Lil' Birdee

So it looks like I may once again be a Florida resident. What a strange turn of events. I am staying with my mom here over the summer. She lives in a really cool, laid-back beach town. I am literally ten minutes away from the beach. I went to work with my mom one day and busied myself with looking out the window at the pretty water down below, and I spotted a family of manatees. Apparently dolphins also frequent that area. I hear a lot of stories about people going kayaking or swimming with the manatees. They are super-friendly, gentle giants. At one point this summer, I would really love to go kayaking with the manatees. That has been one of dreams for years.

I never thought I’d move back to Florida anytime soon, but my situation in Utah has been difficult lately. I was diagnosed with an eye disease called Stargardt a little over a year ago. It’s a degenerative disease, meaning it may grow worse with time and at this point, there is no medical cure for it. It may sound dramatic and depressing, but it hasn’t been that way for me. If it weren’t for my eye disease, I wouldn’t be going to college and would still be a slave to the fast food industry. I also wouldn’t have started taking better care of my body and would probably still be complaining about things all the time. I have learned to appreciate the little things in life and am a lot more motivated in pursuing my dreams and taking risks.

But transportation is a pain in my butt. When I was diagnosed with my eye disease, I lost my driver’s license. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful I don’t have to drive anymore. I have a paralyzing fear of driving. But if you have ever been to Utah, you know how spread out it is and it can take forever to get from one place to another. Where I can’t drive, I take the bus and I live about three miles away from the nearest bus stop. And the only way to get there is to walk, whether rain or sunshine. Too bad Utah is cold and snowing nine months out of the year. Within this last year, I’ve had mono and lung infections and a sprinkling of colds. It doesn’t matter how sick I am. If I have class that day, it doesn’t matter if it’s a blizzard outside. No matter what the weather is, I have to put on my big girl panties and tough it out.

When I manage to catch the bus, it takes me an hour to get to school. I may only have one class that day. Going home takes two hours because of the way the bus schedule works. It is seriously a major pain in my butt and I have only recently begun to acknowledge this. Since I’ve been in Florida, I’ve been outside every day and I feel great! My Utah pastiness is quickly dissolving into a nice brown tan. I started to entertain the idea of moving back when I discovered that my mom lives only a short mile away from a college. That way I can balance school, work, and a social life and it will only take around 15 minutes to travel to and from school. For me, this is a dream come true.

School isn’t the only reason why it would be nice to live here again. My brother lives only an hour away and I really miss him. Since he moved out, I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with him and I think he’s really excited about me possibly moving back because he gets pretty lonely when his fiance is traveling for work. It worries me a little bit to be moving back in with my mom since we used to fight so much, but our relationship has mended a lot over the last three years and I think we will be perfectly fine, as long as I work hard to make friends and build a life for myself here. My mom is a really awesome lady and I have come to truly appreciate her over the last few years. There is a part of me that is sad about moving out of my dad’s house because I’m very close to him and always have been. But my relationship with my step-sisters and occasionally my step-mom has had a very negative toll on my self-esteem. I don’t feel like I have any kind of a sibling bond with my step-sisters. I feel very out of the loop and as if I’m not quite sure where I fit in. And my step-mom can be moody and overly-critical of me sometimes. I know she cares about me and wants to see me succeed in life, but sometimes it’s like I’m walking on eggshells around her and I can’t take it anymore.

I’m also sad about leaving my four year old niece behind. I love her a lot, she is my favorite little kid and I was really looking forward to watching her grow over the years. Even if I end up moving here and will be far away, I think I can still manage to have a close bond with her by talking to her on the phone and sending her little gifts in the mail.

I dug up all of my old diaries from when I was growing up. I started keeping a diary when I was 7 years old and stopped writing in them when I was 15. A lot of my diaries are fun to read because they remind me of times that seem like a lifetime ago, so distant in memory I almost wonder if it ever happened. I really got a kick out of reading my earlier diaries. I was a very strange and creative child. The diaries I kept during 8th, 9th, and 10th grade are really hard to revisit because those times were so rough. I mainly wrote about the boys I liked and how much I wanted a boyfriend, which is boring and depressing.

I really want to pick up writing in a diary again because it is so therapeutic for me and helps me to process the events of my life better. Lately, I’ve been feeling like my days are passing by in a blur and I want to feel like I’m living my life in the present. I have felt very strange the past while, as if my mind is on auto-pilot, simply moving through the motions. I don’t know what I need to do to wake up, but I’m hoping revisiting my journals and keeping a new one will help.

The past few months have been good for me because memories from my 8th grade year have been swirling at the back of my mind and I’ve been feeling a lot of emotions I associate with that time of my life, which is both good and bad. My 8th grade year was probably one of the hardest years of my life because I had recently changed schools and wasn’t adjusting well to my new one, I didn’t have a lot of friends,  I gained a lot of weight, and was experiencing the general array of horomonal teen angst. Even though it was mostly a bad time of my life, a lot of good things happened too but I never seemed to remember the good parts. I only focused on the negative and carried a lot of the anger and resentment from that year on into most of my high school days.

At first it was very painful to reflect on my 8th grade year and to feel some of those same emotions resurface, as if they had never truly left but instead taken refuge deep inside myself. Now I am very thankful for this time of reflection because I have come to terms with a troublesome part of my past, to the point where I have slowly begun to remember the good times and feelings of that year. It is very strange to think how I wouldn’t come to fully process that part of my life until seven years later.Now my mind is beginning to involuntarily reflect on the first few years of high school, which also seem largely unresolved. I am very open to the experience now that I know of the peace this level of resolution has given me.

jedees:

in case you were curious as to why I hated everything yesterday

Wow. When I first saw this, I danced for like twenty minutes because I was so giddy. Oh, my life. No wonder I have a crush on him. He’s talented, he’s a ginger, and he’s got one smokin’ bod. You British men are going to kill me!

Hello, I recently created a blog for my art. If you’re interested, please check it out! It would mean a lot to me if you did. Here is the link:

http://jungle-jenna.tumblr.com/

diabolique-mon-ange:

Concept Art World » Armand S. Baltazar 

(Source: drunkonstevphen, via ravenbloodstone)

swedishsopranofish:

Small pic of Earl Carpenter 

He is my favorite Phantom.

justanothertroublekid:

Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known? God gave me courage to show you you are not alone…

boxfive:

Earl as Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard UK Tour

mysecretgarden21:

Earl Carpenter ‏ “ Hello Newcastle and what a welcome …. already have a cut on the side of my eye! #fightwithtransferbus ” 

tumble-through123:

Earl Carpenter

(via wanderingchild)

alvadee:

Thomas Schulze

Hamburg “Neue Flora”, Germany

(Source: , via dasperfume)

It seems like everyone is getting the opportunity to see Earl Carpenter and John Owen Jones perform in the Phantom of the Opera UK tour, and here I am just chillin’ in the United States… I wish I had the money to purchase a ticket and fly to England. I especially want to see Earl Carpenter. From what I’ve seen on you tube, he’s phenomenal. He adds a depth and tenderness to the Phantom I’ve never seen before. Plus, he’s quite the babe in real life. I think I may have a crush…

thenewyorkway:

Literally me.

(Source: killthebubblegumbitch)