The Reason

A Facebook friend posted this yesterday and I saw it and was just like, holy crap, that's me. I don't feel like its talked about a lot why people choose not to commit suicide. Most of the time people talk about why people DID commit suicide and a lot of the time, that talk is very judgmental. I know I struggle when I see the negative comments directed at that person, usually talking about how selfish they are, questioning why they didn't ask for help, what a waste of a life their decision was, etc. I don't generally see many people trying to understand. So seeing a shout out like that, was kind of awesome.

I've been suicidal multiple times through my life, even as recently as two years ago. No, I have never actually attempted, though I have had plans in place. The reason I never went through with it, is because I knew how much my death would hurt my parents and, I assumed, my friends. See, I'm really bad at friendships. I have this tendency to assume that the other person or persons don't actually like me or will start to dislike me or something like that so I automatically hold back. I make my assumption into a reality, I guess. I've had friendships where I feel like I give 110%, always trying to be there, always trying to be a reliable friend, and had those friendships crash and burn. So, I'm reluctant to fully put myself out there, but there are times when I get so desperate for that feeling of friendship that I push a little too hard. See, I don't think I'm a particularly likable person. I'm stubborn, opinionated, and honestly, just a tad judgmental, okay, a lot judgmental. I tend to make snap judgments about people and its hard to change that impression once its made. Frankly, I'm a bitch. I will totally own that. But over the years I've made a few friendships that have lasted and while those friends may not have always known what to do with me when I was going through one of my super depressed phases, they were there.

Mirror, Mirror

I've been in Denver for almost a year now. I go to school full time, I work two jobs, and I'm currently in the middle of moving to a new place. I've done well for the last year. I've gotten good grades, I've done well at my jobs, but as the classes have gotten harder, my stress level has gone up and now with moving adding to an already difficult quarter, the cracks are starting to show. For the first time, I'm not doing well in a few of my classes. I'm struggling with finding enough time to study. I'm struggling with feeling exhausted all the time. I go seven days a week. The snow day we had last Wednesday was the first full day I'd had off in a few months. The cracks are showing and I don't know how to fix them. I live in a stupidly expensive city. I can't afford to quit one of my jobs. I'm trying to graduate by next summer so I don't incur a ridiculous amount of debt and so I can actually start working. I mean, I'm 28. Most of my friends and fellow students around the same age have at least one associates degree and most have a bachelors. Me? I'm at my fourth college trying to get the associates degree I failed to get two years ago.

Future, What Future?

What do you do when you begin to wonder if you're truly cut out for the career path you've started down? What do you do when you begin to question everything that you've been striving for? It seemed so clear initially, everything made sense. But as time passes, it becomes less and less clear. I went for the more practical career, the one that was respectable and made sense. I've always loved animals, always been good with them. But the science of it all makes my head spin, makes it hard to enjoy what I'm doing. So I start to wonder, is it for me. And then I come back to, god, what a failure I would be again if I gave it up with just two semesters to go. But then, what does it say when I dread going back and trying to wrap my mind around all these complex procedures. I love animals, but is that enough? And more and more, I'm thinking not. I find the science interesting, fascinating even, but the understanding of it often eludes me.

The Past Is The Past Is The Past

Over the past couple of days, I've been slowly sorting through the innumerable pictures I have on my Facebook account. When I was younger, I had a tendency of uploading every picture I took so I found myself going through many many albums with way too many pictures, some of them not even good pictures. It was supposed to be a relatively quick job. You know, download the few albums that I wanted from birthdays and trips and junk most of the rest. What I wasn't expecting was the influx of memories and to an extent emotions that the process has unleashed. Because the farther back I go, the more comments and likes that I've found, comments from people that I don't even talk to or see anymore. It's a strange feeling to see how many friends I used to have that I laughed with, shared inside jokes with, and just hung out with. I find it kind of ironic thinking of all the people who think homeschool kids are unsocial. I had way more of a social life back then than I do now.

A Year in Review: 2016

Another year has come and gone. It's been a year of a lot of highs and some major lows. I began the year by going back to school with an actual purpose in mind. I've been in college since 2009, jumping from major to major and, to an extent, college to college. But nothing I went for seemed to click. Until I decided that since I really, really do not like people, I should go for the career I wanted as a child: a veterinarian. I decided to start out less ambitious though and I enrolled at CNM for the spring semester to start taking the classes I needed to get into the CNM Veterinary Technology program.

While the semester wasn't easy with the complications of chemistry, the endless paper writing for English, and the craziness
of theatre appreciation, I found myself enjoying being back in college for the first time ever. I found myself making friends and getting along with various classmates, but most importantly, I found myself actually succeeding in college the way I never had before. I ended the semester with all A's and made the Dean's List.

But the biggest success of the semester was taking the test required to get into the Vet Tech program. I had constantly heard how difficult the test was supposed to be and was more than a little apprehensive going to take it. I figured that I would take it once and get a feel for it and what questions would be asked so I could study and actually pass it the second time. To my complete and total disbelief, I passed it the first time with fairly good scores. I was over the moon. All I had to do was pass my summer classes and I was in!

Life Is Good

It's been going on two months since I last blogged I'm ashamed to say.  I could say that finals and all really got to me, but honestly it's more been the fact that I haven't been in the mood to just sit down and type.  But I have been pretty busy so that has definitely contributed to the lack of updates of any kind.  In any case, I successfully completed my first semester back at college with all A's which was super exciting.  I honestly don't think I've ever had that good of a semester at college ever.

In addition to successfully passing all my classes, I also passed the test I needed to get into the Veterinary Tech program on my first try.  That was a huge shocker for me.  I had to get a minimum score in four different

areas (Reading, Math, Science, and English) in addition to also getting a minimum comprehensive score of 60%.  The test cost ~$40 to take each time so I really wanted to pass it in two goes at the most.  I knew I could nail the Reading and English sections because those have always been super easy for me, but the math and especially the science would be more challenging.  Going in and taking the test, I was sure that I had failed it.  The science section turned out to be significantly harder than I had expected so I was sure that I hadn't made the minimum score I needed to pass.  But when I finished, lo and behold, I had passed with a 78.7% comprehensive score.  I will fully admit that I cried when I got back out to my car, I was so happy.  I also managed to freak my mom out accidentally when I called her as soon as I got back to my car and I was still crying a bit when she picked up.  She, of course, immediately thought something was wrong.  Whoops!

Awake and Alive

I realize that I really haven't posted anything since last September other than my one post recently so I thought I would give a bit of an update on what's been going on since then since life has changed quite a lot, thankfully for the better.  So back in September I was dealing with a lot of personal issues.  I was severely depressed, even suicidal.  I was cutting again and just generally in a very dark place.  I had hoped to return to school during the fall semester but didn't get everything done in time so unfortunately was unable to take any classes.  I ended up just working.  Honestly, it's a bit of a blur, but I was not doing well during that time.  I tried going to counseling which didn't end up working out but towards the end of December I finally got myself together enough to apply to CNM.  I was accepted and started looking at classes.

It was at this point that for whatever reason I kind of stepped out of the dark zone I'd been in.  Maybe it was just the fact that I was actually making steps towards doing something more with my life, I'm not sure, but I enrolled in six classes which turned out to be a bit ambitious.  Most importantly though, I finally settled on a major.  I've been jumping around with my major since I first went to college in 2009.  I wanted to do photojournalism, then wildlife biology, theatre, and vocal performance, to name a few.  When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a vet because I loved animals so much.  Well, I guess some childhood dreams aren't totally crazy because I'm working my way towards a degree as a veterinary technologist with the goal of graduating in two years.  From there I'd like to hope that I'll go on to pursue my doctorate in veterinary medicine but as that will require going out of state, that's up in the air.  My long term goal is to be able to focus on horses/farm animals.  For now though I'm focusing on just getting the courses done that are required to just get into the vet tech program.

Just Be Held

So this is going to be a brutally honest post about myself, so word to the wise that it's going to be a bit dark and depressing and weird because that's basically my life.  So here goes.

So lately I've been struggling with a lot of stuff with life and just personally with my depression.  I've been feeling very stuck in life, not knowing where I'm going and just feeling like I'm really going nowhere and feeling very hopeless.  It's gotten to the point where I started cutting again a couple weeks ago and actually did some research on suicide methods.  I always end up realizing that I'm too much of a coward to actually go through with it which in some ways makes me more depressed.  So nobody panic, I'm not going to go kill myself or anything, so no worries.  Basically though I've felt like my life is just going to pieces.

My mom, being the intuitive mother that she is, realized that I've been struggling lately and sent me a song by Casting Crowns that she thought would be good for me.  Now here's where things start getting serious.  I don't listen to much Christian music anymore, mainly because I don't feel like I'm really a Christian anymore.  I've never figured that I was a particularly strong Christian.  I always struggled with my faith even when I was younger and was active in church and youth group and about as much of a church kid/teen as is possible.  I struggled with trusting in someone other than myself.  I was bullied and teased a lot when I was younger and I became the strong, tough kid who became a bit of a bully herself.  I learned to swear, to make myself more physically imposing so people would leave me alone, and when someone teased or made fun of me, I responded right back.  I stopped letting people in.  I was a weird kid and was never really accepted by other kids anyway.  At public school I had friends who would suddenly decide they didn't want to be friends with me because the cool kids didn't like me or the cool kids would pretend to accept me into their group and then ditch me.  I learned early on not to trust people.  At church I was also teased and judged and generally left out which could be part of the reason I have so much trouble fitting into a church, because I'm thinking everyone there is judging me and I'm this outsider and don't belong.  So that's the long explanation of why I figure I have so much trouble with trusting in God or anyone else and leaning on Him with things in life, big and small.  I feel like I have to fix myself by myself.  "Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know."  Yeah, I totally get Elsa.

A Pause, Not A Stop

I've been considering getting a tattoo for quite some time, however, I've hesitated because of the cost  and also because a tattoo is so permanent.  I didn't want to get something in a spur of the moment decision that I would regret later.  If I was to get a tattoo, it would be something that had a lot of meaning to me.  There was also the issue of where I would get it since I didn't want it to affect my ability to get or retain a job in the future.  I also knew that I wanted something small.  While I admire the incredible artistry and skill involved in some of the massive tattoos that cover a person's entire back or chest or arm, I personally prefer something much smaller.

I hadn't given it much thought in a good while until today when a young lady I know shared a link on her Facebook page about the 3rd Annual Semicolon Tattoo Project.  I'd heard of the growing popularity of the semicolon tattoos but hadn't really looked into it all that much.  Curious, I finally decided to check it out.  Suffice it to say that I am about 99% sure I have found my first and possibly only tattoo.

For those of you who don't know, the point of Project Semicolon is to "start a conversation that can't be stopped about mental illness, suicide, depression, addiction and self-injury."  A semicolon is a pause, not a stop, a sentence the author could have ended, but chose not to.  As the founder of Project Semicolon stated, "The idea behind the tattoo is to say that your story isn't over yet.  That you are the author of your story and you are choosing to continue."  As someone who has had and still does have major struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and addiction (to food, not drugs or anything like that!), I can't imagine another tattoo that would so perfectly fit me or have so much meaning and depth.

My first thought was to have the tattoo behind my ear where it would be fairly unnoticeable and easy to hide.  But the more I thought about it and saw pictures other people had posted, I decided that if I do it, I'll get it on my wrist.  My thought was that, 1) I'll actually be able to see it to remind me what it stands for, and 2) weird as it might sound, it just seems an appropriate place considering the scars on my wrists.  So while I haven't decided 100%, I have decided that even if I don't get the permanent tattoo, I will get a temporary tattoo.  I think the movement behind this tattoo is amazing and absolutely awesome.  Creating awareness for certain things can be really difficult, but I hope this one continues to gain more followers and reach even more people.  I don't think I'll ever look at a semicolon the same way again!

Never Take Friendship Personal

So I realize it's been quite some time since I've gotten on here.  My life has simply not been interesting enough to write about (I work at a dry cleaners.  Can you say boring?) and I haven't had any profound thoughts to talk about either.  So I ended up just letting things slide.  As I have often said in the past, we'll see if I can't do better.  Don't hold your breath though, you might be holding it a very long time!

So life really has been fairly boring.  I work mornings, go home, and stay home.  I go out with a select group of friends once or twice a week, but that is literally the extent of my social life.  I'm actually going to see a Christian romance film that's showing for one night only on Monday night and I'm actually kinda terrified because 1) I won't really know anyone there and I don't know the people I do know who are going very well, and 2) it's a romance which is the kind of movie I always avoid because they depress me.  Aaaaah!  Freaking out in 4...3...2...1...days. We'll see how it goes.

In any case, I find my lack of a social life to be rather ironically amusing because I was so much more social when I was younger and I always figured I would have even more of a social life as I got older.  Nope!  How things change.  I think that point has really hit home recently with checking out my Timehop the last couple of weeks and seeing all the friends I used to have and all the people who liked and commented on my various social media posts in years past.  It's just made me realize how much, as I've gotten older, I've fallen out of touch with those people and failed to really make any other lasting friendships.

Looking at Life

This past weekend my family went on our first family vacation in about two years.  For me it was the first time I've really been out of Albuquerque and the general surrounding area in that same amount of time.  I know I've mentioned it before, but I am so not a city girl.  We went up to northern New Mexico, kind of north and west of Taos up into Carson National Forest.  Let me tell you, it is gorgeous up there!  So much cooler and greener.  I did not want to leave at all.  We were gone Thursday through Sunday and it was nice to have two full days to just relax.  Friday was my parents' 26th wedding anniversary so we enjoyed celebrating that with a steak linner (you know, too late for lunch but too early for dinner: linner).  Busted out the wine and everything.  It rained most of that day so we pretty just lounged around, napped a bit and played some games.  Saturday was clearer so we went for a 2 mile hike which was fun and then my dad and I went for a drive while mom stayed back and read.  Dad and I saw some really pretty country and just enjoyed getting to explore.  Sunday I got up early to make the 4 and a 1/2 hour drive back to Albuquerque so I could continue filming with a friend who's making a pretty epic movie.  So that made a fun, but exhausting day.   One of the things I really enjoyed on our camping trip was getting back into some photography.  I really haven't used my camera much since my family moved back into Albuquerque so it was a fun opportunity.  There were some really pretty flowers we saw on our hike and with the rain we were getting most of the plants were covered in drops of water, something I've always wanted to photograph so I took advantage of that.

Thank You, God

Everyone has those days, those days when nothing seems to go right, where all those carefully laid plans go up in dust, when it seems like everything is actively working against you.  On days like that my reaction is generally just to get annoyed or, on occasion, downright angry.  I don't tend to think about why those things happened, I just know that they happened and it ruined my day or a portion of my day and I am not happy about it one bit.

Chivalry Is Not Dead

Years ago, before my family moved and when I was still going to church on a regular basis, I had several guy friends that I would hang out with on a regular basis with some of my other friends.  Whether we were at church or out somewhere, they would always insist on holding the doors open for the girls.  It was one of those simple little things that I just got kind of used to.  A good guy will hold open the door for the girls to go in first.  That was probably at least three years ago.  Since then I've fallen out of contact with most of them.  The only guy I see on a regular basis is my best friend who's like a younger brother to me and the group of friends that we hang out with doesn't generally actually go out anywhere, though if we do, he grabs the door for us young women.  Being the only guy in our little group, he has to act the gentleman which he does perfectly.  But aside from him, the only guys I see are at work and unless you're some really gorgeous girl or an older woman, you get the doors slammed in your face.

Sometimes Being Practical Is No Fun

Do you ever have those moments when you have a choice between two things you want where one is fun but practical and the other is just fun?  Yeah, me too.  I hate decisions like that, but its a part of growing up, something else I'm not a huge fan of.  Can I please just go back to being a little girl playing in the mud not worried about how I looked or what I was going to do with my life?  Nope, stuck being an adult.  Ah, well.  In any case, I recently struggled with one of those choices.  Since its unlikely that I'm going to be able to take any classes at CNM this semester, my parents mentioned that I should check and see if UNM Continuing Education had any cooking classes I could take in the meantime.  So I went and checked and sure enough they had quite a few one night cooking classes.  There were also a lot of other classes with arts and crafts, music, writing, exercise, etc.  As I set about exploring the various classes I could take, the music ones caught my eye.  One of them was for the University Chorus, a choir that you didn't have to audition for that was going to be working towards a performance of a The Defiant Requiem, part of Verdi's Requiem, a beautiful piece of music.  I immediately decided I wanted to take this class not just because of the piece being sung, but because it culminated in a performance in Popejoy Hall.

British TV Shows In Quotes

Sometimes I wonder, as I'm sobbing over the death of yet another character in one of the British tv shows I watch, if this is healthy.  Is it good for me to watch shows that draw me in so easily, that captivate me, get me attached to the characters to the point where when they're in pain I hurt for them or if they die I'm left crying my eyes out?  And yet that's what makes them so fantastic, because they can do that.  Because they make you feel something, look at the world in a different light.  Because some of the things the characters say make you really think, make you look at your life differently.  They let you dream, let you believe even a little bit that maybe those amazing things you see episode after episode could be real.  There's something special about that.

A Simple Life

 

A lot of the time when people hear that I want to make a living as an actress, they automatically figure I want that life for the fame and fortune.  They think I want all the fancy dresses, the parties, the awards, the big houses, etc.  The funny thing is, that's not why I want it all.  Dresses?  Give me a pair of jean and a t-shirt any day.  I'm not a big fan of dressing up.  Parties?  If you've seen me at a party, I'm generally the person standing awkwardly in the corner feeling very uncomfortable and out of place.  Awards?  Sure they're great, but they're not needed.  Houses?  Why on earth would I need or want more than one?  And most people who know me pretty well, know that I don't like really big houses, I like something much simpler.

The only reason I want to work as an actress is because its what I love and for the most part, I don't think I'm terrible at it.  Sure I still have a lot to learn, but I think I'm at least decent.  And if I am terrible at it, well, I can only get better.  But sometimes I wonder if I could handle it all, all the stress and craziness of that kind of life.  Yes, I would be doing something I loved but would all the sacrifices I would have to make for it be worth it?  And the other aspect that I think about from time to time is that I would like to get married eventually.  According to some, at 22 I'm already starting to get old which I personally think is ridiculous.  But I sometimes wonder, in that industry is it possible to find someone to marry who isn't going to cheat on me with his co-star or decide he wants a divorce?  Hollywood marriages notoriously end in divorce with very few lasting for any real length of time.

Out With the Old, In With the New

Recently, I've been struggling with a lot of stuff.  Some pretty major emotional ups and downs and changes.  And finally, finally, today, I kind of just thought through things and decided that I really needed to get out of this rut I've been digging myself into for years.  I needed to turn around and give everything to God and let Him handle it.  I also realized that part of the reason I was have such serious emotional issues was because of my music.  I'm a Christian, yes, but that doesn't mean that I only listen to Christian music.  I've come to realize that little by little I have removed the majority of my Christian music from my MP3 player to make room for newer non-Christian music I had either heard or found.  As I thought about it today, I realized that at least 3/4 of my music was not Christian, and about 1/2 was not edifying or really good in any way.  I realized that I had started to subtly move towards some edgier music.  Nothing explicit, maybe a curse word here or there or a mild suggestion, but it was affecting me, and not in a good way.