People watching

Sometimes, in life, I get immense joy by simply watching the world around me. As I sit on the beach now I reflect on my relationships as I watch other ones around me (not creepily, I promise). 

It's enjoyable watching children run around without a care in the world. They try to catch the nearby seagulls, and build sandcastles, and scream when the waves hit their feet. I've always noticed that children are quite special. So innocent and intelligent. They truly see the world in a different way that most people don't. I hope I never lose that innocence. But their are always couples that walk the shore and share a blanket while laying under the sun's rays, and it makes me think about what girls love most in this world: to be loved unconditionally by a man who will be their knight in shining armor. 

Some things I know girls can live without, but secretly there are things that we really don't want to give up, but won't speak up so to all the men reading this, here are a few things you should strive to do and become:

1. Hold her hand in public. It's pretty simple and although you may not think it's a big deal or important any physical contact we have with you makes us feel like the only girl in the world. And continue to hold your wife's hand as you grow old together. There's nothing cuter than an older couple still holding hands. 

2. Send her flowers. Even if you love together, there's something so sweet and romantic about getting a bouquet of flowers from the man your head over heels for.  To us, they symbolize the fact that you think we're beautiful and that you're thinking about us.

3. Hold her. And I'm not just talking about when your watching a movie on the couch, no, I'm talking about in the most random time of the day; pull her into your arms or onto your lap and just hold her. It's another physical contact that makes us feel safe and important. 

4. Kiss her forehead. We love getting pecked on the cheek and on the lips, but the forehead is where it's at. I can't describe it for you but it's just beautiful. 

I guess part of me thinks that this list is what I want, but doesn't every girl just want someone that makes her happy? Believe me guys, us girls can live without these things, but you'd be considered something extraordinary if you did one of these:) 

Let the Healing begin

"Sometimes the healing is in the aching."

It really does hurt when you have to let someone go, and I think it just takes time to allow yourself to heal. Sometimes you have to start back over and remember the positive things about letting go..no matter how hard it is, you have to also let go of the negatives of losing this person. And in reality you never really lose that person; sometimes physically you do, but mentally you never have to rid that person from your mind. You can still remember all the memories you've shared and all the plans you had written down. Sometimes though, life throws you curveballs and we must either move out of the way or hit them into left field.

The tears I allowed to just stream down my face are now swept away. They help with the pain. I don't know if or when this pain and stinging will go away, but sometimes I don't think I want it to because it's still the only thing holding me to him. I'm hoping one day it'll come back to normal, maybe not completely the way things used to be, but back to the laughter and friendship. I think that's what I'm going to miss the most: having someone who completely cares for you and would just sit and hold you for as long as you needed. Sometimes you need to lose something in order to find what you have.

The Pretend Ones

Within the past few months I've become more aware of the people who I have surrounded myself with. I've become more aware of the fact that not all of them will help and support me through the rest of my life's journey, and that scares me. Not every person I talk to on a daily basis wants to make me better; some people just do it for show. That's makes me wonder: Why do it then? If you don't truly love and support your friends or family or coworkers or teammates, why pretend?

I've already learned once that you can't trust just anyone anymore. And that's why I evaluated every person I had surrounded myself with for the past 2 years, and I thought I was fine, but all it takes is one event, one moment in time to make you realize you were wrong. I don't think everyone around me cares about me as much as I originally thought, which is completely fine! In life not everyone will like you or trust you or help you; maybe this is just teaching me that fact before I leave this small world we call college. But being a psychology major I think about things a little deeper than usual and it makes me wonder why people pretend to be something they're not...

I think we're all victims of this. Pretending to be someone we truly aren't, but I don't think everyone does it on purpose. Sometimes certain situations arise where you have to act a different way or pretend for just a second you're something that you're really not. But then there are those people who do it on purpose. Those people are either people who are "people pleasers" and just want to be seen like a fabulous person by everyone or they just really don't care, but if you didn't care why would you still pretend? I have a few people that I have surrounded myself with that I know they are choosing to pretend because they can't get by without me; why? I have no idea, but for some reason I think they think that if they're on my "good side" then they're set! Well, that's not how it works in the real world, and I'm finally starting to see that. The sooner I can not care about what people think or say about me, the sooner I'll be happier with my life and the sooner I can surround myself with real people instead of pretend ones.

Those Moments

It's amazing how one single thing, one person, one moment in time can change your mood instantly. For the past two Mondays I've been lucky enough to have this experience and coincidentally it has been in the same spot with many of the same people and basically the same topic of discussion.

If you take one moment to look back on your life up to this moment, how many times are you able to say that one small thing or a single person changed your attitude within a second? As I sit here myself and reflect upon this idea I realize there have been many a time when this has happened to me, but the more I think about it the more I realize that many of these moments weren't as significant as the past two have been because I have made these moments that significant. For all the others I allowed the opportunity to slip past me and continue on through my life like many other things. What I now realize is that I have to build upon these moments because although they do happen to me I need to make them important in order to continue to feel as good as I do when it happens. Maybe then these moments will mean more if my mood is already as high as they normally make me feel.

Sometimes it's just about discovering something new or being reminded about something that you've known for quite some time; whatever it is, it really doesn't matter, what matters is whether or not you allow these moments to slip by. I think these moments are part of God's graces to us and it's up to us whether or not we will build upon them. He gives us the opportunities we ask for, and even when we don't ask, so why not continue to grow and build on what we're given?

LOVE

What exactly is love? And how are you supposed to know when you are in love or when you're being loved? I've never thought about this small word so much before but now I've just been thinking about these 4 letters more and more. I think you know you're in love when you just feel amazing. You feel like nothing can go wrong and nothing will go wrong. You just want to go ahead and scream it when you see that person next and hug them and kiss them because you know you're in LOVE! But what happens when you get that feeling more than once? When you meet someone else and get that exact feeling you just had...

Now it gets confusing and fuzzy and blurry, and then you're not so sure of what to do. You feel so weird, but it's that 4 letter word that still makes you feel so good. And that small simple feeling makes you feel like nothing is wrong. But are things really that wrong? After all it's just a feeling, but because it has been made out to be a big deal is why you freak out; it's why you panic for feeling it for two different people. Part of you is so excited and happy and feeling the best you could ever feel in your entire life; then your other half is screaming and tearing you apart inside because it has no idea what is going on or what you're going to do about it. And on the outside you have to be completely calm, completely fine about what is happening to you. Then you're alone and you can break down; you can break down over a four-letter word that has put you in this position--a position you would have never pictured yourself in.

Love. What a crazy, stupid, beautiful, insanely perfect word that can make you feel so much more than just the one emotion it's defined to evoke. It is possibly the only word that makes you feel happy then completely sad all at once and so quickly from one to the next. How crazy is it that one simple word can change your thoughts and feelings in an instant.

Nothing New

Once again I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Earlier this week I had to face some critical choices, some very upset people, and some very big lies. I chose to stand up for what was right and I figured out some very important things about myself and about the people around me:

1. I am tougher than I could have even imagined. I knew throughout the past 2 years that my skin has grown thicker and that I have become more confident in what I stand for, but I was really tested this week and I proved that I'm a force to be reckoned with.

2. This is nothing new, but once again I continued to get tricked and then shocked by people and their actions. More lies and more cover ups just different people.

I have finally realized that I truly don't care what people are going to say about me or what other people are going to do. If I can just do the right thing then the people who matter to me won't mind, and the people who mind don't matter to me. It's a beautiful thing to come across in your life and I hope everyone has that day where they can completely be free. I also found this week quite ironic because I'm learning about conformity in my social psychology class. This week was all about conformity and about how those people chose to conform to each other, and I'm very glad I came out of that my own person. Yes, everyone does conform in certain situations, but if everyone can be their own person in over half the situations they find themselves in throughout a day...we'd have a pretty amazing world to live in.

Changes

It sometimes amazes me how quickly things can change or how slowly they change over time. One day everything is the same, and the next it's not drastically different. You can't imagine your life changing in an instant, but just like that it does. The people, the places, the things, all change from one thing to the next or they just disappear all together and sometimes you don't get a chance to say goodbye...

I've said goodbye a few times within the past couple of months and it hasn't been easy. One moment I'm preparing myself to see these people and these places and the very next second, they're gone. Like they've vanished into thin air. You don't hear or see them, you don't know anything about what happened except for the fact that they once happened to you. It's like a dream. It all seems so real and intense, the feelings you can get are all incredible until you wake up, and realize it was just a dream. Was what happened to me an actual dream though? I mean it couldn't have been....it seemed so real for so long. I held on to every word as if I needed it to support my last breath until I realized it was only a dream.

Sometimes, in life, we come across people or places that are so good to be true that within a couple of years...we realize that they were too good to be true. Not everything can be true and real because what would life be like if everything were true and real? Most true and real things can become wrong and fake so quickly. Things you would never consider, but it's important to have those things happen in your life...because it always keeps you in check with reality. It reminds you of the realness and trueness of life, and forces you to remember that this world isn't perfect.