On Soul Mates (?)

So I’ve come to a topic where I am not really sure of what I think. And that topic. my friends, is the topic of soul mates.

You see there was a time that I would fit you on the existence of such whimsical creatures. I would vehemently battle any nay-sayer’s until I was blue in the face. this was all, obviously, because I thought I had found one. Thought I had won one. Thought I had seen one and touched one and fell in love with them. 

But now I wonder if we really do have that one person who is our “other half”. Or can we, more complexly, have many people that can fill that half… and it’s all a matter of bumping into the right one at the right time.

Looking back on my love’s lost I have often said: “I wish I had met you later in life”… and it’s normally true. I am a very serious girl for being only 20. And I’ve noticed that I haven’t met any guys, my age or older (or especially younger) that want any type of seriousness in their romantic life. So I’ve always been caught in this romantic trap where if you show too many feelings you get dropped but if you’re too much of a bitch you get dropped as well. Has anyone found the in between?

Or is there no such thing as a soul mate or other half at all? Is it just finding a person that loves you in a moment where they are ready to love and you are ready to love back? Can your life partner just be the average joe that comes along at the right moment to say “hey girl, you’re beautiful” and makes you feel like “hey man, those are some nice manners you got there”. (Forgive me for falling into some stereotypical and slightly sexist ideas about attraction but I digress…)

Can someone… anyone… shed some light on this confusion inside of my brain? 

I’d appreciate it…

On Confidence

When I was a little kid I had a shit ton of confidence. I was the little five year old that would run up to some random kid and be like “HEY! Let’s play dinosaurs, I’ll be the pterodactyl (insert pterodactyl noise here)” and then would continue to chase them around until we were best friends. I looked at everybody, waved at everybody and talked to everybody. I never thought “Oh gosh what is this person thinking about me” and I never thought “Oh shit I really need to stop wearing overalls”. I just did my thing and loved myself like my parents taught me to and loved life. When you’re little you have no worries, or at least I didn’t.

Then I got older, as we all do. With middle school came a lot more pressure than elementary school, but I kept my confidence. I remained friends with all my friends from middle school, made new friends from across town and my grades remained A’s and B’s. I did basketball, soccer, softball, band, newspaper, student council, you name it. I was confident in what I did. I wrote creative stories in language arts and always shared them with the class because I didn’t care if anyone didn’t like them. Because I did. I was simple. And weird. I wore boy’s Gap clothing until I was 12. I stupidly refused to wear a bra or mess around with make up. I beat up a boy after school for not sharing his football. None of that made me feel bad about myself. It actually made me feel good.

Until I started dating.

You know how dementors eat the souls of the living in the Harry Potter series? It was kind of like that. With every guy I crushed on a little bit more of my pure confidence was sucked out of me until I couldn’t breathe anymore.  To this day I forget to breathe if a boy I like comes anywhere near my face, but things are better.

There were a few dark years for me during the end of middle school. Years where I dramatically and immaturely believed that unhitching my skin from my body with a pair of scissors would make me feel better. More important. More loved. I forgot what confidence was when I started dating boys because they started disrespecting me. I felt unworthy. I felt shy.  I worried about everything and everyone except myself. 

I remember the first time my mother found out that I was cutting myself. I was in eighth grade. I’ve never seen so much hurt and pain and anguish on anyone’s face ever. It was like every scar on my wrists was a fresh wound on her’s. She cried that night. I cried that night. But the tears didn’t cure my disease.

Looking back I know I was stupid for trying to hurt myself. I don’t think I ever wanted to die, exactly but I also don’t think I had the confidence in myself to do it either. It just felt good. I know that seems crazy. Maybe if you’ve gone through it though you know what I am talking about. I liked the feeling basically because I hated the feeling of every day. Of guys hurting me. Of feeling helpless. Of my confidence diminishing to nothing.

High school brought a lot of changes for me. My confidence levels began to grow as I made the varsity soccer team as a freshman and was asked to be on the JV basketball team instead of the freshman team. I made new friends from the town over that really seemed to like me for who I was. I wasn’t dating anyone or messing around with anyone that wasn’t good for me. It was a pretty good year. A year of confidence I needed. I didn’t try and hurt myself. I didn’t feel like I was being attacked by hooded figures sucking about my soul through a bendy straw. I felt like I was finding me.

I started dating a way older boy my sophomore year.  He had graduated the year before. Nothing against him, he really wasn’t a still isn’t a bad guy. We’ve had our share of ups and downs. But now I am realizing it was honestly the worst thing I could have done to my recovering confidence. I found that I was only happy when I was making him happy. That I could only think that time was well spent when I spent it with him. I  got caught up in love songs and love stories and love letters and came to the conclusion that being loved was the only thing on this earth that mattered. And not loved by parents or friends, but by a guy. I felt so naively confident with him, but felt like shit when he was gone. There was a false sense of stability in my world as long as he was there.

And then, after two and a half years, he cheated on me.  

I was a senior in high school. We were planning a life together (looking back it makes me want to punch myself in the face). I was crushed. Not just because of the betrayal, but because of the feeling of emptiness I had inside. I thought I wasn’t good enough. My one source of confidence was gone.

I have based my life off of that statement ever since. Every time something bad happened to me or I didn’t make the team or the grade or the friend I would justify it with “I’m not good enough, of course I didn’t get what I want“. And I was content with that. I had never given confidence a thought. Well, for my friends, yes. I was constantly giving them advice to believe in themselves but I couldn’t apply the advice to myself because I was just so sure that I was never good enough for anything I wanted and never would be. 

I sold myself short in future relationships both friendly and romantic because I wasn’t good enough. I got average grades my first year of college because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t get the things I wanted most in life because I simply wasn’t good enough.

I got together again with this boy after his engagement broke off. And it turned out to be the best thing I ever did because I realized something.

I was good enough.

Not for him. I actually left him. I was good enough for me.

For the first time since I was in elementary school, I broke down the barrier of self-doubt and self-hate and dependence on men for a sense of worth. It was like I unleashed a patronus of bad-assery against the forces that were sucking out my confidence. And I was surprised with the results. 

I don’t know what it was exactly, besides possibly the fact of actually beginning to believe in myself and see all my hard work pay off. I had made it into a prestigious honor society, gotten a 4.0, landed an internship, aced an internship interview and received an offer the next day…. I just started focusing on the positives, really. 

I feel like that little 5 year old girl in the overalls running around hissing at people pretending to be a flying dinosaur. I feel like that 11 year old girl running around in basketball shorts and no bra beating up the boys. I feel like me again, for the first time in forever (No Frozen pun intended).

There is a Fall Out Boy song that goes:

“You are what you love, no who loves you”

I try and listen to that song every day, because it teaches something that everyone should know and live their life by. I have found so much happiness in the things I love and gotten rid of so much sadness by not giving a shit about who loves me. I feel like I can do anything now. I take each day one step at a time and look at my future with a smile, not a question of “who’s going to be loving me then?”

I am a Harry Potter lover, writer, reader, flute player, Dovakhin, worker, coffee lover, xbox player, intern, eater, sleeper, party-er, friend, family member and hobbit and no one can make me feel bad about any of that, because it’s what I love. 

If you go out and find what you love and stop worrying about who loves you, you will be able to do anything. Confidence is one of the greatness gifts God has blessed humans with and if you have it you should never give it up.

 

On friends

I’m slowly becoming aware to a phenomenon that has apparently been impacting the social lives of my peers since middle school. Did you know that the more friends you have the better a person that you are?

I was clueless to this correlation with apparent causation. I thought I had made it through high school just fine with the four people I could truly call my friends and all the rest that I tried to keep a positive demeanor with. Apparently I like failed Friends 101 or something along the way.

It became more apparent to me in college where freshman year everyone was grouping up and making cliques and I had just made 2 true friends.. Sure there were people that I hung out with and partied with often but I knew they weren’t my real friends.

I always thought that true friends were something hard to come by. Maybe it’s just me being stubborn, but I am still stuck in that backwards way of thinking. I always semmed to notice that the people with the most friends, in both high school and college were the people with the most unhappiness, unrest and just all around problems. 

So to you that believe quantity of friends makes up for quality, I’m here to say that I disagree with you. I disagree with your idea that the size of a group dictates the size of importance. I disagree with your ability to shape shift into whatever one friend wants you to be at a time even when it isn’t the real you. I disagree with your total ability to drop those who have stood by your side loyally in order to gain more friends.

I had this friend once. We’ll call her Jordan. She was a really good friend for a really long time. We played soccer together, watched Youtube videos together and spent our time just being kids and enjoying life. We didn’t care what anything thought of us, we just loved being each other’s friend. And then we entered high school and she started dating a guy on the football team and very slowly I found myself distanced from her because I wasn’t cool enough like the 25% of the grade that called themselves her “best friends”. 

You don’t have to impress real friends. Real friends are there for you in your happiness and darkest hours. Real friends are the ones that don’t care that you’re not invited to the kegger. Real friends are, in my opinion, hard to come by.

If you can find people who love you as a friend for who you are and enjoy being themselves with you and enjoying life for what it is and not how many people are in it, then I think you are the true winner. Time can never be wasted if you are spending it with the people who you care about most.

My best friends may not be cool to everyone but to me they are the world.

On hooking up

For a long time I was convinced that I didn’t fall for the guys I was hooking up with. I was introduced to the dating/hooking up scene pretty young (thank you, hormones) and I have never really looked back. While long term relationships were almost always my goal and I have been in a few (I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic) there were always those situations where they weren’t possible. And instead of being reasonable and intelligent and walking away from, shall I say, risky situations, I dove headfirst into them because I was like “yeah, fuck it, this is what I want”.

I’m only 20. But looking back on it, that’s not what I want at all. There are memories I have of men that I knew (or hardly knew) and I just want to hit myself in the face repeatedly while screaming “Why you idiot, why?!” You see I, like so many other people, found this new “hook-up” culture exciting. Sometimes when we find ourselves in long-term relationships we often become bored with one another and start focusing on everyone and everything else which leads to cheating or just nasty break-ups and then a wild few weeks/months of just randomly hooking up with people.

Now I’m not saying this is everyone. One of my roommates is in fact a virgin. One of my other roommates has been in a long term relationship since she was a freshman in high school.But I do know there are a lot of people who act like this, myself included. It can be hard, especially in college, to settle down and realize what you are doing with your body and more importantly, your mind and soul.

I tried to convince myself that I was not interested romantically in any of the guys I hooked up with. I pretended that I was using them and it wasn’t the other way around. But there would always be that point in the relationship where I found myself angry that they weren’t texting me back or mad that they ditched me. And they would just say “we’re just hooking up, chill”.

Why the fuck is there just hooking up? What asshole came up with that idea? It doesn’t matter what are reasons are, it always boils down to one person feeling genuine affection for the other and the other person feeling completely creeped out (I’ve been in both positions). So why do we do this? What part of the human brain convinces the body that giving itself away for just another body in return is alright? Sex has become sex, and nothing more. There is no more making love, or at least it is very rare. I have only made love with one person in my entire life. And trust me, you know the difference. You feel the difference. Because you feel like there is something between you besides just skin. You honestly feel love.

Not only is the value of the sex skewed, so is the value of the people involved. It’s quite unfair, actually. Girls get this silly and unjust representation of a whore or easy while men are considered heroes. Many people will try and fight me on this, but its true and the stereotype comes from both genders. I’ve tried to brag about one of the guys that I hooked up with and one of my friends at the time was like “that isn’t something to be proud of”. It’s just not right. There’s also the problem of the hook-ups that are never really clarified as hook-ups. You know the ones where you have deep, stimulating conversations with someone for weeks and really start to like them as a person and then BAM one thing leads to another and you’re in bed and their not having those conversations with you anymore. Those are the absolute worst.

Hooking up is stupid. No offense to anyone that does it (heck, I’m insulting myself). If you can hook up with a bunch of people and never feel affection for any of them or never have any of them feel affection for you then good for you. You’re inhuman. Teach me your ways. But if it’s possible and you’ve done it please let me know.

Most people my age are content with partying and doing all kinds of drugs and hooking up and not giving a fuck during their twenties but that’s not what I envision the best years of my life being. Sure, I love to party, but I would really love to party with someone that truly cares about me. Someone who won’t be mad we have to leave the bar because I threw up on the bartender. Somebody who will take a shower with me and listen to me ramble on about my dream for hours and tuck me in and then let me make them breakfast the next morning.

I wanna be done with hooking up. I wanna find love.

Harry Potter

My mother started reading Harry Potter to me when I was in second grade. It lasted approximately 10 minutes before she put the book down and vowed to return it to the library the next day. Her reasoning? She couldn’t believe there was a talking cat. But I was quite the  inquisitive young girl and decided to sneak up past my bedtime, find the book and continue reading. From that moment on I became one of the world’s biggest Potterheads and lover of all things harry potter.

I have read all the books (the last 3 the day they came out) multiple times, know just about every line to every movie (and tweet them incessantly as they are said), have been to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios, been to the traveling exposition when it was in NYC, seen both of Daniel Radcliffe’s Broadway plays, have a Pottermore Account, did the Harry Potter Puppet Pals “Mysterious Ticking noise” as my senior year soccer camp skit, sung “Harry Potter in 99 Seconds” for my high school’s talent show (but unfortunately was beat out for third place by a DJ), purchased multiple wands (my favorite is Ginny’s), and even got a harry potter tattoo. I mean, I really love Harry Potter.

Over the years I have gotten a lot of shit for this passion of mine. Many of my peers in high school made fun of me for dressing up in a cloak and glasses for the premieres of the movies and knowing every line to all the movies. I was often the only one that noticed the differences between the books and the movies and was made fun of for highlighting them. I remember one time senior year, after I had done the talent show, when a girl in the grade younger than me looked at me and said “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”. And you know what I told her? I said “Honestly I don’t”.

There is nothing better than Harry Potter. Harry Potter is more than a silly series about something that could never happen. It is an escape for everyone who needs one. I grew up with these stories. As Harry aged so did I, and as the stories began to get darker and darker my understanding of myself became richer and fuller. Harry wasn’t just a character in a book, as many other Potterheads will understand. He was a role model. He was a guide. He was the perfect example of everything a young adult should want to be. He gave up his life for his friends and more importantly the world and he always believed that those he loved and lost were with him in spirit. He went through bullying, abuse and torture and still was able to do good. He should be an inspiration to us all, really. The book wasn’t even a book. It was something more than that. It was a universe that we all wanted to exist. It was home.

The most shit I get for liking Harry Potter is when someone sees my tattoo. It is a Deathly Hallows tattoo and it rests on the center of my chest just between my breasts [I’ll include a pic at the end of this post]. It’s not a very large tattoo, but it represents the most important part of who I am. For those of you muggles that are not familiar with the story of the Deathly Hallows and the Three Brothers, a wizarding fairy tale, I will quickly fill you in (if you know it feel free to skip):

Basically there were three wizarding brothers who came to a very full and dangerous river that they knew they could not cross safely. So, being wizards, they took out their wands and crafted a bridge and basically cheated death because travelers would normally drown in the river. So once they made it across death appeared and pretended to praise the three brothers for tricking him and offered them each a gift of whatever they wanted, knowing their desires would probably put them in an early grave. The eldest brother asked for the most powerful wand and so death gave him the elder wand. The second brother asked for a way to have his late fiance returned to him from the grave so death gave him a Resurrection stone. The third brother, who was much more humble than the rest, simply asked for a way to be hidden from death until he was ready. Death reluctantly gave him his own cloak of invisibility. As their lives go on, the three gifts, or the Deathly Hallows, impact their lives very greatly. The first brother kills a powerful wizard he once had a quarrel with but by doing this gives away the power of his wand. He is killed in his sleep that night by someone who steals the wand. The second brother gets his fiance back but she does not belong in this world and so he kills himself. Death has the two brothers quickly but for a long time he cannot find the third. The third brother gets married, has a child and passes the cloak along to him when he is ready. He meets death as an old friend and the story is over.

The story of the Deathly Hallows has a moral message that many people miss when reading and especially while watching Harry Potter. If you want power and abilities beyond human comprehension, then you will be consumed by them. Like Lord Voldemort or even Dumbledore who’s sister died as a result for his quest for power. But, if you are humble and want peace, like Harry, you will be happy and live a fulfilling life. I got this tattoo for that reason as well as the fact that I want to be like Harry. I have always lived in a sacrificial way towards my friends. I would do anything for them, even die for them as Harry did.

Harry Potter isn’t just a story about wizards and dragons, it’s a story about life. And it’s a mold that I want my life to fit in. My tattoo is a reminder of this manner in which I want to live in case I ever get caught up in something that is not me or behave like a Slytherin. Harry Potter will forever be my inspiration and my home. As Albus Dumbledore says: “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light”

 

My tattoo 🙂

 

On tattoos

Getting my tattoo was probably one of the best decisions of my life. Sure, it was a little less than a year ago but there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t look down on my chest and smile at the ink that rests on my skin. The little symbol is a constant reminder to me of how I want to live my life and what is truly important in life. It makes me happy. That should be what matters, right?

Apparently I have been wrong in that assumption. I’ve gotten a lot of offensive and annoying questions after showing people the newest piece of my identity that I love so very much. Some of the people that I thought were my friends asked questions like “What does it mean?” “Why did you get it?” “How much did it cost?” “What is it going to look like when you’re old?” “There? Why did you get it there?”. The funny thing is, the answers to none of those questions even matter. Why didn’t anyone ask me if I LOVED it?

If I love my tattoo that is ALL THAT MATTERS. People who get tattoos do not get them for their friends or their co-workers or the public: they get them for themselves! Tattoos make the wearer happy. They make them stronger. They make them feel more beautiful and more like themselves. Their permanency is a gift, not a hindrance. It’s forever beauty, a constant reminder, an ever-lasting truth.

That is why people get tattoos. If you do not like tattoos or a certain tattoo on a certain person, there is nothing wrong with that. There is, however, something very wrong with you spreading negative energy to someone who likes the design and the meaning so much that they got it engraved in their skin for eternity. I wish people could focus more on being positive towards others and critical of themselves.

The winds are changing, though. More and more often now I am seeing people proudly boasting their tattoos, most of which are truly beautiful piece of art. My hope is that one day no one asks “What does it mean?” and instead simply thinks “That is a beautiful piece of you”.

 

On normalcy

When you’re a kid you are the most you you’ll ever be. You dress how you want, play with who you want, watch what TV show you want, eat what you want. You get to do the things that you most want to do. You get to pursue the passions that are most appealing to you. And yet somehow, in the process of growing up, you move away from those things that you enjoy doing so much. Yes, I know that as we grow we take on more responsibilities like school work, chores, relationship maintenance… and therefore there is less time to do what we want. Yet responsibility isn’t the tide that’s carrying you away.

Stereotypes are something that we like to pretend don’t exist anymore. The extreme representations of jocks, preps, weirdos, nerds and trouble makers that we saw in the Breakfast Club seem comical to us now. I went to high school with kids who deny there were stereotypes at all. Maybe it’s because they have all been swept away from what they like and who like love and what they are and mixed together into one, large “normal”.

Normalcy is important to some people. Wearing the same clothes as everyone else is seen as normal. Buying and listening to the same music as everyone else is normal. Starving yourself or taking supplements to be the same size as everyone is normal. Hanging out with all the other “normals” is normal.

Unfortunately rarely a person seems to notice that “normal” is not normal.

If we were all meant to be the same, we would all have the exact same DNA. We would have the same musical, entertainment, and social preferences. And if you’ve made it this far in your life without realizing the impossibility of that “normal” than I feel very sorry about you.

Being yourself can be one of the hardest yet most rewarding things you will ever do in your life. Getting back to that childlike ability to enjoy the things you truly enjoy, without caring what anyone else thinks, is a true beauty in life. It comes with costs. You may be branded weird. You may have less friends. But you are rewarded with a truth that many others can’t find.

When I was in high school I had a hard time accepting this truth .I wanted to be liked by the other girls, lusted after by the boys, invited to all the big parties. But as a grew from a freshman to a senior I realized those wants were all wrong, for me at least. I realized that watching the Harry Potter movies so many times that I memorized all the words was more fun to me than watching any “normal” movie. I understood that hanging out with my best friend, even though she was branded weird for liking different people, bands and fashions was more important than a thousand fake friends.I learned that playing in the band was more fulfilling than partying all the time.

In this day and age, being yourself is a sacrifice. While I hope that one day it becomes normal, it still isn’t. But I urge you to find the things you love and stick with them. Don’t take the easy road and follow everyone else. Fight the current til you make it ashore. Because if you do, you’ll realize the things you sacrificed weren’t sacrifices at all but small victories in the battle for you.

Has anyone ever really wanted to be referred to as normal?

I hope not.