Someone Who Understands

The start of the weekend wasn't easy. Everyone at home was stressed out for different reasons so I slept over with my two best friends, Ally and Sam. We lay sprawled across Ally's bed, playing the whole "I don't know, what do you want to do?" game. My mind wasn't really up to it. I felt distracted and secluded. Of course Sam noticed something was wrong. (How does she always do that??) I insisted I was completely fine, just thinking. It was a lie. I didn't feel fine at all. I just didn't want to talk about it. Finally, after they badgered me for like 5246831 hours, I agreed I would text them, because my body and mind were really not up to talking about it. I then sent 7 messages worth of a bit of an explanation.
A small part of it said, "I hate talking about it. I hate how depressed I get. I get sick of the same people telling me the same things that don't mean anything. It's all "you're amazing Tessa" when they're really thinking, "wowww she just needs to chill out". No one understands. They just pretend to. I'm tired. Tired of pretending."
I refused to cry. So I lay stiffly and stubbornly on the bed. They read the message without a word. They knew there was nothing they could do to cheer me up. As the evening progressed I got over my troubles and went to sleep at about 2:00 in the morning.

I got home Saturday mid morning, my mind, once again, disturbed by unwelcome thoughts. I stared in the mirror as I threw my sloppy ponytail up and the words kept coming back to me. You should talk to Kayla. I rustled through my pocket and just as I was holding my phone to call/text my big sis, it jingled. "Kayla Rowberry: What are you up to today?" I grinned an enormous grin that spread across my face. We walked to Macey's together in the hot sun to get excersize, eat ice cream, and get "tan like black men". When we got home we sat under a shade tree, getting eaten by bugs and telling deep dark secrets. We went inside and watched silly YouTube videos and ate waffles. It was a great day that really lifted my spirits.

I vented and told her things I hardly tell anyone. I knew I could trust her and she related to everything I said. I thought back to the night before. No one understands, I had thought. But Saturday I was reminded there's someone who always does. I was afraid I would lose that, but now I know I never will.

Whoops

As you might have noticed, I've switched things up a bit and changed my blog background and colors. As you also might have noticed about two of my posts are messed up. Meaning they are highlighted/colored incorrectly.

This is because the days I wrote those posts Blogger was having a spazzm and turned the words black and highlighted them white. Obnoxious. So I changed them back to kind of-almost relatively the same-ish colors because when writing a post there are limited colors you can use, but in the overall template settings, it has every color there ever was.

That's my story. I hope it doesn't drive your OCD crazy like it does mine.

What Are You?

In English class we were assigned to write a paper about what we are. Yes, WHAT, not who.
And because all of you lovely souls are obviously bored of something to do, I have decided to bless you with that very thing. Here is my paper.

"What am I? Sometimes I ask myself the same thing. After being asked this very question I put the rest of the afternoon into figuring it out. I did come out with a few answers of which I will now share with you.

      I am a lover. In other words I can’t imagine life without my friends and get a bit attached to them. Unfortunately this particular quality has caused me a lot of grief, not to mention too much drama for my taste.
I am a klutz. I would probably trip on a paperclip if you set it in the right spot.
       I am a shower singer. Footnotes is my favorite class (no offense Ms. Moe). I once sang in a singing competition in which I forgot some of my lyrics and shook like an earthquake the entire time. I’m pretty much traumatized for life. But still my poor family is treated to their own loud obnoxious concert every time I shower. Also every time I cook, clean, walk up and down the stairs, tie my shoes, draw, listen to music, or do homework...
       I am a fluent speaker of sarcasm and Spanglish. My conversations at home often include pointless and non-offensive insults with the few random Spanish words I happen to know.
       I am a “Belieber” (i.e. a Justin Bieber fan).
       I am 90% extrovert and 10% introvert. I have many friends and love to talk and share my opinions. But when placed in a large group of strange people all expecting me to say something relatively intelligent, I tend to get bit shy.
       I am a girly nerd. For further explanation, I take the advanced classes at school, but instead of playing video games I paint nails.

       I’m a weirdo. So just deal with it."

Here We Are.

What did I tell you? Of course there's a first day of school post.

I entered the school fully equipped with my pillow binder and Justin Bieber notebook.The day went by pretty normally. It felt like just a week ago I was doing the same thing; roaming the halls, getting a billion hugs a day, writing notes, and spending "five years" at my locker (as my guyfriends put it. They don't understand my major need for primping after 3 periods of everyone trying to braid my hair.).

As you know, we're pretty much the top dogs this year. Ninth grade is going to be awesome.
A1 World Geography was boring.. nothing else to say about it.
A2 Honors English was awesome, not to mention I have a thousand friends in that class and my teacher is hilarious.
A3 Spanish 4 was surprising. There's only 9 people in that class including me... It's gonna be a fun year.
Lunch was pretty exciting. I found my baby brother and introduced him to my posse (i.e. four guys and a girl--all taller than me). We harassed him cause his only good friend so far had a different lunch so he was flyin' solo.
A4 was P.E. I've never liked that class a single day of my life.

Tomorrow's supposed to be the better day of the two, though, so I'm expecting great things. Yeah. This year is gonna' be beast.

Huzzah.

Sooo I was surfing through my blog dashboard. And I found a magic button called "Stats". It was quite the shocker. Total views on my blog= (Drumroll please)... 9,175. And since I'm a math geek I divided that number by the total number of blog posts, which is 149, and if we're assuming each blog post was read an equal amount of times, that would mean each post has been seen approximately 61 times. HOLY CRAP.

After this little discovery I added my followers to any frequent commenters that don't officially follow my blog, and I got to 26. It's crazy to think that 26 people read my pathetic rants and pointless stories. I LOVE YOU GUYS. And I'm glad you're slightly entertained.You all made my day. I'm glad there's always someone listening, and knowing people actually read this makes me never want to stop blogging. School starts this week, so come back to check for a few interesting stories. :)


......
Awh, you guys are just so awesome. :')

Futuristic Thoughts

I went through my normal routine blog stalking when I came across my all-time favorite, my sister's. In her most recent post she talked about how her life is so different than what she thought it would be.

At that thought I wondered what I thought my life would be like right now when I was in elementary school. I guess back then I just assumed my life would stay the same forever. I would have the same best friends, Dad would still tuck me in at night, and no matter how old I got I'd still be me. I guess technically I'm the same person, but at the same time I know I'm not. I've had experiences that have truly tested my strength and with them came new beginnings. I hear my old favorite songs and it takes me away to a time I didn't know how much life could toss someone around to the point they aren't even the same person.

Then I thought about my fantasies of my future. I'll go to Timpanogas High School, graduate, and then meet a hot R.M. in college. We'll get married and then like five years later we'll buy a house and have three kids that all have darkish brown hair and green eyes, just like my husband. Then my husband and I will grow old and become some of those super cute old people that work in the temple. The end.

But we all know that's not gonna happen. My parents will probably move me to some hill-billy state like Tennessee and I'll end up with a creep with a 3-foot beard and in overalls following me around and I'll have to break it to him that I'm off to Utah the second I turn 18 to fulfill my dreams.

I guess that won't happen either now that I've foreseen it. Life just works like that. It never goes as planned. But thank the heavens on that one, I'd rather live in a cardboard box than move anywhere.

One thing I can correctly foresee is that someday I'll look back at this post and wonder what in the world I'm babbling about. And then why I didn't stop making plans for my future and just let it all happen. So I guess that's what I'll do.

Love at Home

"There is beauty all around, when there's love at  no one home..."

For reasons even I'd like to know, Braden and I have never gotten along. The day he came home from the hospital I stepped on his head. I spent the rest of his years as a baby trying to hide him. Under blankets, stuffed animals, and any other convenient nearby object.

Once Braden could talk/walk, our rivalry got more complex. Braden would steal toys from my room, I'd steal them back, and the next thing we knew we were sitting holding hands in the chairs of love. Your common time-out chair consists of the child sitting in a corner for a certain period of time. Our time-out chairs were much more evil and we had to sit in the chairs holding hands and singing Love at Home until we both apologized. Of course, it was even more torturous because I was too stubborn to believe I'd done anything wrong.

I lived my entire childhood thoroughly convinced that Braden's sole purpose in life was to ruin mine. We wrecked every loving family song in the book.
"I hate brother, he hates me, we hate sister, yessiree. They all hate us, and so you see, we're such a loving family..."


But recently things have almost reached a midpoint. Nowadays Braden and I are either really nice to each other or really not. When we're not yelling at each other, we're actually pretty good siblings. We make each other lunch, I let Braden sleep in my room when he has a nightmare, we play games together, we joke around, Braden wakes me up in the morning when I forget to turn my alarm on... all of that good stuff.

For family home evening on Monday night our family has a song night. We all harmonized and it was way cool. I was proud of myself when I hit every note to High On a Mountain Top. We sang probably over 20 songs, everyone suggesting their favorites. At the end I was really hoarse, but as I sang and looked around at my family and really felt that love at home. Even though sometimes they drive you crazy, your family members are the people that are always there. Your friends come and go but you can always count on that loving family at home to take care of you.

Little Miss Maisie

Everyone in our family says they wake up in the morning wondering if they're still dreaming. The entire time we've been in Utah we haven't had a family pet until now and it still seems a bit... abnormal. You look at her and think, Oh, there's the cute dog I'm babysitting. But inside you know that you're gonna have that cute dog for up to 15 years.

Having a puppy comes with many advantages and disadvantages.
For one,  she's adorable and fun to play with. But with that comes the fact that she chews on everything, including hands, feet, and other necessary body parts.
Secondly, eventually she'll be potty trained and life will be easy. But on the down side... she's not potty trained and has had like seven accidents two or three of which I had to clean up.
Thirdly, she's very forgiving. Which is good because we've tripped over her about 289475329865209475 times in the past few days.

Overall I've decided it's worth it. Someday when she's older she'll get over the chewing thing and will ring her little service bell by the door when she needs to go out. And by then she'll be bigger and less likely to be tripped over so much. I guess the lesson to be learned here is that puppies are a lot of work, but in the end you have a happy little dog trained just the way you want it. I look forward to then. But for now I might as well enjoy getting my toes gnawed off by a crazy little puppy.

Ready for School

School starts in ten days. WEIRD.

I almost don't know what do expect going into ninth grade. Seventh grade I started as a nervous, hygienically-challenged, confused mouse. Eighth grade I started as a starstruck, twitterpated fluffball with her head stuck down a hole in the ground. I don't know how I'm starting this year, but I at least can have the reassurance it's gonna be better than any past ones.

This week mom and I went school clothes shopping. I get new clothes about twice a year and right before school is one of them. I got three pairs of jeans, a couple cute shirts, and a few pairs of shoes to wear throughout the year. You'd think clothes shopping would be a downer, worrying about sizes and all, but it actually makes me feel better about myself. I don't know, I guess there's something about looking all spiffy in your new jeans that fit you perfectly that just makes you realize that no matter what you look like, you can always look good with what you've got.

Let me tell you, I am SO ready for school to start. I've gotten to that point I've done everything I wanted to this summer, and now I'm just ready to go hang out with my friends and show them the tan I never thought I'd have. ;) My classes are all perfectly arranged, I've got a really nice locker, and this year is looking better than ever.

Ally is in Algebra and I'm in Algebra 2, so we agreed I'll have to come over on some weekdays to help with homework. Things are really looking up for us. Before, I had convinced myself that her friends at Maeser would somehow replace me. But now I realize that I'll still have all of my separate school friends, just like she'll have hers, but none of that will ruin the friendship we have now.

Life really is going by pretty smoothly for me right now. *Knock on wood* Every day I find myself smiling and one point or another, no matter how many annoying moments there are. I'm not dreading what life is waiting throw at me, I'm ready for it.

Someday You'll Believe It

Ever since the beginning of time when I looked in the mirror I didn't see a young woman. I saw zits and freckles fat and frizz and wide feet and hairy arms and every little blemish I could possibly find.
When I got my phone my friend Sam told me she would harass me every day. I didn't realize how true that was until at least once every day she texted me with the same sentence of "Tessa you're a babe!!!" (The "babe" thing started out as an inside joke.) The first little while I thought the whole, Why thank you! but it faded a bit to You don't really mean that... to Still? I thought I was a babe yesterday.

My "babeness" soon just became routine. My phone let off it's tweetle-toot and there was the same message. One day I was feeling especially irritable and only replied with short answers. With a lack of much else to say, Sam finally elaborated. "I have to tell you every day so someday you'll believe it."

It definitely was something I never could have expected to hear. She always knows my ups and downs and is there whenever I need her. I took that daily text message as a total joke and the entire time she sincerely meant it and wanted me to know I'm good enough for everyone else even when I'm not good enough for myself. A flicker of hope lit up inside me. Maybe someday I will.