On gratitude and growth

"It took a health scare to re-prioritize"- Front Row, Alanis Morissette

Got into a car accident Saturday morning. 10am my life almost changed forever in a potentially physically irreparable way. I was driving on my way to upstate New York with my sorority sister Emily. We were ironically on the way to the funeral for my big sister's mother who was killed in a car accident two weeks ago. We were at an intersection stopped at a stop sign, and all of the sudden another car totally slammed into us, on the driver's side. It all happened in a flash. Before we knew it all four air bags deployed(as a non-driver I wasn't aware that some cars came with four air-bags) and the car started filling with smoke. Emily turned to me and told me she couldn't hear anything, her voice shaking. I reached down to the floor of the passenger seat and grabbed for my phone which Emily told me to get and call 911. I felt awake and alert, but as the smoke filled the car I started to realize what happened. I remember speaking in short shaky phrases. "In a car accident. car filling with smoke. do we get out or stay in the car?" The operator kept telling me to calm down, which they always do, but I couldn't think straight. Hell, I didn't even know where we were. She said if we could we should get out of the car. I yelled at Emily "GET OUT OF THE CAR!" I opened the door and got out. Emily couldn't open her door so she had to climb out the passenger side. The next few minutes were kind of blurry. Emily calling her parents crying, me noticing her beautiful blue smashed in car, handing my phone to a man to talk to 911, a cute, skater-looking girl who appeared no more than 19, standing shaking and crying saying she dropped her glasses. I saw Emily's car and then realized the girl is the one that hit us and looked at her car. I started to shake.

Cops came and took down our info. A tow truck came and hauled Emily's car away.  The paramedics and the tow truck people said the car was totaled and told Emily to grab anything valuable out of the vehicle.  An ambulance came. Emily and I and the girl who hit us all were shaken but not hurt. The girls father came and was really sweet and seemed glad his daughter and the people she struck were all okay. I banged my knee, probably on the dashboard so Emily and I climbed into the ambulance for them to look at it. They asked us if we wanted to go to the hospital. Sitting in the back of the ambulance my anxiety started to set in and I kind of wanted to go and get checked out. I also realized that my knee was probably fine as I was able to walk on it and bend it, and I didn't want to be a hypochondriac. We decided against going to the hospital. They asked us if there was someone we could call to come get us. I called Rachel, another sorority sister who was en route to the memorial but turned around and came back to get us. The ambulance dropped us off up the road at a nearby McDonalds leaving me with an ice-pack as a parting gift. How strange it must have looked for two girls to walk out of an ambulance and into a McDonald's. I noticed a few stares but I was too in shock to laugh at the absurdity.
Rachel picked us up ten minutes later and we met up with everyone at a restaurant as we had missed the service.
I woke up today sore with a few bruises but overall feeling good. Feeling grateful. Grateful for seat belts, and to my mother for enforcing mandatory seat belt usage since I was a child. Grateful to whoever invented air bags. Had we not been strapped in with seat belts and had four air bags this could have been a very different story. Grateful to such amazing friends who all were so concerned and who have texted me today to check up on me and see how I am. Grateful for my mom for giving me a hug, something I don't usually get from her and am not ordinarily comfortable with but appreciated it nonetheless. Grateful to be able to have walked away from this awful, crazy, scary day uninjured.

2013 has been really rough. I have been through a roller coaster of emotions over the last two months that have left me dejected and numb. What this experience taught me was that I have spent the last two months focusing on what I didn't have that I completely forgot/ didn't appreciate all that I did have.
I have family and friends that are all so supportive and kind and amazingly caring. I have my health and I have a future that is bright both professionally and personally. Life is about making choices that will teach you something. Not all choices will go your way, or work out the way you had hoped. The important part of life is to be bold, to be honest, to try new things, and learn from your mistakes. Grow as a person and evolve with the seasons. Don't fear change, but welcome it as it is a chance to be a new and better you. Surround yourself with kind, respectful, caring people who value you and who make you happy. Keep your loved ones close and let go of the negativity. Have and give love, have and give honesty, have and give appreciation for all that you have, and most of all be happy...you're alive.

just a thought

The ones you think you can trust you shouldn't assume you can----trust is earned not freely given no matter how long you have known someone(or how short).

countdown to graduation: exactly four months !!!!!
countdown to when the job search begins: 5 weeks

The monologue that sums it all up for me

"Please don't tell anyone this. I want to be happy. Yeah but I didn't think that I did. I made a promise such a long time ago that I was going to take in experiences, all of them so that I could tell other people about them so that I could save them but it gets so tiring trying to take in all the experiences for everybody, letting everyone say anything to me, and then I came here, and I see you, and you've got the fruit and the bowls and the fridge with the stuff and the robe and you touching me and I realize that I am not different, ya know, I want what everyone wants, I want what they all want. I want all the things. I just want to be happy. You know there's all these experiences that I feel like I've asked for. Things like who in their right mind would want that. You know like one time I asked someone to punch me in the chest and then cum on that spot, like that was my idea that came from my brain and its like what makes me think I deserve that. And then I remember that when I was three I told my mom that my babysitter had touched my vagina in the bath and my mom thought I was lying--obviously, and probably I was and whether I was lying or I was telling the truth something is broken inside of me. The thing that I didn't realize before I met you was that I was like lonely in such a deep deep way. You know that I was reaching for all this stuff but all I really needed was to look and someone and realize oh that person wants to be there after I am dead, you know? You think I am a crazy girl? If anything I think I am just too smart and too sensitive and too like not crazy so that I am feeling all of these big feelings and containing all this stuff for everybody else and its like okay I read this article about Fiona Apple in New York Magazine where she said "oh, everybody acts like I am nuts. I am not nuts I just want to feel it all. That's what I'm like I just want to feel it all."-Hannah Horvath, GIRLS(S2ep5)

sundays

"There's something about Sundays that makes you want to kill yourself"
Having a particularly sad Sunday. I think I dreamed about you last night...you with her...with someone else...happy. I woke up sad. Luckily, I don't remember a lot of the details of the dreams. It's still hard everyday knowing you made a choice. A choice that wasn't me. I will pray everyday that we get a chance. I pray that by the time the snow has melted, and the sun is shinning, the flowers are blooming and the grass is bright green, you will come find me. I pray that you will realize there are no two people better suited for each other than you and I.
I pray that this pain is worthwhile, that it is going to serve a greater purpose, a purpose so grand I cannot have the foresight to comprehend it right now, but when it happens, this pain will all make sense.
this has to all make sense...