Back home I think?

I have been home for almost a month now but it's weird how home changes. My tree in the backyard is the same. It smells like May when I creep barefoot down the driveway to get the mail in the morning but something doesn't feel right. I feel like the world is beginning all the time but also I feel I am mourning something I didn't know was ever gone. Sometimes I'll dream about the sound of night games and hear the click of the Barker's sprinklers and I sprint away from my brother in a heated game of Steal the Flag.Today I looked at my fence and remembered going all Sisterhood of Traveling pants in the backyard with Kristina and Shannon. I still remember the strange looks on Joe and Reed's face hopping the fence to discover our cult or something like that. Even last summer Sunday drives with Brian to the 4th south noodles to get his schedule and just talking about life seems like eons ago.These times of life are dead now. They lie next to everything we give up to grow up. I know I am young still, very young but there is a part of my youth or whatever people call it that is gone now and I must move on. It hurts but I think about my garden this year and how hard it is trying. We have had a very rainy spring and I'm not sure if my garden will make it but yet it still grows. Even when it is drowned, blown over by wind and stepped on by my compassionate cat, it still is photosynthesizing. I have so many more memories to make. It's time to go forward with faith and maybe a little more reality. I just hope someday, maybe even it's in the next life, I can feel home as it was before growing up.  

Leaving

            Yesterday, I said goodbye to my life at the College of Eastern Utah. There are some souls I will never see again and it killed me to leave. I have never left anyone or anything in my life before. I lived in the same suburb my whole childhood. I have seen many people leave and I always thought it hurt so much more for me than them. As I began crying through the winding Spanish Fork Canyon, I learned that it hurts more to leave sometimes. Truth be told, I hated College of Eastern Utah. From the dry desert wind, the cliques, the metallic taste of the water, and the lack of community among the student body. In all this bitter hate I found people who were just like me. We endured it and became a family or something like it. They will always matter to me and help me see who I am. Anyways I don't want to dwell on the moment but know that you people changed me forever and for those for you back in SLC, I am back and so happy to be here. I'm excited for waking up to the freeway outside my window and the clinking of bats hitting baseballs on Saturday mornings. I'm so happy I'm home but a part of Grace Wilson is always going to be in those mornings in the JLSC drinking diet Pepsi with orange crush mixed in to repress the taste of Pepsi talking to those people who changed me forever.

 Family is a very broad and beautiful word. It encompasses many people and feelings. You find people that stamp themselves upon you and change everything. You can live in completely different universes and God puts you together and your souls meet and you know they'll be a part of your realm of life forever. It seals a pact of memory that leaves you feeling like if they leave you're losing a sister or brother. A piece of my heart is here in Price. Souls like Aurelia, Meygen, Jessica, Mae, Raquel, Ciara, Tadd and many others will be a part of me forever.

one year older and wiser too?

Yesterday was my nineteenth birthday...

      I feel twelve years older than last year. After you walk away high school, it's the scariest but most beautiful place to be. Everyday, I listen to a new story of someone who I haven't known since kindergarten. People are so incredible. They overcome so much and just fascinating. The world isn't black and white or love and hate anymore. It's full of color and emotions that make love look simplistic.
     It's weird to think I turned sixteen so long ago. I miss being sixteen year old me sometimes. I believed in others and in sunshine and friendship and that everyday was meant to be magical or it wasn't worth getting up. Then came seventeen and the struggle that is adolescence. The magic went away. Life became about loneliness, heartache, Facebook and watching people change who were supposed to stay forever. I learned endurance, patience and that people who matter always linger around in dark times of life.(That sentence sounded like Harry Potter ha-ha) Eighteen knocked on my door and I thought that I knew everything with the passing into adulthood.  Like I said before, I aged a lot this year. I said goodbyes too many times, said "why me?" all the time and almost forgot what a thank you was. I learned I am not the only one who prays for a better world at night. Family is my muse and it took a lot of struggle to the truth.
Now I am 19. I am prime and have one last year what is known as being a teenager. Today I swear though, I felt the magic coming back of being sixteen. Maybe it didn't go anywhere but I think I might believe in something other than my savior Jesus Christ again. I believe in myself.

Heal the past, live the present, dream the future.

ten great things from Spring Break so far.(in no particular order.)

1.  reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and getting to the point where the plot is excellent and not full of teen angst.

2. Listening too much Dashboard Confessional again.

3. Spending time with old friends and learning about who and what you are on the inside. I felt peace of heart and mind for the first time in what seems like years. I'm grateful I've grown up enough to know that and love and forgiveness for yourself and others always outweighs insecurity and doubt. 

4. Playing Poke'mon on my Gameboy and having the highest hopes of trading and battling my cousin Daniel. Two badges already losers. :o)

5. Say Anything. John Cusack and one radio playing Peter Gabriel's "Your Eyes"

6. Being grateful for home and how great your parents are and how much they give to you, sometimes their very dreams.

7. Missing oh say my brother because he's that great of a person. I have so many stories for you but some of them could say disrupt the spirit? 

8. Jessica Andrus :)

9.  Watching Beauty and the Beast with Amy Fairbrother and singing to every song.

10. Baking away the worries on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Day 30 - A picture of someone you miss.

I miss this, who we were and how true we were. Never giving in and staying up too late walking to the park. Talking to boys we weren't suppose to.  Dreamers. It seems we are so far away from each other these days. I never thought you would be the one I would grow far away from. I hope this changes soon. I need so much right now. 

Day 29 - A picture that can always make you smile.


Prince of Darkness/White trash/never feeling too far away from the ones you love. I miss everyone in this photo, including myself