The Boston Red Sox

Baby blue staring in the window pane
Just counting drops of rain
Wondering if she's got the guts to take it
Running down her dreams in a dirty dress,
Now her heart's a mess

Praying she'll find a way to make it

So keep on climbing, though the ground might shake
Just keep on reaching though the limb might break
We've come this far, don't you be scared now
'Cause you can learn to fly on the way down

Fly - Maddie and Tae

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 Tonight I was laying there on the car ride home from getting ice cream with my family. 

I was thinking about my life right now, and what it feels like to me. So often I have felt my success ultimately defined by my relationship status. Not to say that I wasn't extremely ambitious outside of my relationship, but I certainly did not feel like my life was complete and happy unless I had a boyfriend. 

I'm single right now, and for the first time in my life I'm actually content to just be me. Nights can be lonely (and sometimes emotional), and there are certainly mornings where I wish I was waking up to a "good morning" text from someone who loves me, but ultimately I have so much more going on in my life that having a boy around seems insignificant by comparison.

 I have so many expectations and goals for my life, and I'm not willing to settle on them; not for anyone. Not for the firefighter, the business man, the artist, or the golfer. I want the freedom to be whoever I want, say whatever I want, and do whatever the fuck I want. 

My life is going to mean something. I know I'm meant to be someone, and right now I just want to figure out who that is or is supposed to be. And maybe that's not a devastating realization to a lot of people, but it was for me. It was a first, and I am stronger for it. 

So whatever life throws at me, I'm ready but not desperate for it. 

I'm a fighter. 

  

Photograph

We keep this love in this photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Our hearts were never broken
Times forever frozen still

 Photograph - Ed Sheeran

It's midnight and I'm back in your hometown.


It's not very far from my house, but it feels like a totally different world. I'm driving down these streets with the windows rolled down, listening to the kind of music you use to hate. I can smell the ocean that's been carried by the warm breeze tonight, almost as if this quiet town is trying to force your memory into my mind. What it doesn't know, is that I came here so I could remember you. It doesn't need to push your memory into my brain. I'm welcoming it in, because I want to miss you tonight.

 Tonight I want to remember what it was like the first night you ever came to my house. You came by to play video games with my brother, but we both knew that you only agreed to it because you wanted to see me. It was the first time I ever sat around to watch boys play video games, and the only reason I did it was so I could stare at you the whole time. As I watched you pull out of the drive that night, I somehow knew that you were going to become a part of me. A very big part.


Tonight I want to remember that day on the beach when you finally asked me to be your girlfriend. It was sunset and we were supposed to be at a church picnic, but we snuck off by ourselves like we often did (and like we did many times after). You brought me out in the water and picked me up and I wrapped my legs around you. I remember we were laughing and kissing; wet salty kisses with your big soft lips that use to envelop mine. We talked and talked and talked; I couldn't tell you what about anymore. I don't even think it really matters. All that mattered was your skin against mine and the way you were looking at me. You finally leaned in close and whispered "Will you be my girlfriend?". That is still one of my fondest memories. I couldn't say yes enough.

Tonight I want to remember what it felt like to be effortlessly in love. Back when life was simple, and the most complicated factor in our relationship was trying to figure out what your high school schedule was, so I knew when I would be getting a text from you during the day. I remember the days and the nights where I never questioned how much you liked me or how much you loved me. Like that was just a given because I trusted you so much, and you still hadn't given me a reason to not.

I need to remember you tonight because if I don't, I might not ever remember what it was like and I might not ever find it again.

So I'll drive by your house, just so I can feel your arms wrapped around me, laying on the floor of your living room watching Netflix and fooling around. I'll walk down this street so I can smell your cologne and hear you tell me about your dreams. I'll sit in my car and cry just so I can feel something again.

Because tonight I want to miss you.

You Need Me, I Don't Need You

Do you ever watch yourself being awful to someone, and consciously make the decision to do it anyway? It's almost an "out of body" experience.. Like, you can watch yourself in slow-motion and you still make the choice to act that way regardless. 



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I'm not quite sure when I learned to manipulate other people. Honestly, (at risk of sounding melodramatic), I think it started when I took on the responsibility of mediating between my two sets of estranged parents. I learned to tell my step-mom whatever it took to satisfy her desire to make me hate my mother, and I told my mom whatever she needed to hear in order for her to be able to sleep at night. Even as a seven year-old, I knew that in order to keep peace between my households everyone needed to hear something.

I became adept at being able to determine what everyone wanted to hear, and then I served it to them in a way that it made it sound like it was my own original thought. It worked really well, and it definitely kept tensions between my sets of parents to a minimum (the minimum was still pretty concentrated).

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Last night I was out with a guy. I like him well enough and he's decently cute, but he's not all that motivated and he doesn't really challenge me intellectually. He reminds me a lot of Eric Matthews from Boy Meets World: adorable but about as deep as a hot tub. That combination of characteristics doesn't exactly mix to concoct the kind of guy I keep around for very long.

It was about nine o'clock at night and were down on the beach. It had just been pouring rain a couple hours before, so the whole world looked new and refreshed. Like all the ugly had been washed away with the hot Florida rain.

We were sitting there on the bench kissing and he was making me laugh because he is such a goofball. He looked down at me (because he's 6"1 and I'm 5"2) and asked if he was the only guy I was involved with. Before I could even respond he included that he really liked me and I was the only girl he was or wanted to be involved with. 

I made the choice to tell him what he wanted to hear. What he wanted to hear was that I was head over heels for him and that there was no one else I could picture myself with. The truth was and is, that I am involved in one way or another with three other guys, not including him.

I watched myself lie to him as if it were a movie playing right on a movie screen right in front of me. As the words were falling out of my mouth, I started questioning who I was all of a sudden that I could lie in order to keep using someone for what they are worth to me right that moment. For all the years that has been done to me, I swore I wouldn't do that to someone else if I could help it..and yet, here I am doing it to this kid (who's not technically a kid, because he's 4 years older than me).

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When did I become capable of doing that to someone? Am I the only one who thinks that's awful? Why do I give a shit about anyone feelings but my own?

I don't want to live my life always doing the most considerate thing for people who don't mean anything to me. But maybe I should.. I don't know.

There never seems to be a right answer to anything anymore.

What Happened to Bullet Proof Weeks in the Fall

So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep
And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe
And I keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are
Hope it's nice where you are

Last Kiss - Taylor Swift

I will never stop being proud of you.


Every time I see your face, and all the new things you're doing, I smile Matthew. You make me proud every day, and we've hardly spoken in over a year. There were and are so many things I have wanted to say to you. Things you don't want to hear, and things I don't have the right to say, but I still wish you could hear them.

I love you with all my heart and soul, and I will never stop loving you. And it makes me so sad that you can't understand that. To you, I gave up on you a long ass time ago.


I know the exact moment that I crushed you. I can still feel it. It aches like a tumor in the back of my skull. That night in the house that didn't belong to either of us. We had drank together for the first time. Something we had said we would never do, but we had both become very different people during the course of our breakup.

We had some beers and took a shower together. You led me back to the bed and we made love. In the truest sense of the phrase. I needed you and I wanted you and I wanted to feel like everything was going to be okay. If we could just be us for that night, I might be able to go on being okay. Feeling your body and your warmth against me, felt like coming home. Your presence filled the gaping oozing wound that was protruding out of my heart. You were the love of my life and the fact that your life went on without me was starting to kill me. I was such a selfish little girl. Matthew, I wish you could know that I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't realize that I was breaking the both of us.

I woke up the next morning and you were laying next to me. All I could think was how beautiful your face was. I mean, really, you were beautiful to me. You were always the boy that I laid on the floor of my garage talking to all night. The first boy I said "I love you" to. You were my everything. Instead of saying those things to you, I told you that I didn't want to get back together with you. Because I focused on the anxiety I felt over explaining to our friends and family that I took you back. I was always trying to be an adult, even when I didn't want to.

But you never had to take any of the responsibility, Matthew. You didn't get it. I got to be the grown-up and think about all the repercussions of our actions, and you got to be the fun, spunky videographer who believed the whole world was all cupcakes, unicorns, and rainbows. Life didn't work that way and I hate you for the fact that I had to take all the responsibility and that you got to hate me for it. Breana, the big bad bitch who had to constantly splash you with an ice cold slap of reality. And then I got blamed for the fact that life isn't fair. Newsflash! It isn't and it's not my fault that I was preparing for the future and you weren't.

It's hilarious how much you got to blame me for. But were you the one in the CVS in the middle of the night, buying a pregnancy test and sitting in the bathroom next to me while I had to anticipate the most horrible 10 seconds of my life? Or how about having to endure the judgmental looks from the store clerk. You didn't even offer to meet me there. You just wanted to talk about my "options" or how it wouldn't have been so bad to have a family at barely nineteen.

Everything was such a mess last year. I still haven't totally recovered from it. I had a picture for how my life should be, and our relationship killed it Matthew, and I'm not exactly sure where it went wrong when I really think about it. All I can come up with are the words to The Fade. "It's a slow fade, when you give yourself away, it's a slow fade when black and white is turned to gray..". Somehow we had a slow fade from a wonderful relationship, to one of the most toxic I could imagine.

So, when I say that I am so proud of you, and truly so happy that you found someone new, I mean it with every cell in my body. You will always be so special to me. You will always be my Matthew in the back of mind. We grew up together, and I discovered so much of who I am with you, and I will always be grateful for that, and for you, and for the pain and the joy.

I love you.

It Won't Be Like This For Long

It won't be like this for long
One day soon that little girl is gonna be all grown up and gone
And this phase is gonna fly by, so he's trying to hold on
'Cause it won't be like this for long
It won't be like this for long

  

It Won't By Like This For Long - Darius Rucker

I took my sixteen year-old sister out to a country bar for line dancing the other night. My sister and I are best friends, and I would do anything and go anywhere for her. So, when she looked at me at the end of a very long Saturday, and asked me to take her dancing...I went straight to the bathroom and started to get ready. I wasn't terribly excited, but she's such a good kid, and if going dancing for a couple of hours with her older sister is really how she wanted to spend her Saturday night, I will take advantage of it every time. We only have so long to be best friends before she'll grow up and go off to school, get married and life will never be the same as it is right in this moment.

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I spent my early years with her, not being the best sister. At sixteen (she was twelve at the time), I got my first boyfriend. My life and my world revolved around him entirely for almost four years. I totally missed out on some of the most important years of Bailey's life because I couldn't see the forest fore' the trees. I thought she was a nuisance that  God had bestowed upon me to give me a lesson in patience and fortitude.

Being the youngest child at a really trying time in our family's history, means that Bailey got the short end of the stick when it came to attention. During her late elementary to middle school years, our oldest brother was trying to jump off the deep at end at every corner and my parent's soul purpose in life was to keep him from drowning. And while that was going on, I wanted to be anywhere but home. So, I spent all my time and energy with my boyfriend. I don't know what Bailey was thinking or feeling or what those years were really like for her. We shared a room, and there wasn't a night that I turned over and asked her how she was doing. When I think about that now, I am astounded with myself.

As I got older and finally took my head out of my ass, I realized I had been totally missing out on a kid that had always been there for me and the one kid who I acted like it was a chore to be around. One day I turned around and she was the beautiful, strong, intelligent and independent little girl who was begging for someone to pay attention to her. From that point on I was set on getting to know my little sister. Part of it was that I was finally single and I needed someone and part of it was that I had realized that I was missing out on her life. Whatever the reason, I'm so glad it happened.

Bailey makes me stronger every day; she is such a tough kid. She has a strength and defiance in her that I wish I could muster up for myself. I always considered myself tough until I got know Bailey; she is a bulldozer and I am mesmerized by her all the time.


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We got to the bar around 8 o'clock and the parking lot was full to the brim with jacked up pick-up trucks and I was giggling at myself. This place was not usually my scene and I was still trying to figure out why I had agreed to, but Bailey was excited and ready to go. We walked through the door, got our underage wristbands and went inside. There were only a few people on the floor, doing dances that Bailey wasn't very familiar with, so we took a seat at the bar and ordered diet cokes (because we're children, and that's all we could order) and watched the dancing. It was mostly some older couples who, you could tell, had been doing this for years. They could practically do these dances in their sleep.

I was completely enamored with the whole scene. It was like something straight out of Hope Floats. Bailey and I just there for a long time watching, commenting, and sometimes laughing at the other spectacles going on around us. Finally, a song came on that Bailey recognized and she dragged me out onto the floor. Bailey knew all of the steps and I was fumbling my way through mimicking her foot work. It was hilarious and I was cracking up the whole night. I'm not half as smooth as I once was, and Bailey looked like she belonged there.

She has a funny way of being able to adapt to any situation she's thrown into. I've yet to find one area where she can't completely take over and fit right in. I believe strongly that God put Bailey in my life as a way of stretching me and pushing me to grow. I will never be as mystifying as Bailey, but she certainly makes me different just with her presence. I'm so blessed to have her as a sister.

Don't ever take your family for granted. There is more to be learned there, than you could ever expect or understand. Let go of your pride - there is a reason that God placed each person in your life. I know that now, better than anyone. 

Lets Talk About Sex Baby

I was barely fourteen when I had my first kiss.

His name was Kyle, he was seventeen and I was pretty sure I was in love with him. We had grown up in small town Georgia and I was his little sister's best friend. I had always looked at Kyle like he hung the moon. In my mind, he was the perfect boy to be with. I loved his family, he believed in Jesus, and we were destined to be together because we had been friends for such a long time. In my mind, my life was going to be like Sweet Home Alabama. I was going to marry Jake.

So, at fourteen years-old, I was determined to get Kyle to kiss me. In my mind, we would sit on the roof of his house, look up at the stars and talk about how much we liked each other. Then, toward the end of the night, he would lean in and gently kiss me on the lips. That's exactly how it happened in my mind, and that's exactly how I thought Kyle would want it to happen too. It would be the perfect first kiss.

In reality, Kyle lead me the upstairs bathroom of his house. It smelled like adolescent boy BO, sulfur water, and urine. Without any romantic build up, he leaned in and kissed me and almost immediately stuck his tongue down my throat. He started to feel me up and then he pulled me to the floor of his unkempt bathroom, sat he on his lap and started to grope and dry hump me. That turned very quickly into him finding a way to get his hand down my shorts. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't really want it and I wasn't even aware of what fingering was until that night (I had to go home and Google it). He never asked me what I was okay with, what I wanted or how I was doing with what was going on. This was the first time I let a boy take advantage of me, and it wouldn't be the last.

The very next boy that kissed me was on my fifteenth birthday. He kissed me on the side of my grandma's house. He put his hand under my bathing suit and forced my hand onto his erect penis even though I said no and forcefully removed my hand. He just forcefully replaced my hand there. It was one of the sloppiest kisses I have ever received. I'm pretty sure his tongue was not only in my mouth but also all over it and around it. It was repulsive. But I let it all happen, and I only had a bigger crush on him after it.

Fast forward about four years and here I am on a date with an older guy. He has a job and a car and I feel so special that he likes me. He says all the right things, and tells me how intentional he wants to be about building a relationship with me. I thought that finally I could have my fairytale.

Well, his version of a fairytale was sitting in the back of his care on our second date, pressuring me into giving him a blowjob. I just wanted him to like me for me. For once in my life, I wanted a guy to be interested in my heart and my mind, and not what I could do for him. But I did anything he wanted me to that night, because I wanted the picture of the fairytale so badly. I still cringe when I think about how awkward it was and how continued to ask me to do things that I didn't want to do, and the things he did to me that I wish I never had to remember.

I wish these were the only memories I had like this, but they're not.

I don't want to give the impression that I was helpless in any of these circumstances. I was a big girl and I made my own decisions and trade-offs. But all throughout these experiences, the main thing I learned, was that beating guys to the topic was the way to never have to feel forced into anything ever again.

So I'll send nudes, I'll incite physicality, and I'll do anything I have to do in order to never feel like a man has that kind of power over me ever again. No one will ever make me feel helpless and empty and sad ever again, because I won't let them. They don't get to be special, and it doesn't get to be their idea anymore. 

Cleaning Out My Closet

I'm sorry baby girl..

I am so sorry that your life isn't exactly the picture of fair. I am so sorry that you don't get the opportunity to love your mom and dad equally. Because in broken homes...there is always a good guy and a bad guy. I know how unfair it is, to have to go back and forth from one home to another. And dad is always mad at mom, and mom is always mad at dad.

I know how hard it is when your stomach starts turning to knots because you're so scared that mom is broken, and that it's your fault. It sucks that you're always looking out for your parents feelings and trying to protect them from each other. It's funny how being the kid of a broken family makes you acutely aware of everyone's feelings and you spend more time trying to take care of them, than yourself. Parent's always think they're the one's trying to protect you, when in reality you work just as hard at taking care of them. It sure makes you grow up faster than you wish you had.

Everyday makes you who you are. You will be tough, you will be vulnerable, and you will yearn for a life your parents couldn't give you. That's probably why you want to be married and have a family so badly. You want what wasn't given to you to begin with. And that's okay.

Already Callin' You Mine

Dear L,


I almost told you I loved you, and I think you could tell I was getting really close. I don't know why in the hell you decided to leave without any explanation after some of the wonderful things you said to me...and the way we looked at each other. I just don't get it, and I've never had anyone walk out on me in this way before.

I guess it really doesn't matter why. It was probably for the best. If I was honest with myself, I couldn't be with you. You were too old, and we didn't believe enough of the same things about life, but our chemistry was undeniable. I would have given up the world for that chemistry...and I was about to. Thank God I didn't get the opportunity.

My only hope is that one day you'll man up enough to give me an explanation. I've already let you go, but I just want to know why. What happened L? We were so good. We had so much fun together. I just want to understand, so that I can figure it in my mind.

Either way, as much as you hurt me with ignoring my texts and phone calls, I don't even really care. What I got to experience with you, will always be worth it. How we were together reminded me that fairy tales really do happen, and that my romantic expectations have been gruesomely low. Thank you so much for the laughs and the cuddles and the kisses and everything else. I will always cherish this past month as one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

You were an adventure.