ugh. if anyone has any more truth for me today, it's going to have to wait until tomorrow.

I'm strug buggin' lately. 

I don't know how to turn off the my brain. I realize it's selfish of me to say "i try really hard" but i do. 

I create rules in my head that no one made up for me, i preempt things with excusing myself or making up a lame excuse because i feel like i'm breaking said rules 

and people are sick of me. so i do things before people ask me to because i've somehow created myself into the friend who "just knows" and does things without even having been told. 

and i'm just bad at it. and i feel bad about it. 

so no one wins. 

 

In my head i don't ask people for a whole lot. I never want to force them into something or do something they don't want to do,ever. I'd feel horribly guilty the whole time and then not even enjoy the thing i'm at because i'm so preoccupied by the fact that i may have, at some point, forced a friend of mine to do something just because i wanted to do it. 

I have all the Catholic guilt and none of the rosaries. 

I realize that not everyone is like me or cares about the same thing i do and i dont' expect that or want people to, but sometimes it's just nice when people are willing to go somewhere or do something with you just because you love it and they want to share that experience with you. 

am i completely crazy for thinking that? 

I just don't know. My brain does some crazy things, or so i've been told lately. 

so, there's that. 

i want this.

i just want to be me, but, like, a happy version

my when head is strong and my heart is weak....

My heart and my head speak two different languages. This frustrating for 100% of the people who love me. Long story short. I feel like i've been working really hard and turning out really good stuff, and yet i feel completely invisible. Thankfully, i'm not super obsessing about it because I have many, many things to work on and it's keeping me busy. 

Today i listened to the entire 21 album. I just need Adele to make more music. 21 is my JAM though, i love the whole damn thing. 

It just brought me back to my St. Paul Days, sitting in Aria, staring at the beautiful Barista boy...you know, the one with the eyes, who regularly made me a almond or maple chai without the bubbles. 

And there i sat with Julia and Katie and we laughed and did homework and i played "one and only" on repeat until people got mad. The door was always propped open, allowing the fall breeze and the sound of change to swril into the door way, and ring the bell. Almost as if to tell us change was coming. The walls were orange and bright but the sound of the Beatles and Bon Iver softened the colors. The floors creaked and the one bathroom had a janky lock, but it smelled like heaven.  It was our own little corner of the world once upon a time. 

It seems like a lifetime ago, and maybe it was, we were all different then, but the way that time made me feel floods my memory with all the best feelings.And today, when i felt a little less than stellar, i held on to that memory. Because, once upon a time, we did something special worthy of memory making. 

Our humble beginnings started in coffee shops over lattes and dreams and rehashes of days and planing for futures, and they were beautiful before the middle got hard and complicated and the endings were sad. 

Although, everyone lived happily ever after the best way they knew  how, we just couldn't co-exist in their happiness. 

And that is sort of a love story and a tragedy that not even Shakespeare could write with enough grace and poetry to recreate having been there. 

diamonds on the souls of her shoes....

Sometimes when you're making a birthday slide show. it makes you cry.

and feel terrible for ever being sassy about anything

looking through a life that is being lived with the amount of grace and humility that this one has is seriously the most lovely thing.

These photos, a patchwork of memories, and people and places that fit together to create an amazing story....

well, it's hard to beat.

but so easy to love.

i lay to rest my troubled face....

I turn 30 in about in a month and half. 

A whole new decade. I wont lie, I'm super glad to be rid of my 20s. The last 3 years were ROUGH. and i'm still trying to climb my way of the shitstorm. 

and i'm not doing the best job. 

but...anyway, i love birthdays. a lot. i think they're the best and i think that everyone should have 6 every year because we really do not stop and celebrate each other enough. Nor do we spend enough time thinking about the impact we're making. 

I just think it's important for people to feel loved and celebrated. 

well, i'm not having a birthday party....because i don't wanna plan it and i'm not sure who would even show up. 

and that give me ALL KINDS OF ANXIETY

I have in my head that i've burned a lot of bridges though i did nothing to set fire to them, and i'm really sick of apologizing to people for not knowing how to deal with a broken heart, and car and no money. 

I don't know how to be in crisis other than to just shut everyone out. 

But....still here i still with a blinking cursor unable to pull together a list to even birthday dinner with. 

bah. humbug. i don't wanna have a birthday. 

i've been driving for an hour, just talking to the wind.

Sometimes, when i feel out of place, i go to a coffee shop.

I sit, i watch people. I listen to Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald, and i drink coffee and for however long i stay here, I feel like i have a place.

The chair in the corner by the window remembers my body, the table holds my stories, and the window shines the same light it did that last time i was here.

the cute barista boy must have felt bad for me paying in quarters because that is NOT what nearly 30 year olds  do.

so he made my raspberry white mocha with a pretty little design in it. His way of saying, that not everything is ugly, and i appreciate that.

As i sit, re-reading things I wrote last fall, and not thinking they are total trash. Some how  i totally captured the buzz and love i have for fall.

Last year, the words flowed much easier. Probably because my mind was racing a mile a minute trying to silence all that was in my head, as if keeping the thoughts on like a running faucet will empty my brain of all the things i was feeling.

Well, it didn't work, but i think that's ok. i don't ever want to run out of things to say.

Cue a vibrating cell phone with a message from an old friend asking what i'm doing.

"Writing", i said. "What are you doing? "

"Driving, i could use a "case hug" ----that's how you know it's an old friend. Nobody calls me Case here, almost at all. The nicknames my friends give me, much like the rings of a tree will tell you how long they've been around.

she just happens to be the same person who hated me 12 months earlier. I never quite know what to do with her. like....ever.

So i told her my location. she came. I asked her if anything was wrong....and she said she could ask me the same.

Not really, i said, just processing all that this season means. She said the same.

and we drank coffee and chatted about our days and our futures and i almost cried asking when things will stop being so awkward and hard and when will i feel like an adult.

and she said asks the same questions and the answer is probably never.

It's never fun to have a "what's wrong with me" conversation, but if your'e going to run down that path, it's nice to do with with your old best friend. Who is still pretty gentle with you when she sees your sad eyes.

it was simple. and the awkwardness is subsiding.

And it's just how fall is, showing that missing pieces find their way back. and life is what it is, until it's something different.

and if there is one thing i'm both terrible and a rock star at, it's change.

I'm not saying much at all right now, except that St. Paul has a way for making me feel like a real girl. Like i'm just one of the regular people trying to make it through the day without falling.

So, i'll hold on to hope and pray that Jesus shows up in a way that i can feel sometimes soon.

There are just days when the lies in my head win. 

Today is one of them.  

Some days it's just glaringly obvious that i still want to be a cool kid. 

and i'm lost. 

and i feel guilty about everything. 

and i keep trying to force things to happen, that clearly will not. 

and i'm broke. so, so, so broke. 

everyone is always better than i am, i'm always so dramatic. my tone is always wrong. i'm always sassy. 

and today, i just can't. 

Fall

I know the song of September by heart, I've been singing it since before i can even remember being in love with anything.

A season so closely linked to death, is the season that makes me feel most alive.  September creeps in slowly, it begins as a far off sound, and quickly developed into school bells, and crunchy leaves and the crack of a fire.

September is humble in it's beauty. It does not boast of it's firey leaves, or the sweet smell in the air.
The smell of the familiar.

September is comforting, constant in it's buzz. September is populated by potlucks, backpacks and hurry. It's football games, and rainy days, and reds, oranges, and yellows.

It's the buzz of things to come, and going back home.

It's the sound of an old friend you haven't seen in a while. It walking into a place you know by heart and sitting down for awhile to remember, and to be thankful.

I love September's song, and i'll sing it until there is no air left in my lungs.