Courage and Unconditional Love

It takes courage to be yourself. 

It takes courage to wake up in the morning and choose to expose yourself to hurtful judgement.

It takes courage to stand up for yourself in the face of adversity.

It takes courage to defend your beliefs. 

It takes courage to admit that you may have been wrong.

It takes courage to apologize.

It takes courage to share your secrets.

It takes courage to be kind to people who have been unkind to you.

Life takes courage.

So why do we discourage one another?

Sure, there are bad people in the world. But there are also a whole lot of good ones. There are INFINITELY more people in the world trying to do and encourage good than there are people doing and encouraging bad. 

So why is is that we are often unkind to those who are doing the best that they can in a different way than we are? If we are all doing our very best, the only thing that we should be doing to one another is encouraging. 

I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who love and accept me even though I choose not to participate in something that they hold very close to their hearts. Absolutely the people who love me enough to let me make my own choices and mistakes encourage me to participate in the things that make them happy. I do the exact same thing! I happen to really love red lipstick, Crayola crayons, and snuggling, so I encourage the people I love to try those things because they make me so happy. But if the people I love choose not to, that's okay too. 

Love is something that is, in my opinion, unconditional. That has been my experience, anyway. And just like I said before, I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by people who love and accept me even though we don't share the same beliefs.

Courage and unconditional love are the main ideas behind this blog post which is why I'm about to share something with the internet. I hope that I'll be met with respect and unconditional love, but I know that that may not be the case. 

I'm bisexual. 

Let me explain that a little further. I am attracted to both men and women. This doesn't mean that I'm attracted to any of my female friends. This just means that I don't look at a person's gender when I'm looking at a potential relationship. 

I hope that you all understand that I am literally the exact same person that I was the last time I talked to each one of you. I understand that this is hard news for a lot of people to swallow. I understand that a blog post may be viewed as the best medium for coming out to a very large group of strongly opinionated but lovely internet people. 

But I also hope that you all understand that coming out is as hard and scary for the person coming out as it is for the person that is having someone come out to them. 

I hope that the courage that it took me to share something intimate about myself with you encourages you to be a little more accepting of those who you may not understand or agree with. 

Being yourself takes courage. And I hope that you can have the courage to be yourself as well.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at my email address which you can find by clicking here. 

You can also contact me on Facebook or on my cell phone at (480) 356-2121.

Be kind to one another. I love you all.

Becoming a Functioning Adult: Even More Difficult Than It Sounds

I have been in college for 92 days. Never mind the fact that I just had to stop and count actual individual days instead of just adding the number of days in each month since I got here. That is irrelevant. What is relevant is that in the 92 days that I have been living in the absolutely lovely mountain town of Flagstaff, Arizona and going to NAU (GO JACKS), I have learned a number of things. 

This isn't what the uni's sign looks like right now. But it will be soon!

Below, I will provide you a comprehensive list of important things to know about going to college.

• If you do not own good headphones, BUY SOME. Sometimes it's nice to just plug in to some mindless music and avoid responsibility for a few hours.
• Promising yourself that you will do your homework later is not a good idea. You think you're feeling unmotivated now? You just wait until 3 hours later when you've woken up from a nap in the one patch of sunlight on the floor in your room. THEN you will feel what real lack of motivation is.
• Keeping your room clean is a whole lot easier to do when you're living with someone who doesn't know that nearly every day at home your mom would say to you "You live like a homeless person, PLEASE clean your room."
• Living in a 12x19 box isn't going to be the best thing that's ever happened to you, especially if you have incredibly loud, inconsiderate neighbors like we do. THANKS GUYS

This is our room at night. It's kinda nice with the Christmas lights. Also S/O to sleeping Lindsey in her bed because she has lab at 7am tomorrow. Poor girl.

• Your roommate is going to be the person who listens to you when you cry about the silliest, most trivial things. Be nice to her. She will quickly learn all of your secrets. 
• Having a random roommate just might be the best thing that could have happened to you. I know that this is not always the case, but my roommate and I have become close friends and living together has becomes more of a blessing and less of a chore every day.
• Money gets spent quickly. Only buy the things that you NEED and give yourself a monthly fun budget. Don't be me and end up with $6.50 in your bank account halfway through the semester. 
• Long distance friendships are hard. But it's true that distance makes the heart grow fonder.I have grown to love my best friend even more than I did before we both left for college, and I didn't think  that that was possible. The important thing is that you communicate your needs to one another and understand that you both need to lead your own lives and talk when you both have time. Truly great friendships don't just fall apart because you're not texting 24/7. 
  
  Heaven knows I wouldn't survive without this girl.

• GO TO YOUR CLASSES. Like really. Just because attendance doesn't count for points doesn't mean you shouldn't go.
• Be kind to everyone. Just like in the rest of life, everyone is going through crap. You never know what is going on in the life of the girl who just pushed you out of the way to get on the bus. Assume the best of people and that is what you will usually find.
• There's nothing like my mother's cooking. University food gets real old real fast.

Above all else, I have learned that it is so so important to put yourself first. Over the past few weeks especially, a very special friend of mine has helped me to recognize the importance of helping myself before I help others. I have learned to love spending time with myself. I have learned that before I can do anything for anyone else, I have to make sure that I am taken care of.

Bottom line, college is an experience. And it's an experience that I think everyone should have.

Be nice to each other. We need more of that in the world.

Mentally I'm Still Stuck in the Second Grade

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS ONE OF MY COLLEGE ADMITTANCE ESSAYS AND HAS BEEN REWORKED TO FIT THE BLOG'S VOICE.

In the second grade, I attended Benjamin Franklin Elementary School East Campus in Mesa, Arizona, pictured below.

Beautiful. I know.

Since then, not much has changed. I'm still in the same town with the same kids with the same names who live in the same houses and carry the same sack lunches with the same goldfish crackers and sandwiches and cute notes from their moms. The funny thing is, I don't care for the sameness of this city with its kids and their goldfish crackers and their mom notes.

(I have nothing against goldfish crackers. It's just part of the imagery. Move on.)

Second grade is the first time I remember realizing, however faintly, how much I sincerely disliked the "sameness" of everything around me. Mrs. Aradondo was the name of my teacher. She seemed pretty okay to me at the time (or maybe I just liked her because she had a bunny. That was probably it.) I rather enjoyed her company until one day, I ended up with the wrong phonics worksheet. Instead of sending me home with the correct worksheet like a rational person because it wasn't my fault that I had the wrong one, she kept me in at recess. When I say she kept me in at recess I mean that she made me sit in the breezeway outside of room 26  where I could watch all of the other kids playing. As I sat with puffy red eyes, watching the other kids play while I cried melodramatically over my worksheet, I watched the girls with curled blonde hair, blue eyes, and white sneakers laugh and play. Self consciously, I looked down at my own pink and black sneakers, felt my own brown hair smoothed back into its tight ponytail and thought about my green eyes and freckles. I was different.

I was different. But I was goddamn adorable. That's for sure.

Looking back now, I realize that my emotions could not have been nearly as deep as I recall. But I wish that I could wrap my arms around my tiny, freckled, second-grade self and tell her that the ultimate "sameness" of everything around her was safe for now, that eventually she would see that "sameness" is/was not part of who she would grow to become.

That little girl in my past has become such a large part of who I am today. Physically, I am no longer wearing pink and black sneakers, and my freckles are, for the most part, gone. I've turned out to be a rather attractive person by all accounts of the the word. 

I mean LOOK AT THAT BEAUTY.

But emotionally, mentally, religiously, and morally, I am different than the sameness that surrounds me. There are still days when I feel afraid of being the black sheep in a community of white sheep who avoid my company, and some days it takes everything I have to get out of bed and face the people who have made the past 4 years of my life pretty miserable. But I have come to realize that while sameness is safe for now, I have bigger, more exciting things waiting for me and my differences. 

Mentally I am still stuck in the second grade.

And that is an okay thing to be.

I. Am. Pathetic.

Woah.. Some title for an entry in the "I Can't Get Over My Stupid Ex-Boyfriend" chronicles, huh? Yeah.. That's a thing. We'll talk about that in another post.

So back to the reason behind the title of this post. There seems to be this ideal that is fed to teenage girls (and women in general) that says:

"To get over your stupid ex, eliminate all signs of them in your life. Sever communication with them and friends you made/had as a couple. Delete them from your life entirely and it won't be a problem. You'll move on in no time. No biggy. Whatever."

WRONG.

I tried getting rid of everything! His t-shirt, his headphones, the texts on my phone from him, the couple of phone messages that I had left of him telling me he missed me and saying "Remember. I really really like you." He said that a lot, you know. "No matter what else, remember that I really like you." or "Hey beautiful girl, remember that I really like you." 

Please excuse me while I reminisce for a moment.

Okay. I'm finished. I tried to get rid of everything. (keep in mind that when I say I got rid of everything, it means that I put it in a box in my closet. I know. I'm bad at hard things.) Okay.  So I got all of his things back out because I was worse off without his stuff than I was with it. It has been a month since all of this happened, which leads to why I'm pathetic.

Ready for this?

I don't think you are.

Oh well. I'm going to tell you anyway.

I STILL SLEEP IN HIS SHIRT.

Boom. There it is. The cold, hard truth. That is why I am pathetic. It's not that I don't WANT to get over it. I do! There is nothing I want more than to sit down with him as one of my good friends again. 

So my question to you, my lovely readers, is this:

What helps you move on after a bad breakup?

Do you eat a gallon of your favorite ice cream? Do you watch Gilmore Girls and cry like a little girl while you watch Rory and Dean be in love? Or are you like me and you just wear your ex's t-shirt to bed and feel all twist and upside-down inside? TELL ME. I am willing to try ANYTHING. We can work through it together.

-Nikki

ps. If you ever need someone to talk to, my email is listed here. I'm here if you need someone to listen.

Men with beards are hot and attractive people intimidate me.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that I'm not a terminally awkward, strongly opinionated, oftentimes unenthusiastic, antisocial, cynical, grudge-holding but surprisingly forgiving optimistic realist who gets too involved too quickly, because I totally am. I'm also the neediest independent person you will ever encounter. 

This is me. 

Now that we're acquainted, here are a few things you should know about me accompanied by pictures:

1. I think men with beards are incredibly attractive.

 that beard.

just.. oh my god.

2. On this blog, I will occasionally admire a beautiful woman. No, I am not gay. I just know how to appreciate beautiful people like:

miss Emma Watson

3. I swear. I try to do it tastefully, but sometimes, the best word to use is a curse word. I'll do my best to substitute with other words. But I can make no promises.

or... um... bologna sandwich...? I don't know.

4. I am incredibly intimidated by friendly people who are also  good looking. Whether or not you are intimidating, if you are attractive and friendly,it's going to take me some time to get used to the fact that you want to be my friend. No lie. When I met the girl who is now one of my best friends, I was TERRIFIED to try and be her friend because, get this, she was cute and she wanted to be my friend! I'm not an introvert by an means. But I'm not good at making friends.

5. I get too involved. Don't mind me giving you unsolicited life advice.. I'll be done in just a moment.

6. I support equality 110%. Marriage has somehow come to be politically associated with Christianity. However, Muslims marry, Jews marry, Atheists marry, Buddhists marry. Why not homosexuals? Because the Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman? The Bible also gives implicit directions about how to properly trade your daughter for livestock. Yikes. Not to mention the fact that our nation was founded on a blatant and straightforward separation of church and state. I'm happy to discuss this with you. You can email me here if you'd like to talk about it.

7. I'm going to do my best to be 100% honest with you, my readers, at all times. No fluff, no lies. If you ask, I'll do my best to deliver the most honest, no nonsense (okay maybe some nonsense. have you met me?) answer possible.

So there it is. That's all the information I'm going to give you for now. As we're together longer, you'll get to know me better. And I hope I'll get to know you better too! Until you hear from me again, smile at lots of people, give someone an expected hug, and make your mom proud.

-Nikki