Day 30

There's nothing quite like 

the silent companionship

of a loyal dog

Day 28 and 29

I will bite through my
lip with my very own teeth
and show you no tears

The clock ticks along
to the pulse of my own heart
years are passing by

Day 26 and 27

Your voice to me is
a lighthouse while out at sea
I come and I'm home

It is enough to
look in the mirror and like
what looks back at me

Day 25

Some days the walls of
our fish tank are barriers
and others, windows.

Day 24

We are all just a

lot of water with some blood

and fucked up feelings

Day 23

Just because someone

let it happen does not make 

that action ok

Day 22

I've been loosing sleep.
I toss and turn, the bed feels
too big without you.

it's only Wednesday…?

Day 21

I have cried today
and that's ok, we all need
to release what hurts.

Hell yeah that's bread.

Read between the lines

If books have taught me anything

 (and they’ve taught me a lot)

it's that you are a beautiful person

by no other definition

than the fact that

I find you beautiful

in your own way

in the way you see me

in the way you see the world

The Second thing 

I have learned from books

 (if I've learned anything)

is that

for the love of God

do not let that

beautiful person

go

Day 20

I'm in the middle

not quite miserable, yet not

quite happy either.

My grandfather's flannel

The Buddha in the Attic

My first book review of the year! 
And I'm starting off with 
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.

In Otsuka's Pen/Failkner Award Winning novel for fiction we follow the lives of Japanese picture brides in the early 1900's. We follow the many stories of these women as they travel by boat from their home lands to this new foreign country. We are with them as they meet their husbands, work, and bare children throughout their new lives in America.  Through Otsuka's beautiful writing style we become one with these women and their lives, we feel their journey as if it were our own.

I give this book 9 out of 10 stars

I LOVED this book.  The title and the cover caught my attention at first, I had never heard of it and I just picked it up and decided to give it a try.  Man am I glad I did.  It's a super quick read it's only about 130 pages roughly.  I love Otsuka's writing style, she doesn't write in the conventional sense of perspective.  Instead of writing from one woman's point of view or even a third person omniscient perspective but from the perspective of the group of women collectively.  It's so interesting and I've never read anything written quite like it.  Overall this book is a wonderful look at a culture and time period radically different from our own. It's a great mix of history with a fictional voice, I highly recommend it.  This is the second of Otsuka's novels and you can be sure I'm going to read her first. So if you like this one, stay tuned for When the Emperor was Divine.

Day 19

Nothing is so good
as wonderful company
and a full stomach

Kara's mug

Day 18

We dance in the dark
the night as black as out hearts
with no moon at all.

"the weather outside is frightful
but this coffee is damn delightful!"
…I think I'm so clever...

Day 16 + 17

The persistent clock,

last night...

minds ever wander, mouths yawn.
Why are we all here?

AND today!

Man is love a bitch

it breaks, destroys, complicates

and we beg for more

Day 15

Never get so lost

in somebody else that you

forget who you are

My Moraine ID…it could be worse...

Day 14

it was over when
i realized that your dog
liked me more than you did

Let me hear ya!

So I've reached 3,500 views on my blog, WOOO! Thanks guys!
But now I ask one more thing of all you guys out there, let me hear you!
I want to know your thoughts! Clearly there are people looking, roughly 50 to 100 a day and I wanna hear what you'd like to see more of, what you don't like,what you like about it already, anything and everything!
I'd love to hear from you, I may not be able to do everything you ask but I'd really appreciate and consider it and do what I can.
Thank you!!!

Day 13

At Moraine at 8am

One day you will find
how to see beauty in the
things one cannot see

Wish me luck!

So it is the eve of my Moraine Valley excursion, classes start tomorrow, and I gotta say I'm a little nervous.
It's a daunting task starting all over again, new places new people, I know I'm home again but still things have changed. 
Of course with me I'm going to worry about parking and getting to the right places and buildings for my classes.  I just wonder how I'll feel at the end of the day.  Will I be exhausted and completely spent or will all my worrying have been for nothing, we shall have to wait and see.
It's scary at going at something alone and knowing no one can come along with you and make it better, or help you through it, there is only you.  
But it is also with things exactly like that, that there is a very empowering feeling afterwards when you've made it through all on your own. I'm hoping that's how I'll feel at the end of the day.  For now I'll just have to deal with the nervous jitters.
Wish me luck.

Day 12

"You're not a paintbrush.
You're not anyone's paintbrush.
You are the artist."
-inspired by Alex Miller

Day 11

The happiest of campers today

I want to peel back

my own skin because you are

crawling beneath it.

Day 10

I whisper your name

like a prayer between my sheets.

Your name, always yours

waiting in the Concetra Clinic…again….

What are we waiting for?

You know I have found that there is nothing quite so sobering as registering for community college.  If only because you're given so much time to wait, think, and reflect on your life choices.  
I probably waited a collective 3 hours yesterday while registering and for the first time in my life I did not think to bring a book with me so I had a lot of time to just sit and think.
This is kind of what I came to at the end of all of it.
I love my parents, I am so lucky for my family because I know that it's not as common today to have both parents still together and so supportive of pretty much everything I choose to do.  However this means I have done very little without their assistance, and I made the decision with coming home that I needed to do more of that. I don't think it's that I couldn't, I just needed to start pushing myself to figure it out on my own.
So I went to register alone.  
I know what you're thinking, my god, this girl is almost 20 and she hasn't registered for school on her own (which isn't completely true, I successfully and quite easily registered at Millikin on my own for all three semesters, hence why I had no fear I could figure it out at Moraine)?!?!?!
But for a lot of things in my life this is true.  I have always had someone by my side when things got tough, and you know, part of my doesn't think their is anything wrong with this. 
I have a very supportive family and friend group.  But I had realized how much I needed to believe in myself, alone, a few days previous.  
You see for my job at Sunrise I needed to go through some procedures at a clinic, you know drug test, small physical and finally a two part TB test.  I actually went and did this all on my own as well.
None of this bothered me, the physical was a simple "touch your toes", "lift this", "read that" kinda thing. I knew I was clean for the drug test, but the TB test was a shot, and this made me sweat a bit.
Laugh all you want, call me whatever names make you feel better about yourself, but shots are not fun for anyone (except for maybe masochist, and people with needle fetishes, for which I am not judging, I don't know your life.)
Now I never had problems with shots, I was a relatively good shot taker, but I had always had someone with me (namely my mother) to focus my attention on.  
You'd never be able to tell from my outward appearance, the nurse probably had no idea what was going on in my head at the time, but while I sat their patiently for the first part of the test, my mind was a whirlwind.
I wished I had taken up my mother's offer to come with me, I wish I had coerced Kara to come with me, someone, anyone, why did I do this alone?!?!?!
And then another completely different thought came to me, I am perfectly capable on my own.
I know it sounds stupid, or obvious, or whatever but that's exactly how it happened.
I took a deep breath said that to myself (not out loud of course of the nurse might have thought I was crazy) once more and just looked away and it was over. Simple and painless, like I knew it would be.
I realized that so much of my life was spent receiving comfort from others, which is fine!  Great in fact! BUT I think we need to understand that while those who love us give us strength we need to know there is strength in us alone.  And this applies to more than just shots and registering for classes.
I have no doubt so many of you out there have figured this out years before me, and probably some others haven't, and some of you are probably thinking, "I've done all that kind of stuff on my own for years! What's this pussy talking about?"
And rightfully so, but I hope those people who are saying that can think of this on a grander scale.
Of course I'm going to continue taking care of myself alone, learning how to manage my life without the help of others as one should, but I'd like to take it a little bit farther, and this is maybe where someone else can take something from this article.  
When I'm alone, don't feel the need to look at my phone 500 times in a minute. 
Feeling comfortable just standing or sitting, not fidgeting wondering what others might be thinking about me alone.
And trusting myself. That I will always have the love and comfort from my friends and family, but that I am enough.
Of course a lot of you may already know this and this article was a complete waste of time.  To you I am sorry. But this was something I needed to figure out for myself and it's not a huge jump, but it's a step in the right direction for making myself feel more whole again.

Day 9

My head is swimming
with the sound of your name, a
one note lullaby.

Hey Marilyn 

Day 8

Well I'm officially registered for classes at Moraine and will be starting Monday, wish me luck!  I'll be taking classes MWF and working TR and sundays, and that'll be my life for a while, we'll see how it goes.

Me registering for classes

I think of you as

I fall asleep, I wonder

if you do the same.

Day 7

At a stop light when I realized it was 11:46pm

I know it's a couple hours late, but I swear the poem and picture were taken before today so….that counts for something right?






Sometimes I whisper
my own name in the dark to
know I am still here

Day 6

One night, I taste him
and I come to realize
I have been starving

Braving the cold

Day 5

Look at me, soft eyes

soft hands, soft lips, soft. People

were meant to be soft.

 Ready for this day to end, it's been a long one

Day 4

In another life
I would beg and hope you'd stay
but I'm stronger now

Bed head.  It could be worse.  I swear I'm not about to cry.
I had just woken up.

Day 3

I'd do anything

to see you smile and hear you

call me your darling

Fresh out of the shower!

Day 2

1:51am on 1/2, I had a fun New Years Day

 Word to the wise most of the haikus will not correlate to the picture, yesterday was a fluke.

I kissed a model

before he was a model

his breath kinda smelled.

Something pretty for you

My New Year Day 1!

So it is the first day of my New Year!!! Woo!  
Hope you all had wonderful New Years Eve's, I know mine was.  I spent it with one of my best friend's Kara, painting, snacking, watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Couldn't have asked for a better way to start the year with someone I love so much.

Kara and I celebrating another year as friends :)

And so starts My New Year. I've decided with my new year that I'm going to take a picture of myself each day as a kind of marker.  365 pictures accompanied by 365 Haiku's starting with today.  I hope those of you out there looking for something, whether it be to better yourselves or find someone or change something about your life, that you go out (maybe tomorrow after the hangover subsides) and make it happen.  That's what I'll be trying to do. Have a great New Years Day everyone, hope you come back soon!

Picture #1 just as I am

      Haiku 1
Here's to a new day
with new feelings and faces
and hopes set so high