25 Truths

1. I am impatient with both myself and others. This has led me to make many hasty and rushed decisions —of which have resulted in regret sometimes and elation others.
2. I will expend most, if not all of my energy before asking for help.
3. There is something very therapeutic to me about packing.
4. I am happy to say that I have grown up alongside a sister and best friend who makes the hard easier and the good better. She is all light and I am blessed to have her.
5. In the past, I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to be good and trying to be liked. I think I’m finally entering a season of life where I just want to be myself, whoever that may be.
6. I recently adopted a puppy. My stumbles, breakdowns, and easily worn patience in my new role as a puppy mom has me questioning if I’ll ever be nurturing and attentive enough to mother a human baby.
7. I struggled my freshmen and sophomore years of college with an eating disorder.
8. My youngest sister has Down Syndrome. I hate God the most in moments when I look at her and think of all of the things she will not get the chance to do or be, but I love God the most in the breathtaking moments where I am reminded of all the good she is and all the joy she is.
9. I have been in love with writing since the 7th grade when a poem I submitted to a competition was selected to be published.
10. For me, graduating college felt like a landslide, where I
    was losing my footing as time, opportunities, and memories seemed to be slipping out from under me. I feel rushed to be all I’m going to be and do all that I’m going to do.
11. I would happily eat dessert for every meal if it was socially acceptable.
12. In the past four years, I have spent stretches of time as a devout Christian and a passionate Atheist. I have landed at a place where I harbor neither absolute certainty nor complete disbelief for God. I waver between hope and doubt daily but am confident that whatever or whoever gave us this earth and these lives made us of and from love.
13. In fight-or-flight situations, I routinely choose flight. Whether my escape route is quitting, moving, sleeping, or staying in, flight is my most destructive self-preservation method.
14. With that said, self-deprecation is my most comical self-preservation method.
15. My biggest fear is being stuck. Figuratively and literally. An inability to move or “fleet” (see #13) terrifies me to my very core.
16. I’ve spent countless hours the past 8 years at either my dentist’s office or my oral surgeon’s office having bridges placed and removed, having bone grafting done, implants placed, and crowns fitted because I was born without two of my front teeth. I worry constantly that my implants are going to fall out of my mouth, which is irrational and ridiculous.
17. I think there is something really brave and beautiful about being able to free yourself and someone else when a friendship is no longer centered on growing and serving each other.
18. I fail miserably at being lukewarm. I am either fully committed or completely uninterested. There is nothing there for me between the two extremes.
19. I am more afraid of marrying the wrong person out of haste than I am of never getting married at all.
20. I am infuriatingly task-oriented. It actually pains me to start a project and get up from it while it’s unfinished.
21. Besides writing and posting this, the most honest and vulnerable thing I’ve ever done was perform at an open mic poetry night. It was calming and terrifying to stand in front of a room full of strangers and read pieces of my soul aloud.
22. I have been surrounded my entire life by delicate and strong feminine energy and even still on my best days, I feel that I fail, at least a little, at being evenly firm and soft simultaneously.
23. I have learned the hard way that, as a woman, if your self-worth is wrapped up in the friends you have collected or the stares you receive from boys that when the friends leave and the boys turn their heads, you are left completely shattered. Your worth cannot be rooted in the fickleness of others because people change their minds.
24. I am working on being less critical of myself and others, but my mind’s natural reflex seems to be to analyze and judge.
25. I am obsessed with love and grace. Sitting with your hands full of both seems to be the magic that everyone is so desperately seeking. I firmly believe that love and grace can heal just about anything, but I’m confronted daily with how flawed the love and grace that I give myself and others truly are.

Love always,