We can do better .

It's a concept.

An idea that has been mentioned time and time again, yet doesn't catch on or doesn't keep rolling... but stops.

Dead in its tracks.

Four days ago, I left work two hours early, headed to go meet my aunt so we could drive up to Phoenix and catch a plane with my mother to San fransisco .

After months of training for a 50k, my mother and aunt needed what support they could afford and I, being cheapest and most available, was a shoe-in for the job. (They got a baby sitter and portable entertainment in one!) 

It was a simple enough gig. I remember replaying the expectations in my head as I boarded the plane heading out. 

-Take care of them.

-Give them everything they want. 

-Fill baths with ice before they get back from race.

-Drive them wherever when their legs hurt. 

-Be at the finish line when they complete their 30 miles

-drive back to Tucson on Sunday night (Monday morning)

The list goes on, but the rules were simple. I was to do what they needed, WHATEVER they needed, and my trip would remain free.

Easy enough.

I sat down next to the window on the opposite side of my aunt as the flight attendant began her monologue of proper emergency etiquette . " Thank you for flying with... If happens...pull this. If... Push that. Help yourself first.".

I have heard the speech a million times over, so it was easy to disregard as I popped in my new blue headphones, and laid my head back agains the rest, while gazing out the tiny side window.

I wasn't looking forward to flying, so I prayed instead.

I prayed for God to protect me, and land this plane safely so I can live longer and achieve more . So I can become something. And amount to anything.

The plane began to move.

Faster and faster until eventually we were roaring down a runway, stopping for nothing, slowing for no one.

Pure power.

I felt the front of the plane lift from the ground, which leads me to my favorite part. There is a moment, just as the front wheels take flight, and the bottom wheels drag behind the plane. The world feels as though it is shaking, like it is about to morph into something new, when suddenly you feel a kick- 

A dip-

And then you're completely in the air.

You don't feel yourself moving upward, but you feel the angle, and you see the ground moving further and further away.

It was this moment I looked out of the window.

Tears formed in my eyes for the first time as I really took into account the sight before me. How small I was in such a big world. Theories, concepts, and thoughts all came to my head at once. 

What if? How? When? What about? Why?

The thoughts, alone, took up my whole flight. But suddenly we were landing and the thoughts were left in the sky in which I found them.

I didn't think twice.

In between then and today we had a great trip. They ran, and finished. I ate, a lot. We shopped. We explored. We had a blast!

Then we came back.

I boarded this plane with less eagerness, and stress . Even though I didn't want to fly at night, I knew I would get a nap and it would take up the time.

A nap, I needed. 

This time we were in the first group to load into the plane, and I snagged a seat next to a window once again, this time opposite of my mother.

 "Thank you for flying with... If happens...pull this. If... Push that. Help yourself first."

That line again... I shrugged it off.

This time the plane picked up speed quicker, got to the sky quicker- and I was about to nap it out when I looked outside.

Lights from the city luminated like constellations agains the empty blackness of space, the ocean was not visible by color in the darkness, but just made the image before me fade to a beautiful nothingness.

The yellow gleams mimicing stars in a magestic and unparalleled way, sectioned together like a group of moons from another plantet.

Imagine one of those constellation maps. With the black backround, and yellow colored dots which stand for the stars. The city of San fransisco looked like thousands of constellations filled in with those yellow dots.

Only their dots where glowing.

There are few sights in this world that have taken me for my breath. I mean, I have seen beautiful. I see beautiful every day- but sights like these...

Well, you don't ever forget sights like these.

I have never felt so small.

Then it hit me, 

Right in the stomach, the concept hit me like a ton of bricks aimed directly at my rib cage.

How foolish of me to always be so concerned with myself.

How foolish of anyone!

"Help yourself first?"
"God can you protect ME so I can amount.."

Getting on that plane was a form of me escaping my problems, if even for a short time. Throughout the whole length of the trip, it was all that I was concerned about. MY needs. MY problems.

Problems I could not escape.

Eventually, I knew i would have to come back to the problems I was so eager to leave.

And it occurred to me-

If we focused all of out strength into loving others, then our hurt be a lot less destructive. 

What i mean is this:
World-wide some of the most common advice given is to LOVE.
If we all focused all of our strength on pouring that love into others, if that became our only concern and our only motivation for doing things, then our "individual worlds" would be a lot less shaken by the hand of our own defeats.

And im not talking changing the world, though a movement like that definitely could. Im talking in your personal life, Loving others in return makes it easier to love yourself.

Problems that seemed big, get smaller.
Joy is more prominent because hurt fades away.

I thought about the millions of peoples living around those lights, in those mysterious worldly constellations and how a world of people who were as self-consumed as i had been would create a world of the most dangerous type of hate.

But if we love, we have hope, passion, joy, faith, reason, loyalty, honestly, peace, compassion, laughter, and power...then fear, pain, and sadness cannot defeat us. For love is more powerful still.

I don't know.

 as I exit that plane, and move on my way- I haven't forgotten . I think of it as a sign, a wake up call for me personally. 

We can do better.

Some call her heartless

" some call her heartless?"

No.

many. 

Many call her heartless. Her being me, me being TJ- I have absolutely been called heartless many a time . 

I'm not heartless, though. I have a heart- I hear it beat during anxiety attacks, and when I'm nervous or scared (which occurs often.)

Some call her unemotional .

I have emotions. I feel. I fear, I love, I hate, I hurt.

Im human.

 I may keep them secret, but I can assure anyone that I do, in fact , feel.

Some call her a insensitive.

I'm not. I feel a lot.
For everyone, i feel a lot.
And realistically, i feel too much. I invest a lot in people, trying to assist in their hardships, their heartbreaks, their tough times and tight situations.
I feel for them, but I dont show fear and pain when i am the one who needs to be the support.

Some call her unattached.

Spot on.

I am unattached. When i do things i do them with the knowledge that this person may or may not do the same for me.
I see the best in everyone, but i expect the absolute worst because that is the type of experience i have. 

I care. I do.

But i dont feel sorry for people who have had it tough. I dont show empathy for them.
Though i show respect for the ones that grow despite of it.

I dont trust anyone, because i have never met anyone that has proven they were worth it.
I dont rely on anyone because no one has ever come through.





I am not one to dwell on the past, for it is the past for a reason. But many things have happened in my life that have hurt, and hardened me. Completely.

I thank God for the change in my spirit, and the calming of my heart, for otherwise id not be the free spirit I am today.

People see what they want to see .

In me.

Maybe in you.

They take an outside wrapping and pretend to assume what is inside, like a child with presents on Christmas Eve . They say what they think, then they commit and "know for sure"... When they don't know at all.

I suppose this post is all over the place. 

But in my defense, my thoughts are all over the place as well. 

It comes down to this:

Judgement is not always accurate.

If you really want to get to know someone, you should invest in getting to know them. 

People spend their whole lives bound by the assumptions others make. 

Some call her heartless.

But some don't know her very well.

White Picket Fence

Old movies do it best.

Imagine this: You're outside at a park, watching a film that is being projected on a huge screen 40 feet in front of you in the  middle of the night. Your significant other is on your right, and you both are laying back on a small picnic blanket while the stars shimmer above your head, and the soft whispers of other couples make their way around your ears. Old movies at the park are your favorite.

The film pans, in slow motion, across a cookie cutter neighborhood, with beautiful trees on either side of the street. The camera moves in on a family laughing with their neighbors over the white picket fence that divides the two incredible homes. You are so taken by the beautiful film, you almost dont hear me scoff from about five feet away from your picnic blanket.

But i did. Scoff, i mean.

Call me modern, but i hate the idea of a "white picket fence". Mostly because i have LIVED that way.

I am not talking about the idea people in the sixties and seventies had about living the "american dream" and getting their home in the suburbs. Im talking about the common misconception of a "white picket" lifestyle.

I may be a bit more adventurous then your average young lady, but one thing that drives me nuts are the people that are afraid to try anything.

We are not called to be motionless. And we definitely aren’t called to perfection.

I dare you to move. 

Those white walls, though beautifully decorated WILL come crashing down on your head, that planted grass will poison your step. Those laughing neighbors will betray you because at the end of the day - it is your neck before theirs.

And behind the thick wood, inside closed doors you know you're life isn't the perfect that you allowed it to seem.

I don't want to scare anyone. That is not my intention- to each their own, and to each their home. 

But realistically, the sky is not always the pretty shade of blue we paint it to be. Sometimes the skies turn grey. And that beautiful paved rode we have been driving on turns muddy. 

Fog blurs our vision.

This was my life, for the last year .

Like a mislead old movie, I put up this front- I lead people to believe I lived a perfect life, when behind closed doors, I was slowly crashing.

I took a mental picture of what was happening, and distorted the image until it matched an expectation I assumed others held.

"shes young"

"she has her own apartment"

"she has a loving boyfriend"

"she even has a pet"

"her parents love her"

"she does great in school"

"she graduated early"

"she has three jobs, and is a manager"

"AND she is joining the navy!"

Day in and day out came claims of jealousy. People admitting to wanting my life- with no shame.

Others bragged about knowing me, laughing as they retold my jokes, and narrated my life stories.

THAT GIRL WAS NOT ME.

My parents had to help me out of that apartment that i couldnt afford, my boyfriend had cheated and did so multiple times before i ever knew, my dog was CRAZY and destroyed that apartment i could not afford, i graduated early...like ninety percent of my class because our counselors were on top of it, i never had three jobs in all- i had one job, quit, got another one, quit, got another one and kept it. I was a terrible manager. Terrible.

My grades were not good, because i stopped trying when i decided to join the navy.

...then i dropped out of the navy.

 So there is that.

I thought I was suppose to live a certain way, and meet certain expectations.

My beautiful life, surrounded by my white picket fence was only protecting the inside of a destroyed home on a muddy road. There was a mess where my life should have been, for a long time.

And only recently have I changed to something better.
Only recently have I let myself BE myself.

Only recently have I stopped trying to deceive.  

I am not ashamed of who i have been, or who i am now. Im not ashamed of what i have and have not accomplished. (for there are many of both.)

 I am ashamed because i let myself be defined by the assumptions of others in the fear that i would otherwise not matter, and would otherwise be forgotten.

A wise man once said that we cannot not be defined by our failures.

I disagree.

We can absolutely be defined by our failures, if not our failures then what? what makes us who we are? what teaches us what we have to learn out of a classroom, and out of our homes.

If not failures what influences us to grow, what pushes us to be stronger.

We can absolutely be defined by our failures. Absolutely.

But we are defined by our accomplishments as well. We are defined for our approach to all problems, all defeats. We are defined in the way we treat others. We are defined by the strength in which we fight, the speed in which we respond, and ABSOLUTELY. ABSOLUTELY.

we are defined by our failures.

But we do not have to become our failures.

I guess what i am saying is this:

That "white-picket" lifestyle is beautiful. It is a concept of perfection that we as humans know we cannot meet otherwise. It is an object of jealousy..

but it is tiring. and NOT worth it.

Be who you are.

There is an unspoken beauty in chaos.

We dont have to have it all together- we dont have to be perfect. 

And above all, we don’t have to be afraid of letting people see past those white-picket fences into a disrupted home, a crazy, chaotic, mixed up home- because at the end of the day

Who we are is made by who we’ve been. 

Moment of clarity.

Hello all my lovelies,

We are starting very early on with the guest bloggers! 

This is super exciting for me, because It gives me something new and exciting to look forward to. This is the first blog ever to be posted on here besides my short previous letter- and it was written by a very smart, very talented and AMAZING girl that ive been lucky enough to have spent eight years getting to know. (She is also my roommate ) . I hope you all will enjoy. (:

Love, TJ.

My Moment of Clarity

                There have been times where every girl on earth feels like she isn’t good enough. I don’t care who you are…there was a time where nothing you did could change the way you felt or feel. I recently had a hard time with my self-confidence and self-worth…and I want to share what I have learned.

You can’t change who you are and you shouldn’t have to

                Time and time again I have felt that I was not good enough for anyone because it seemed like no one wanted to be in a relationship with me. I felt like I wasn’t attractive and that I just had to accept feeling unwanted, ugly, and settle to be the friend. Let me tell you right now, that way of thinking is WRONG! It is easy to get jealous and doubt yourself when you constantly have people coming up to you talking about their relationships. Don’t let this get to you and don’t try to change yourself to conform to what you think a guy might like. Be yourself, I know, I know, corny…but it is true. There is a reason you have friends and family that love you. DO NOT change just because one person isn’t bright enough to see your worth. Which leads me to…

Understand who you are and what you’re worth

                One day after you are done moping and you are tired of feeling sad everything will just click. You will come to understand the type of person you are and what you have to offer…I call it understanding your worth. I realized that I was an awesome woman who was self-motivated, beautiful, loyal, smart, and strong. Once I realized these things for myself I didn’t need anyone to reassure me…because FINALLY I believed in myself…I discovered who I was and what I was worth. Why go after a man who is worth 5 dollars when I am at least worth 100? Please, do not mistake that last sentence as me being cocky…I am just trying to make a point: DON’T SETTLE FOR LESS! Now, everyone does this at their own pace and it may take a totally different situation to discover your worth…but one day every woman realizes that she is worth more than she first believed.

Don’t pay attention to the crap others have to say

                Now that you understand your worth this is so much easier to accomplish. I have always been proud of the fact that I never let what others thought of me stop me from being myself…but then I lost that quality and I had a hard time getting it back. Everything was spinning out of control and I lost myself for a while, haha, then it clicked. Once I figured out, and was comfortable with, who I was and what I was about I started not to care about what others thought of me or what they had to say. Fact: everyone has an opinion about what you do, where you do it, and who you do it with. Everyone has an opinion on your life, but at the end of the day it is YOUR LIFE. Do not pay attention to all the crap that people will say about you because it will only bring you down. I have come to think of these people as being jealous and it works like a charm. It is so easy to focus on the negative things and we often remember the negative far longer than we remember the positive. We are only human and we can only block out so much…but if you make just a tiny effort of ignore the bull that people say on a daily then it will make life so much better.

So…instead of doubting yourself and obsessing over things that you cannot possibly change remember what I told you: You can’t change who you are and you shouldn’t have to. If someone doesn’t like the person you are then they can step. Why waste your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate the person you are? Understand who you are and what you are worth. Take the time to discover yourself and what makes you…you. We are often worth a lot more than we realize and when we discover it, it can be a powerful thing. When you know what you are worth there is no more doubt only the drive to succeed. Don’t pay attention to what anyone has to say about you. As long as you are content with how you are living your life and you are happy, why let others ruin it? Stupid people always have stupid stuff to say and if you don’t consider yourself stupid then their opinion should not matter. I speak from experience and this is what I have taken away from it. We all have our moments of doubt and our moments of clarity. 

I thought I would share my moment of clarity.

Peace,

L.J.

A letter to a loved one.

Dear Elijah Ryne,

This blog is not a first.
I have written plenty of times, about plenty of things that hold absolutely no true significance in the great scheme of life--- my life.

It's not that I like to rant.. though i do. It is more or less that I find i need to write, but i know i have nothing really important to say. Or so i thought.

It is interesting, now, that i look back at all of my old posts, all of my old blogs in general and see nothing but a child's chicken scratch complaining about the little things and trying to justify an ignorant opinion by making it sound inspirational. If i was not so hefty minded, i might even feel embarrassed.

Despite all of this, though, i made another blog.

 I could not tell you exactly why i needed another one, maybe just to feed an irrational addiction, possibly just because there are so many versions of myself it is impossible to keep track-

Or maybe it is because i have found the version of myself i want to live my life being. The version of myself that feels right, feels natural.

I think that might just be it:
I found who i am in the midst of everything I am not.

So this is my new start.
Do not get me wrong, i have no intention of changing who i am or who i have been.
My intention is EMBRACING it.

- TJ