Source: fab.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I drive in to the night, wish for b l a c k in the rearview mirror
 and b l a c k up ahead in all directions, and just my two headlights.

I am surprised most days to have lived to be this age. I never thought that I would make it. And every year it keeps being more of a surprise. And somehow the Hope doesn't die.

I have been sleeping on air mattresses for 11 days. It feels like camping. Or, sometimes the one mattress on top of the other shifts askew, and I lay there rocking, like I am on a small vessel, hoping I do not wake up rocked into the water during the night. The router for the internet blinks above my head, so sometimes it is more of a submarine, silently submerged into sleepy waters. And in here, underwater, I actually dream that you come to get me. That I would be the one you would open up the door and say Here I am.
But I also think, how did I live to be this age, and sleeping on an air mattress. And how can I think I'd be a person that you would burst down the door for.

Some things I realized this morning:

-The only place open on campus to sell me a water bottle at 6:57 a.m. is the bowling alley
-I love Crossfit more than I love sleep
-The girl that leaves my alcove in the locker room right before I get back from Crossfit (smelling like a warthog before my shower), well, she smells like vanilla and candy, and I am so thankful for her.

Roxanne: And ever since I saw that show, I've been an animal lover.
Me: Do you have a dog?
Roxanne: Yes, but I don't like it or play with it that much. It's kind of annoying.

My grandpa has a really hard time hearing, and we all speak loudly to him, which feels kind of silly, if you imagine outsiders watching you yell every little thing.


But yelling every little thing is an act of love.

And I think, looking at my parents, who are just barely greeting their early fifties, It is really hard to imagine you going slowly deaf, but I love you so much that someday I will be yelling every little thing to you, if need be.


And love is a funny thing. It hides underneath the floorboards so that at the moments you feel like you have almost nothing in common with the people you are related to, you take a step and hear it creaking beneath your foot.

Love is exhausting.

"Well, they told me I have Chronic Fatigue, but I don't necessarily believe that that is a real thing. But I have been tired lately....actually I have been really tired (for a few years). Working and going to school, and now working two jobs. But falling asleep at a party does not necessarily mean that I have Chronic Fatigue."
-Hannah. Who is darling because she is usually trying to convince herself of something as she tells you a story.

"I am like them...You ought to see...You don't know me." She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at last to see him there.

"I've got a streak of what you'd call 

cheapness.

I don't know where I get it but its--oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I'm this

because of this

or that because of that."

The Beautiful and the Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald

My first day of school lived up to everything I was hoping it would be.

Maybe the key to staying happy after graduation is just getting out of the house.
Crossfit was super hard. I thought the whole time it was happening that I was dying, and I was sure it was harder than childbirth without drugs. But then it was over and I was so proud of myself and today my body is made out of China and I can barely move.

It felt good to be out, and be around.

But then I did lose my brand new phone on the bus, which is unfortunate, but something that was supposed to happen for some reason or another. So for the second time in a month, I'll probably be phoneless for five days, and living  in the 60's.

I had a wonderful dinner date with Shannon. I think I probably ate about 3000 calories altogether yesterday, but woke up feeling so skinny this morning, and I'm so glad working out is finally doing something. I think it just takes a couple weeks some times.

My brain feels like it finally woke up and I feel alive again.

The Week in Quotes


"Do we have to call it blonde, or can we call it light?"
-Maddy at our staff meeting on the new blonde coffees. She used to have blonde hair, which is why it's funny to me, and also we had spent the entire meeting talking about the specific way that Sbux was rebranding their coffees

"You know, people say I need to get a human baby..."
-Nick, while looking at Tilly with fatherly love

Me: I'm thinking about whether or not I want to get a Master's.
Heather H: Oh yeah, I should get one of those.




I'm really excited and nervous to try out Crossfit tomorrow. I feel like I'm joining the army. Especially because it's so early in the morning.
I'm excited to ride the bus again.
I'm excited Dan made my 5 year old laptop run like it is brand new, on Linux, and that the WiFi started working again. He is a genius.
I'm excited that it is finally getting cold outside. I sat in the hot tub, and it was glorious.
I'm encouraged.

I say to myself, as I rub my fingerprints off in hot dish-washing water, "Don't go there. Don't think about the past, because the past will only sound sweet right now." 
I swipe the credit cards of other human beings who are hiding stuff.
They could even be hiding as much as I am, beneath the surface.
I think of men and women in other countries who will for the rest of their lives have to hide their feelings beneath the surface. In arranged marriages, in politically oppressed places, in the wilderness, in the poverty, in crappy apartments, in Cleveland, in Tokyo, in Portugal. There are other people going through what I am, and that makes me feel less alone.
There are people going through harder things than I am, and that makes me a privileged young woman.

But in the end, God is good. His grace is sufficient to get through this life, and this life will seem shorter later, when we are staring down our murderer (whether it be man, or illness, or tsunami, or vehicle moving at 72 mph) and we might wish we had eaten more donuts when we craved them or we might wish we had shared the Gospel with more people, or we might wish we had kissed our first true love. But in the end, God is still good, and that is how I sleep at night.

I keep living the same day over and over. But I saw the Moores one day in this week, and that's the only thing keeping me from blowing my brains out.

Today Megan was telling me this story of how she got a nose bleed in her car, and couldn't find any tissue anywhere.
"So I stuck a tampon up my nose to stop the bleeding," she told me. I laughed really hard and turned to Zeth.
"This is why you are gay, isn't it Zeth? Girls are so gross." And he laughed and just nodded.


I'm counting the days until school starts again. I can't pretend that my job is real life, at all.