When will you be happy?

So I just saw a blog prompt that asked: "When will you be happy?" At first I blew it off and went searching for other ideas, but as I continued my search, my mind kept going back to that question. It's an odd form of that question... when. When? Usually it's what makes you happy, or who, or why. But not when.

So... how would I answer that? Am I not already happy? Well... no, not completely, but there are definitely things that make me happy right now. I have great friends, a promising future, a few talents. And sure there are numerous things that can bring me down from time to time, but I definitely try to overcome that, after some frosting straight out of the container and some venting to those who care enough to listen. So why can't when be now?

Am I supposed to consider the things that I think will make me happy in the future? Finding my love and getting married. Traveling the world with my camera. Hopefully getting the chance to attend a killers concert. But how can I answer the question with those things? I still don't know when or if I will experience any of those things. Although it'd be nice if I did. :)

Seriously though, how can I possibly answer that question? Further thinking, I'm not sure I want to. It doesn't really matter when all those other things are going to happen that will make me happy, when I'm blessed right now as it is. I may not be 100% ecstatic all the time, but I'm happy enough. I wish I could realize that all of the time.

My worst enemy.

Oblivion is my worst enemy on so many different levels.

I tend to miss a lot of what is going on around me. I'm a very particular observer I guess. But it's not really that I see what I want to see, I just get lost in my own little world, so wrapped up in my worries that I miss what life shows me from time to time. And I kick myself every time. I wish I could say that it's not my fault that I don't see what people want me to see... I wish there was something I could do about it.

You send me messages from across the room, your eyes carry a story, the emotion flows from your expression... and I can't see it. Why can't I see it?

At the same time, I'm sending messages to people too, but it seems like most of them get lost in transit. With all of my might I try and I try to will my thoughts forward, but my futile attempts just keep adding up. I'm not sure what else I need to do, how much more obvious I need to get, to show what I'm trying to show. Of course everything would be so much more easier if we could just scream it all out from the top of our lungs.

"I wanna scream 'I love you' from the top of my lungs... but I'm afraid someone else will hear me."

If we weren't all so oblivious of the things around us... we might, just might... actually be happy.

Identity Crisis.

Once you think you've got yourself all figured out... you surprise yourself with something completely new and you find yourself in square one again.

I see myself as a pretty unique individual most of the time. I'm not one to care what other people think about me, I go out in public wearing some odd things, I've got plenty of piercings and a tattoo. I listen to the type of music that makes some people cringe, and when I feel like being weird, I let loose. But from time to time, when I stop to actually think about who I am, I get lost, draw a blank, have no clue what to think. How do I define myself? How do I describe myself? What is my personality like? Who am I?

I really wish that I could ask people to describe me for myself. I'm curious to know what type of person I really am and who better to let me know than those people who are the closest to me? But I know I would get all sorts of different replies and opinions, so I just may never know.

This coming year is definitely going to help me figure out what type of person I am and what I can use to define myself. (I bring this up a lot when I write, so if I've already mentioned this in a previous blog you've read, I apologize.) I'm really hoping that the opportunity for me to try new things or experiment is not going to change me. I'm not sure I want to change really. I'd almost rather stay the same person but find the puzzle pieces that were missing formerly, to build me up to who I am. To make me stronger I guess.

It will be good to be able to break away from some of the restrictions and boundaries there are around me that keep me held back from figuring this all out. It will be good to go out on my own where the world can take me and mold me the way I'm supposed to be, just based on my own mind and experiences. You can't get a whole lot of that in high school, even if I did have some experiences not a ton of people get.

I'm already starting to feel some of the workings that going to college is going to make me endure. Some of them are pretty cool, but many of them so far have got me way stressed out. Hopefully I'll survive going off to live on my own, and juggling everything I have to juggle. I've done some pretty intense juggling before, but some new factors that have been thrown in, are like knives tossed in the equation. The last thing I need to do is get myself stabbed.

Confession #1

"You're so tiny!" "You're a stick!" "I could pick you up and throw you across the room!"

I'm so used to hearing comments like these. I am small, it's true, I'm short, don't weigh much, pretty much everything about me is small in some way. I have had many people tell me that they are jealous of my petite frame for whatever reason, and all I can do is smile and nod. That's all I can do because quite frankly I don't understand why they would be jealous. I'm short and frail looking, it looks like I hardly eat, like I'm weak... and that's not the way I want to look. I'm better than that.

The truth is, those same people who tell me they're jealous of the way I look, I'm jealous of myself. I love the way all of my friends look and I hate being the tiny one, the little one. The deeper truth I guess is that I'm self conscious of my body and of the way I look. I know it's rediculous, it's just about the opposite reason every girl in the world is worried about their looks.

I feel like I have to overcompensate for my size, and because of that my personality isn't where it should be. I put up concrete walls, a tough face and a hard voice just to seem... I guess not as small as I am. The more I type it out, the more crazy it sounds, but I still hope it all makes since. There are definitely times I'm dressing up or playing around with clothes with friends and I feel a bit inadequate, just wasted away.

I don't want to be the wasted away, tiny, frail looking girl anymore. Because I'm not that girl on the inside at all. There's more to me than what shows on the outside, and I guess I'm just not sure how to portray that to the world. I'm tired of feeling self conscious for being small, but I'm not exactly sure how to change that...

Purging my room.

I have so much stuff. It all accumulates in every nook and cranny in my room, it's absolutely everywhere. My room is easily cluttered and is pretty much always a disaster. Because I have all this junk. Now I am well aware that I really do not need most of what I have. Way too many clothes and shoes, random papers from God know what, pens and pencils coming out of my ears. I hate the fact that it makes me seem so materialistic... so why do I have all of these things? Sentimental value. >.<

There are some clothes that I have that I've owned since I was in the second grade. I can't get myself to get rid of them. Because they have such an important and yet unknown value to them. I would feel BAD for giving these things away. That goes for everything. I feel horrible for giving certain things away. Like these things would feel unloved if I were to sell them or hand them down. It's awful. Eventually I'll get over something enough to get rid of it, and then I'll forget about it... but it's hard for me to get to that point in the first place.

So imagine how difficult it is for me to have to get rid of things as part of my preparation for going away to college. It's already hard for me to accept that my childhood is basically over, having to look at all of the things that define that part of my life and wonder whether or not it should stay a part of my life or not.... it's a bit heart wrenching. I'll probably resort to putting most of it in boxes to store away or I'll keep it in my room at my house. It'll be so weird not to be around all of these things that I'm so used to seeing everyday.

At my dorm, most of what I'll have around me will be clothes, school supplies and some food. Nothing too special or interesting... but my wish for my side of the dorm is to make it look like my own anyways. Hopefully even without all the things that I usually had around me to remind me of those factors that define me, I'll still manage to make something to show that.

Cry myself to sleep.

Every once in a while, one of the girls I know will get into some sort drama or trouble, and will come to me at some point and claim that she had cried herself to sleep the previous night. Now, I've never actually cried myself to sleep, so at this point all I can do is slap on a concerned face nod, and say something about how I'm sorry. But the truth is, if they really managed to cry them self to sleep, then I envy them. I wish I was capable of doing that.

If I have something that I'm really worried about, something that makes me cry at night, where I might cry myself to sleep... I can't sleep. I usually stay up for nights thinking and worrying about whatever it is that has me upset. I have never managed to cry myself to sleep, no matter how exhausted and run down I am. How nice it must be to let out enough emotion to calm yourself enough, to put yourself at enough peace to be able to fall asleep. To be able to cry out enough of your worry to be able to set your mind at some ease. If I was able to do that, I would go through a lot less sleepless nights.

It's obviously a little hard for me to pity someone who says that they have cried themselves to sleep, and yet I always feel bad for thinking so, because I know the nature of girls. They say that in order to get sympathy, and although I believe they should be at some ease to know that they were able to sleep some even with the trials they are going through, I know they see it as such a negative phrase. Most people see crying yourself to sleep as some chaotic horrible thing, someone lying in darkness alone, having to tough out the harsh emotions they are faced with. This is not the picture that pops into my mind when I hear that phrase.

When I hear "I cried myself to sleep" I see something a lot more tranquil, nice, calm even. A release of bad emotions in the comfort of one's own bed. Eventually becoming more and more at ease until finally slipping away to peacefully sleep the night away. It sounds nice to me... is that really all that wrong?

My Inner Child.

Have you noticed lately, that more and more adults have stopped celebrating their birthdays with their actual birthdates? Like they say this is my 3rd 29th birthday, or something along the lines of that? I even have a few friends that do that, one that always has her 5th birthday, another that insists she's still in the 1st grade. Some people find that immature, they think that these people just need to learn to embrace the fact that they are forever growing older and they need to act their age... their real age. But I'm not so sure about that.

Sure, there's a bit of a limit that everyone should respect regarding how old you "act" from a day to day basis. We don't need grown adults throwing complete tantrums in the middle of public places because they refuse to pass the maturity of a two year old. That's a bit much. But in the same sense, if everyone were to loose their sense of an inner child, the world would just be a downright awful place. A happy medium is definitely in order.

Today I bought light up Transformers shoes that velcro from the kids section at Payless. I have pretty tiny feet, I fit in a kids size 2 shoe, and while out with a friend of mine shopping, I found these shoes and absolutely loved them. All my child hood, I really wanted shoes that were velcro and shoes that lit up. I never recieved either of those and although it wasn't a huge devestation to me, I've always vowed that if I had kids they would have plenty of each type. These shoes were pretty much everything that I would have wanted as a kid (other than the fact that they are boys shoes, and when I was younger I would have rather had a pretty pair of girls shoes thank you very much.)

As I was leaving the store with my sister, she kept giving me this look of disbelief, with some eye rolling thrown in here and there. I knew me buying these shoes was something that she could expect from me, so I asked her what was up with the looks. She admitted that this was definitely something I would do, but that it was a bit ironic. Here I am, an 18 year old girl, about to start college, and I'm overly excited about a pair of shoes that boys ten years my junior would love to have. It was a bit funny to think about. While we went through Target later on, we noticed that some of the school supplies had been set out. There were little backpacks and lunchboxes set out, a few of them with Transformers designs. We joked about me getting some of those as well, but of course I didn't. A little later on, a boy walked down an aisle we were in talking about his new lunchbox and how it had Optimus Prime and Bumblebee on it. My sister nudged me and said something about how I should go talk to him, he'd probably be jealous of my shoes. He didn't look more than maybe 5.

Is it so wrong that I would get these shoes? I normally am drawn to flashy colorful bright things, things that little kids would like, and while I do play dress up and do other kid like things with my friends, I definitely do not act like a 2 year old all the time. I don't think that just because I'm going off to college in a few months means that I need to grow up as fast as possible. I hope that I never grow up completely and loose my inner child. I'm used to getting odd looks based off what I'm wearing or doing, and while I wear these shoes very proudly, I'll be prepared for any looks people are going to give me.