’s little moles.

I think my least favorite part about myself is how I can never decide on anything but I always know how I feel about someone because my brain sends some strong chemicals 3000% too quick. I don’t know I’m over a relationship until I’m physically repelled by the person I thought I was happy about.

Or I’m 3000% the other way, and the norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin are like little butterflies trying to make their way out of my throat while I profess some kind of undying love.

I’ll fight so hard or I’ll run so fast, and neither of us is ever ready for that.

¿Qué más?

There are people, like me, that succeed out of spite.

Nonsense has been released post-partum to our intense liking of one another. I am not convinced that I have ever felt love, but I am certain that I have felt a strong need to attach myself to someone that loves me.

I think of you and I laugh.

Who could have predicted that I knew how to work this hard and this fast, and you knew how to run away so quickly? Your mother is my second mother and she still sends me her favorite Netflix recommendations.

Sometimes I hear music and it doesn’t remind me of you.

I only think about the one year and a couple awful months that happened when I think about how young I was and how bad everything is when you’re 20 years old. I think about how you said you never make it to seven months and I think it’s because you’re a cheater and a liar, a phony and a narcissist.

I am getting more.

My best friends and I are going on a trip this year to see something new. I am tired of seeing the same things and hearing how people fall prey to the same mistakes. I want to hear new stories and see new environments.

I always hated your singing,

Everyone is good except you. Your slight lisp is not affectionate in the slightest and you should quit immediately. It’s hard to be the bearer of bad news except when it isn’t hard at all because you belong on another continent, far away from me.

Anybody can run, but it takes guts to stay.

the good is slippery, the bad sticks

Today I was in my first day of media training, and one thing that the instructor said stuck out.

This is about the field of crisis communications and public relations, but I think it applies. The instructor said you can have lots of good moments in your company but nobody really ever remembers those. Those memories are slippery. But if you have one Delta airlines, Starbucks, Tide Pods, Nike, or Boeing fiasco, it sticks.

You remember the bad better than you remember the good and that’s why when things are bad they feel so much worse than when things are good.

The good is there, though. Even if it is slippery.

nineteen

I felt you in my legs before I ever met you. And when you lay beside me, for the first time I told you. I feel you in my heart, and I don’t even know you.

I can’t remember the last time I heard a song that really made me feel something so strongly. When I was a teenager, I used to stay up with Panic! at the Disco albums on repeat on my iPod and I would just imagine what being in love is like. I thought if love sounded anything like Brendon Urie’s voice then I must be on the right track. Then I heard this song and it brought back everything.

I remember my first big big crush.

I remember driving home feeling so different, and I was so sure everyone could see it. I drove home and I kept touching my swollen lips and I knew that the world knew that I’d been kissing for hours. That I just had this air about me that screamed I had found the big L-O-V-E.

I was worried about the leaves on my windshield from spending the night at the boy’s house, because they weren’t the same leaves as the tree in front of my friend’s house that I told my parents I would be sleeping over at. I thought my mom would take one look at my windshield and just know.

Then summer passed and I never really felt that way again with him. And I stayed, and stayed, and stayed for way too long. Long after the maybe-love was gone, the butterflies had escaped out of my throat, and the “iloveyous” were preceded by tears and they really just meant “I’m sorry.”

Flew home, back to where we met. Stayed inside, I was so upset. Cooked up a plan, it was good except I was all alone. You were all I had.

I remember heartbreak, and I remember realizing after that it wasn’t a real heartbreak. I just didn’t want to be lonely. I didn’t want to go back to being alone.

I was so so so confused about whether any of it was worth it. The funny thing about dating a stranger (through an app, through a chance meeting) is you don’t really know the other person on the end. You don’t know who they were in high school or college, or if they ever got a detention or if they ever smoked weed.

I think I forced it because I wanted love so awfully. What was maybe supposed to just be a fling I stretched out well past its expiration date.

I think it’s too much for me to meet someone and in one or two months decide that I’m ready to be in a relationship. I don’t even make friends that fast. I definitely don’t love that fast.

But I get so excited and hopeful about love. I love love. I feel like I was meant to experience every single type of love there is and some days that puts me on a rush and other days that makes me scared.

I don’t think I am a faucet. I think it ends at some point.

I was nineteen. How could you blame me?

pretty. hard.

I worked pretty hard these past two years.

Read it as “pretty” and “hard.” Separately, but at the same time. I worked beautifully and I worked mightily. I worked pleasingly, lovingly, and dearly and I worked unbreakably, diligently, and powerfully.

I do anything I care about pretty hard. I write pretty hard, I love pretty hard, and I sleep pretty hard.

I love words and love and dreaming. Most of the time all at once, and it’s pretty hard to keep up with.

I crashed pretty hard when my family moved across the country, I burned prettier and harder when I fought for a crush (because it wasn’t love, not really) that was never worth my time and was never supposed to happen. I picked myself up pretty hard and got some pretty hard internships and got a pretty hard job with pretty hard decisions to make.

What I am saying is that I can be breathtakingly resilient and my resilience can be breathtaking.

What I am saying is that after two years I am pretty hard to break.

Imagine me after two more.