I really don’t know if I’m going to get it, but I’m glad that I asked. It’s always worth doing or saying something important in the moment, instead of looking back later and regretting not using your voice. I’m proud of myself for asking for more for myself, and if I do end up getting it I’ll be so *insert happiest adjective possible here.*
I have always been a hopeful person, and I don’t think I’ve ever hoped for something so much.
The answer to most of my security questions online is my first grade best friend’s middle name. I used to live in a suburb of Seattle called Puyallup before moving to California in fourth grade. After I moved we never spoke again but I still know her middle name.
There are people I don’t talk to anymore that have had such an impact on my life. I still wear a friend from 8th grade’s P.E. shirt to bed sometimes because we accidentally switched shirts at a sleepover and never ended up giving them back.
I still listen to a band that my very first boyfriend showed me, and it’s one of my favorites.
And I still make a crunchy tuna casserole that one of my elementary school friend’s mom showed me. Half of their casserole was made without peas because her dad didn’t like them but the rest of the family did. I wonder if they still do that.
Our lives are made up of so many people, and sometimes you keep pieces of them long after they have left your life.
At the same time, there are so many lives that you have left some kind of impact on like this. I wonder what parts of me are alive in someone else that I have no idea about.
Last night I sat and talked with a very old friend of mine for hours. We talked about love, and contemplated whether the kind of love that hopeless romantics like us look for is even real. Is the formula for love compatibility + infatuation? I think I have only ever felt one, or the other, and finding a combination of those seems impossible. But at the same time it’s everywhere; it’s in every book I’ve ever read, it’s what I see when I look at my parents’ relationship.
I once said that I was a closet hopeless romantic. My friend responded by saying:
“Oh my god. You are the most out of the closet hopeless romantic. You are literally running in the streets screaming through a megaphone letting everybody know exactly who you are at all times.”
I am a goal-oriented person. I make goals and then I obsess completely about them until they are reached. I am like a tiny little ant lifting a crumb to bring to the queen. Goal. Goal. Goal. This is a very good way to be when it comes to my career.
One of my biggest goals is to fall in love, but you can’t will yourself into love or set aside some time to do so. I don’t think that the heart really takes your goals under consideration. Hearts are very inconsiderate things.
There will never be a right time, but I think that there is a right person. You just have to find that compatibility and then become infatuated with them (or vice versa), and exist in that state forever. Sounds easy, right?
With dating apps it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that you decide when you get to fall in love, but I just don’t know if that’s how it really works.
I still hope that I’ll meet someone at a party, and he’ll say he couldn’t stop staring at me from across the room. Or at a coffee shop, where he asks “is this seat taken?” and we begin a deep conversation. Or I’m in my favorite book store, and he will compliment my impeccable taste in literature and fall in love with me.
it’s weird that they say hopeless romantics when it’s just the opposite. I’m so full of hope for romance, and I’m so happy that it exists. I just want a taste of it for my own.
Noun. a person or thing that one particularly dislikes
I have collected a lot of pictures of quotes and I think it’s cool to look back at them sometimes and see the place you were in. These are all from the last year, screenshotted and saved in my phone while I was going through things that I can’t even remember now.
If it’s not going to matter in five months, don’t give it 5 minutes. These are all from the little five minutes of some intense feeling that I can’t even recall today. This is my little collection of bête noires.
I like that we can look back and be like hey, u good in there buddy? It feels like reading letters from your past self and knowing you really are all the wiser now. I’m not a wise person yet but I am definitely better off now than I was a year ago, half a year ago, even a month ago. We keep learning and we keep growing and that’s super cool and really exciting! Who will I be in six months?? I don’t know but I’m ready to meet her.
How lucky I feel, to be in my body again. How lovely I feel not to have to pretend.
Hayley Williams (Watch Me While I Bloom)
I didn’t want to work out this morning but I pushed myself to do whatever my best is today and I feel soooo good. Like my mood has been so intensely good lately!
This weekend I’m staying home, I got a few books and I think I’m just going to read them all. I know I need to go to the store at some point and meal prep all my lunches for the week or I’ll end up ordering out and feeling like a slug and right now I feel like that speedy snail from the snail mail game. I don’t want this empowering, uplifting feeling to go away.
My local bookstore is back open so I bought one book from each of my favorite authors. If you have a book recommendation please leave it in the comments or send me a DM @prattlepeach on Instagram. I neglected to read as much as I should have been earlier this year so I’m making up for it now.
The books I bought are Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs, Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, and The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.
When I was in high school I read Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and I felt this itch to go explore the world. Not fall in love with a pedophile and live with a crooked therapist and his family, but at least go to New York and stand in the middle of Times Square.
My freshman year of high school I also emailed a fan letter to Christopher Moore and he replied and I have loved him and his work ever since. He writes how I think, or maybe I think this way because I’ve been reading his work since I was 14? I am all of books I’ve ever read, I think.
My favorite band is Panic! at the Disco, and the song Time to Dance is based off the book Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. I met him a couple times and he’s the coolest person ever, and his books are so intricate and I usually have to read them a couple times each to fully understand them.
I’m definitely happiest after I’ve read a book, done some HIIT, and had an iced americano. That’s an ideal day alone with myself.
I also want to go to the beach maybe, or just take a drive on PCH and listen to music. I feel open and excited, after so many weeks of not feeling good. I think there is potential in the air, and I’m going to try and live in this moment as much as possible.
I can’t name many things better than laying in warm, freshly washed sheets, but I can think of a few that come pretty close.
Here’s a list of some of my favorite things from the past four days:
I’ve had a really great Memorial Day weekend. My mind and heart feel very content. I spent a lot of quality time with my little brother, and I’m thankful that we have a good relationship.
I think this little break did a lot of good for me. I feel like I hit a reset button, and now I’m ready to jump back into work with more positivity than I’ve had in a while.
I cannot express how much I hate being on my period. For the last week I went Full Emo and I didn’t put 2 and 2 together to realize that it was because I was on my period. I thought the whole world was being mean to me and that I needed to just stick myself in a box and never talk to anyone ever again because the week was going so terribly and it turns out it was literally just good ‘ol hormones.
Today’s the first day where I’m not on my period and I went for a walk in my favorite park, learned how to tie dye some shirts, and finally put up some decorations on the walls of my apartment.
My mood is literally so much better. I wrote a post earlier this week where I said I’m always either 100% upset or 100% happy and that’s just not true. But I was on my period and I felt like everybody was against me.
This was the worst PMS-ing I’ve had in a very long time. It felt like I was a teenager again, I was so full of weird angst??? Yikes!!
I’m so happy it’s over, it literally feels like the clouds are parting and everything is good again.
Now that I can appreciate them again, here’s a BoredPanda list of period memes for your pleasure. #20 really, and I mean really, resonates with me for this past one.
Maybe he was actually that happy, or maybe his mama had taught him that you catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar.
Junot Díaz
Everything that’s happened during these last few weeks feels like it doesn’t count; like I’m in some kind of limbo.
I can’t be upset at anyone for their actions during this time because I know how stressful everything is.
Too much time with family members, losing a job or being furloughed, and a lack of outlets and normalcy is affecting all of us.
I don’t blame you for not being nice to me, and I promise you I won’t try to get even or get bitter. I believe that things will get better for you and me and if we’re meant to be in each others’ lives in the future then maybe we will be. And I’ll even leave that part up to you.
I’m taking a long, much needed break from social media. Well, like an 80% break. I’ll log in to Snapchat and Instagram only once a day and if I did something worth sharing then maybe I’ll share it but I’m not going to take random selfies and then critique how I look in every single one. You know how people call diets “lifestyle choices?” That’s what I’m doing with social media. Cutting out 80% of the fatty bad parts and useless carbs and only choosing the good protein-y parts.
For my job, a big part of what I do is monitor Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and NextDoor on a loop. Then I go home and jump on Snapchat and Instagram and do the same thing but for myself and it feels like lately I can’t do anything (at work and personally) without sharing it online.
I am a finalist for a national award in my field, and instead of sharing it with everyone I know I just want it to be my experience. I want to selfishly wrap myself around my achievements and not invite anyone to know about them. The amount of pressure I’ve felt about this award for the past two weeks has been more than anything I’ve ever felt before. Whether I win it or not, I want to live in the moment.
I’ll still write, and I will upload here (thank you to everyone who reads this, I didn’t imagine we would get so far!), but I just don’t want to send any more pictures of myself to people.
I don’t want anybody to see me, to be proud of me, to be nice to me, to be mean to me, except for me.
learning to: cook and take life’s challenges gracefully.
talking to: an old friend and a younger brother.
all while: wearing high heels.
The universe feels right. Yesterday I visited a local botanist (apothecary?) from whom I bought two spider plants and two fittonias. My cat likes to chew on plants so he was also very excited to invite them into our apartment.
I was thinking of naming them after goddesses that relate to nature – Hecate, Demeter, Persephone, Gaia.
Tonight I FaceTimed NYC herself and she gave me another cooking lesson, this was #3.
NYC always makes me feel like I can do something about my life. I miss getting matcha lattes with her and spending hours shopping and talking about anything and everything. She has the best taste in music, coffee, and in life.
I am going to learn how to cook real food from scratch and not just drink two cans of Diet Coke. I made a roasted tomato sauce and poured it over a bed of baked chicken and pasta made from brown rice and black beans. It was such a success.
Today I wore high heels all day and I felt good. The backs of my legs were sore from the fire hydrant & leg lift combos in yesterday’s workout, but it was the good kind of sore where you feel proud of your efforts.
I have a four day weekend, and I plan to stay up really late and watch movies and do things that make me feel good. It is an achievement when we do not allow the actions of others to take away our spark or our self confidence. It feels great to have it wrapped around me like a cloak. Delicious actually. I believe the universe keeps challenging me but there must be a good reason why so I won’t take a single thing for granted – good and bad.
My little brother is coming to stay the weekend, so it’ll be fun to have someone to go to parks and beaches with. I want to explore somewhere new with someone old. I am taking a holiday from doing things that are the latter with someone who is the former.
My posture must be so bad because I’m in a perpetual state of picking myself back up and dusting myself off.
I am so reckless in every aspect of my life, I don’t know how to focus on anything because I’m focusing on everything. I worked so hard at my job that in the process I forgot to decorate my apartment for a year.
I’m skeptical of the validity of zodiac signs because technically I’m a Libra, the sign of the scales, and yet I’m so awfully unbalanced at everything I do.
I love so hard or not at all. I either feel amazing and happy or worried and anxious. I will not trust you for a long while and then I will trust you so completely. I fall head over heels in love in an instant and I will daydream about someone for hours, until halfway through the day I’m really, really over it.
One half of the day I’m thinking of the delicate angle of his jaw, analyzing why his left middle finger doesn’t straighten all the way (probably a gym injury? we’ve known eachother for a week and I know he loves the gym, and I know him with my heart), thinking about the different colors in his eyes. The next half I’m thinking about how annoying it is to feel anything and how disappointing it is to know that I will most likely be disappointed because I build people up too highly in my mind and it never ends well so I have just let it go.
I crash and I burn and I get embarrassed so often. My posture must be so bad because I’m in a perpetual state of picking myself back up and dusting myself off.
I can’t read books in chapters, I have to read them in their entirety in one sitting or I won’t retain anything.
I was asked what kind of music I listen to recently and I didn’t know how to explain that at this point in time I am solely focused on listening to female rock artists and that even though I don’t love every song on Hayley Williams’ new solo album just give me time and I will grow to love each one.
I will do my makeup and hair, put on a nice dress, color coordinate it with a purse, and not do my dishes except for my favorite mug for a week.
I love movies because they’re perfect for two hours and they stay perfect (the same goes for music and books).
I think if I really made a good effort I could ruin every single relationship I have with people in two hours tops. Sometimes I’m tempted to, just to see what would happen.
I’m destructive to myself but I am also so protective of my heart. I have learned to take potential love slowly because in my mind it has already gone so fast. Sometimes I get the two confused and I end up doubting whether a connection really exists and I decide it’s safer to let it go, stay alone.
I want to take sexy pictures, flirt devilishly and not care, but I have to feel safe first. How can you be risky and safe at the same time?
I’m so either/or and never both but I feel like I’m always trying to be.
Prattle Peach 