It's true

I am worn down. So much of my time has been taken up by hanging out with people that by the time I get home at night, I'm too tired to do anything. I still haven't cleaned the apartment, and that was something I wanted to do before I moved all my stuff over here. I haven't even gone grocery shopping!

That's it. Tomorrow's my me day to take care of all the things I've been letting slide. I can only take care of others when I am in a good place. Last night (technically two nights ago, when I wrote that blog & edited it), I was in a horrible place. If I'm going to get out of it, and I definitely intend to, I am going to:

• catch up on sleep
• find a way to wash the floor
• go grocery shopping
• dust the blinds & wipe out the cabinets
• move the furniture how I want
• Do a DAMAGE REPORT for this apartment! I got that almost a week ago!
• go to the chiropractor and NOT get distracted in Orem
• talk to my adopted uncle about buying one of the bikes on his front porch for cheap
• maybe treat myself to food I didn't have to prepare

optional:

• listen to conference
• explore my surroundings (ex. figure out bus stops & which stores are best, maybe find a nearby park to lay in)
• go swimming at a friend's apartment complex's pool (doesn't really matter whose, just as long as I can do it)
  
• catch up with my family & friends back home
• etc etc etc

Maybe I need more than one day to myself...

It comes and goes in waves

So for this past week, I've been fighting another bout of depression. The first day of it was the worst and I'm almost back to equilibrium. Almost isn't enough, though. It's hard =( It's so difficult to keep going when all I want is to come to a full stop.

Draft from when my depression first hit this time (early thursday):
"Sometimes I hate myself. In an earlier post, I said that I don't self-injure. I realize the truth of it now: I don't injure myself physically. When I get in a mood like this, I want to remember every hateful thing said to me and every imperfect response I ever had. I want to sink into a cocoon of sadness and not be bothered by anything ever again."

So, comparing, you can see how much I've improved over the past few days... It still sucks, though.


EDIT: nevermind about feeling better... When you've been trying your hardest to improve and even though you know how much progress you've made--you get a reminder that metaphorically going from prehistoric times to the late middle ages means so little when everybody else is in the age of technology or at least acting like they are...

Late Father's Day post

Let me just preface with this:
My dad is not perfect. I know that. I didn't truly feel like his daughter until I graduated high school and started working for him, but when that happened, I really knew that he loved me.

See our awesome farmer's tans?

It was just such a truly wonderful experience to know that he was proud of me and wanted his colleagues to know that I was HIS daughter.



I think now that he's the sole parent in the house with kids, he's much more proactive about being a Dad and that makes me happy for the younger kids.

We LOVE crazy faces

There are random bits from my childhood of things that I loved. He wanted someone to go with him to the gas station, so I would go and he would get me strawberry milk and we would just talk. I used to be obsessed with driving, so when he would use the driving mower to take care of the yard, I would sit in his lap while he just mowed the lawn and I loved every second of it.

he DOES fit in Nathan's game bag XD

Not many fathers would take their kids out waterskiing with them, but mine did. It was the best feeling ever. I would be in his arms when he got up, and then I would stand on his skis and hold the handle with him. I loved having my bare feet on the skis and the warm water splashing me as we skiied along

No hands!

It used to be that every single Sunday, he would make banana pancakes for everybody and they were totally delicious.

My birthday cake

He is competitive, though. Once he took me to play putt-putt and it was so boring because we kept score and he totally owned me. After that I swore to never follow the rules or keep score when playing putt-putt. It became much more fun after that...

I don't know how he was for this trip...

The thing is, he took just me with him to Columbia to play and he took out of his own personal time, and I know how exhausting construction can be. It means a lot that he would do that.

He is simply the SWEETEST man I know. I've got pretty amazing uncles and other fathers in my life, but he is the only father for me and I love my dad.

Don't Tell Anyone, But...

...we are so in love. I adore this guy

a couple days after we said that we loved each other

Current issues

Apartment hunting is something I can only do in spurts. There's so many choices for what to live in for the summer that it's very difficult to narrow down and just when I think I've hit the jackpot, I find the small print... It's just not that fun. Neither is job hunting. Job hunting is gross because there's not that much out there, so it's more of a suck it up and do whatever's out there, whether or not you like it.

I should probably go grocery shopping, but I'm too lazy. I've cleaned my room & the main apartment areas and that was fun. It's strange how happy cleaning gets me...

Neuroticism Again--Skip if you don't like that sort of thing

I don't know if it's progress or the worst relapse ever, but when I think about Mom, I feel nothing. Not anger, not sadness, not even a "what can you do" sort of amusement. It's like everything stops in my brain when the woman who gave birth to me comes up in conversation.

My psychologically abusive ex-mom doesn't even share any part of my name with me since the divorce and her name officially changed back. Maybe she just doesn't exist in my mind at all anymore. I know the concept of a Mom and I know that I didn't have the ideal childhood, but as far as having a Mom? Nothing.


Even though I got to this other subject through quite a different manner, it's still close enough that it belongs in the same blog post:
When I am hurt, I never seem to feel the need to punish myself physically. There's usually one of two options: 1-retreat so far into myself that it doesn't matter anymore or 2-lash out at people. I can usually stop from doing option 2 because the people around to lash out at have nothing to do with why I am hurting and would probably do whatever it is in their power to fix it. 1 is tougher because it's such a default to build a shell around myself and hide behind it especially if that's all I want to do.

I'm very effective when lashing out at people. I know what to say that will hurt. I know how to say it. I know what inflection to use and what expression to have on my face. I realize this about myself. As a result, I work really hard to keep from doing this because of the reasons stated in the previous paragraph and that I usually regret being so mean later on

Acceptance

I have decided to let Utah into my heart. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal unless you know how big of a deal it was in fall 2007-fall 2008.

An hour walk as the sun is setting and the temperature is perfect and you can hear and feel an almost constant gentle breeze seems to be what it takes to make me decide to let Utah be my California and start actively learning about it and the layout

almost home. see the mountain?

All Smiles

Today I was looking through pictures from when we first met til now. Something I noticed is how we both gradually started to be generally smilier and smilier in pictures

These are my favorites from the past 4 months:

March 16--St. Patty's Day
we became official the day before on a Wednesday

before Maryland--first weekend of April

hanging out with Gary


Finals week

My birthday--May 12

yesterday