summer

thank God for summer. i spent yesterday afternoon at the pool laying out on a towel plugged into my ipod. it felt so good because i've been working hard and needed a little break to recharge. and yes, wow, i just made two references to myself being like electronics. i'm a NERD!!!!

tomorrow i'm signing a contract for the townhouse i found to live in for the next year! i'm so excited. i hope my roommate is cool to live with. i've had my own room for the past year and before that i shared with my best friends. it's been years since i've roomed with a stranger.

i'm overwhelmed with emotions when i think about moving. after things fell apart last summer i found refuge in south jordan with my uncle's family, and now i'm finally ready to head back out on my own but i am scared. i've been trying hard to move past what happened last summer, but i still feel disconnected from my life before i was assaulted.

the disconcerting thing as i discussed in my last post is the disconnect- everything that happened in my 21 years before the assault still feels like a movie, not my life. i am shocked when i remember the past and realize it's mine.

that's why i'm a bit apprehensive (while simultaneously being excited and ready). i am leaving the only place i feel connected to, and i'm going out on my own. i may be nervous but i'm strong. mostly i feel excited. who knows what the next phase of my life will bring. i have hope that it will be wonderful!

more pondering

these photos were taken a year ago.

quick disclaimer: since this is my blog i am not going to apologize for spending so much time talking about a year ago. i probably will post several more times about it, it's therapeutic! i don't mind if i lose the few readers i have, you can roll your eyes and move on to something more interesting like this random site that has a picture of a lama on it. i actually googled "boring websites" and found this, so as to have a link for you to escape with. it is probably more interesting than this blog will be for a while. you're welcome.

do you ever look at photos of yourself from the past and think of all the things that person is about to experience and how she has no idea what's in store? i do that all the time, but not with these photos. i think it's because i am very far away in them and they aren't very personal- it really could be any girl in these photos.

that's how my life before last year feels now. sometimes i feel so disconnected i want to scream. it's like remembering a movie you saw a while ago. you remember what you thought about it and what it was about, but it's a fuzzy memory with lots of holes and missing parts, and it's not your life, but you were immersed in it once, when you watched.

last fall was rather uncomfortable as i would space out all the time- people would talk to me and i could see them talking but my mind wouldn't comprehend anything coming out of their mouth. i'd ask people to repeat themselves constantly. once i asked a friend to repeat herself 5 times. she was sitting next to me and my mind was just blank. i finally laughed and acted like i finally heard her and then left quickly because i felt so empty between my ears. very disconcerting.

all of that (spacing and feeling disconnected) is getting loads better. i'm making so much progress! i have fun, i'm working hard, and i feel like i'm busier than i've been in a long time. in the next week or two i'll be moving to orem. i found a place to live. it's perfect! it's a little town house. rent is cheap, and it is everything i've been looking for. i'm coming back into the world:)

i found this quote somewhere:

"You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." — Douglas MacArthur

i'm probably 50, my hope and optimism about the future are about equal with my fears and doubts. that's an improvement over how i felt most of the past year!

summer

utah sucks because it is almost july and this is the first week that has felt like summer really is here to stay.

i have a lot of time on my hands this week which is resulting in time to watch tv, take walks to the lake, and think too much. when my life is quiet all of the demons i've fought and the memories i've repressed come back and make it hard to be as happy as i am when i'm busy. that's probably true for most people. sometimes i really need time to just meditate and process what's happened, but lately it's mostly unproductive so i've been trying to avoid thinking too much. what's past is past, and that's how it should stay.

still, i can't help thinking about how much my life has changed, how much i have changed. i am in the complete opposite place in life i thought and planned on being in 1.5 years ago. sometimes that makes me really really sad but most of the time i'm okay with it now. i've accepted myself and my life, and have been working really hard for a few months to move forward in life.

rebuilding a life is hard, but i know this isn't the last time i'll do it. no place or phase in life is permanent. we just pass through different places, states of mind, environments, situations, social groups, and jobs. good times don't last, but neither do bad times. at the beginning of this year i felt hopeless, things were never going to change, never going to get better. well, thank God they have. things are so much better.

in 2 weeks it will be my first anniversary from the most life changing event i've experienced so far. i may take the day off from work and go on a little road trip. i'm not sure i am ready for that marker yet. maybe i'll write a blog post about everything that has happened and how i'm so much stronger than i was a year ago. maybe i'll burn some pictures, or maybe i'll just go through the day like normal. food will definitely be involved. but maybe, maybe somehow i'll forget and the day will pass without acknowledgement. i doubt that will happen this year, but the year that it does i will know that it really is in the past.

******

i love my new job, working on the day staff at the residential rehab center. it's difficult though, not being able to trust any of the girls without even knowing them. you just have to assume that everything they say is a lie until it checks out, avoid being manipulated (hard! i keep being manipulated without realizing it until later) and make sure that you are aware of all of the girls and what they are doing/talking about constantly for 8 hours. hard but so fun because somehow that's all endearing to me. i guess i have a soft spot in my heart for teen angst.

it's funny to me that i got a job where all day i am trying not to be manipulated, reminding people of personal and social boundaries, and resolving the dramatic conflicts that arise constantly and out of the blue all day. it's funny because this year i reached an all time low in regards to being taken advantage of, manipulated, and abused and i finally had enough. i've been able to become much more assertive and now anytime i even THINK that someone may try to invalidate or take advantage of me in any way, i have this compulsion to maul them. one extreme to the other, that's me:) considering all this, it's funny that at the job i'm at i spend the entire day doing just that (protecting myself, the girls, and the rules of the house).

i am looking for housing in orem and provo, and i'm planning on moving in the very near future as my job is full time and i'm starting to dislike the constant commute from south jordan to provo. i've already put 3300 miles on my car and i haven't even had a chance to pay my first car payment, although that's due to the retarded company i bought the car from, financing was a mess.

that's pretty much all i have to say right now, not much else is happening or on my mind!

i'm too tired to think of a good post title.

i work from 10pm-6am. tonight i've spent a considerable time on this genius and beautiful site:

sometimes i want to write a whole bunch of things but i don't know how to start. the words just don't come.  that's happening tonight, people. this could be due to the fact that i have worked almost every night for the past week, i'm running on about 4 hours of sleep, and it's 3am. i mean, it's possible is all i'm sayin. since i seem unable to create a post, i'm just going to make a list of the things i'm thinking about; that's easier than forming sentences and stuff.

- the program director at my work officially offered me a full time position on day staff! as soon as a new employee is hired and trained to replace me, i'm off grave! i am so happy. i've wanted this type of job for a few years now.

- i've been reading the transcripts from the elizabeth smart trial, and watching a few interviews on youtube. she is my hero.

- i am becoming so assertive. i stood up for myself twice in the past week in incredibly significant ways. i am a champion. :)

- today was the first hot day of the year. finally utah is acting like it's june, not march. :P if it's sunny tomorrow, i'm off to the pool.

- there's also some other stuff that i'm suddenly too tired to think of and articulate.

it feels like today

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no ones definition of your life. Define yourself."
~Harvey Fierstein

"The soul that is within me no man can degrade."
~Fredrick Douglas

"There is little advantage in considering yourself a victim. No one can deny you your right to an unsinkable resolve of the heart." - Jesh deRox

and lastly:

"There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout:

This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.

When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you."
- Stacey Charter

random photos on my phone from the past week

the photos in this post are not in chronological order. the order they are in is the order in which i feel like posting and writing about them. first, i would like to start with this photo of my darling cousin sophia:

i am sitting here laughing as i type, because this picture perfectly illustrates the reason that this baby had so many bruises on her knees right now. she's going through a growth spurt i guess, and has recently become very klutzy and clumsy- she's constantly tripping, falling, banging into things, and in general getting knocked around. the other day she ran up to her dad to give him a hug on the couch and somehow got hurt on the way, tripping into his arms. she said "oh, not AGAIN!" and burst out crying. so sad. so freaking cute. anyway, the precarious position of her body as she is running in this photo sums up the stage she's in right now.

here's another photo, marian and sophia. they're running on a school playground i let them loose on while waiting for evan to get out of swim team practice.


we hit target before the school playground. after we dropped evan off, i asked them what they wanted to do with the hour we had to kill. marian said "i have 3 ideas, you probably will say no to all of them." i made her tell them to me. she wanted to go to the dollar section at target and then a park or to mcdonald's. i said yes, mostly because i couldn't come up with anything better, and hey, why not? here they are at target, they went crazy when i said they could pick out one thing each. sophia found a winner, a 4th of july themed pin wheel. they played with it all evening, and it is now sitting in a flower pot in the front yard. i was planning on making this post a while ago and i had thought of something funny to say about this photo, but now i can't remember.


i would also like to share this random but cute picture of marian being adorable one morning:

i went to the farm in mapleton for a birthday party/memorial day lunch with family on monday. my two favorite photos.

i'm at my night job right now. i'm pretty tired. i am going to end this blog post before i start rambling about things and potentially posting pages worth of random song lyrics, which will inevitably result in my deleting the post in the morning when my judgment isn't clouded by fatigue and i remember that real people actually read my posts sometimes.

:)