Make Life Happen For You. I Am.

Before I dive into the title, I have to give my back story. If not, this blog post wouldn't make sense, and hence why I labeled it as part one.

My story:

I remember having the time of my life as a kid. I had amazing friends, I laughed, I rode my bike around the neighborhood with our made up bike gang and climbed trees to spy on neighbors. I remember thinking how I didn't want to grow up. I was that child who going into middle school still wanted to pretend Santa was real, and who used my very broad imagination to play dogs, make up games and pretend there was life outside of life as I saw it right before my eyes. It was fun, until it wasn't. It was like I had my eyes closed, living an amazing life and someone forced me to open them and face reality.

As middle school approached, I remember peers on the bus making comments about how it was lame that I didn't curse yet, and some of my girls who had "matured" faster than me saying over and over again how they couldn't wait to grow up. It was crazy to me. I didn't get it. Still, I tried to be a kid. I had my close group of friends so it wasn't that hard, and it worked... for a while.

Then I went to high school. I got on the high school swim team, a club swim team and took honors classes. It was what high schoolers who had goals to go to college did. I still tried to have a happy medium of enjoying life but fitting in with the cool crowds. In other words, I was "struggling" to work a kid-teenage life balance.

And then my parents moved me 900 miles away from the only life and friends I knew. And it just got worse. The club swim team got harder. The academics were now concerning preparation for college. The friends I made were more mature than my friends at my old school to the point they thought I was a lesbian because I didn't have a boyfriend. I mean, I flirted, and had boys who were friends, but a boyfriend-- as if. I was too young for that... atleast in my eyes. But it was like now I was being judged for not growing up. That was fun to them, so I started wondering if my definition of fun was the wrong definition.

There I was, suddenly realizing and wondering why my idea of reality, fun and growing up was not how everyone else did it... what was I missing?

So I did what they told me to. They as in my parents, society, colleges, etc. I tried to grow up. And where did that get me… the darkest times of my life. Seriously.

It was engrained in my soul that college had to be paid for because it was so expensive. So I guess I can be grateful because it’s true, my college did end up getting paid for. I was told that I had to get an academic scholarship or athletic scholarship, so of course I chose the athletic scholarship. I ended up getting full tuition to a 4 year private college for swimming, and graduated with a bachelor of science in elementary school dictation from a school whose tuition was 30k yearly. Wow. That makes alot of sense.

I swam day in and day out in high school working toward colleges scouting me out. Because of this goal mindset, I did not have that high school fun experience. While my friends were drinking, socializing, staying up late, passing curfew and getting boyfriends, I was not. Not even a little.

My days were spent applying to colleges, writing personal cover letters, updating my swim times after each swim meet and going on college recruiting trips. Those few college visits were probably the only time I got to see what “freedom” was. I mean I love my parents, but they were older and didn’t understand how things had changed. They didn’t realize (and I kind of didn’t either until senior year when it was almost too late) that I had helicopter parents. But I finally got a taste of a new kind of fun: freedom. I realized that was the definition of fun that my peers were talking about since middle school.

Can you guess where this is going?

Fast forward: I get to college and I can’t even exaggerate the way I write this: I. WENT. WILD.

I don’t need to tell you in grave detail what that means, as I’m sure majority who read this actually went to college too, but mine included: Greek life, sex, boys, alcohol, and partying while making sure I stayed above a 3.0 each semester. Being on scholarship I only had 4 years to graduate so I ended up taking summer classes because I changed my major twice, after having come in as “undecided”.

And so the point of my story “starts” here. I fell down that American norm/wanna be American dream which only led me to the next SIX darkest years of my life… In other words, I became completely, uncontrollably, and ultimately lost. I somehow lost fun along the way, and with that, I lost who I was.

I was not happy though I wore a smile on my face so the world thought I was. My friends and family still to this day are shocked when I tell them I wasn’t happy in college. But I was lost. And confused. I didn’t understand how that (what I was doing then) was my life. I kept questioning it. Why was I going to a 30k a year college to get a degree in teaching? Why was I dedicating 24 hours a week swimming to pay for this 4 year basic degree. All of while I’m seeing people living out their dreams traveling, writing, just… LIVING. They knew who they were, what they were doing, and I was desperate to find out how. HOW.

Because what I was doing was not living. In fact I was doing the opposite: I was killing my self. With alcohol and blacking out. With insecurities by giving myself to guys who didn’t respect me. By forcing a smile and not admitting the real emotions going on inside of me.

It wasn’t until a few nights of traumatic and very specific events that I realized something was wrong. Seriously wrong about who I thought I was and what I thought I wanted:

1. LOVE. I almost married a guy that I know I would have cheated on if we got married because I wanted what my friends had: the ring, the wedding, the house, the dog… notice how I didn’t say the relationship? The love? The chemistry? Because that I didn’t have. Not with him.

2. FUN. I got a DWI. I didn’t know my life could hit such a low until I saw the sirens and had handcuffs on my wrists. But that chase to hide my emotions with substance led me to something I thought would NEVER happen to me, and yet it did.

3. MONEY. I tried a call center job because I wanted to make more money and when I say I never knew what a personal hell would be, I learned it in that one week. My personal hell was a call center. It was the worst week in my entire life. I was getting dumber everyday.

I had the wrong definitions of these things that I actually wanted because I wasn't listening to myself but others as to what they thought it should look like, and not to what I actually wanted it to look like for myself.

And so, part two is where it really gets good. Why? Because you will see how easy it is to make such an amazing life for yourself, no matter what you have been through. The secret? (no pun intended if you have read the book The Secret... hehe) It all starts with I AM.

After 6 years of darkness, being lost, AND pulling myself out of this victim, "woe is me" mentality, I figured it out: I AM making my life happen, rather that be good or bad. But finally, it is GOOD.