For the past couple of years we have had a family tradition. Every year we take a trip up to Michigan. Usually we go to my Dad's high school reunion. It’s a beautiful campus and it’s in the middle of nowhere. They have so many cool things to see and the whole campus is engulfed in nature. You can walk around on the edge of the lake, you can run the three mile course they have which is surrounded my nature, You can go to the one and ONLY grocery store that they have and get the bare necessities of what you need, and most of all you get to enjoy the sixty degree weather that they have vs our usual ninety degree weather that we have back home. For my dad and I it’s a nice way to spend a week away from home and we enjoy it to the best of our abilities. It also allows me to meet the people that my dad grew up with and learn more stories about him. My Dad was a pretty bad kid and got away with a lot of things. Stuff now that you would never get away with in this day and age.

This year though we had to make a decision. I work a part time job and as it turns out, the week that we usually take to go to the reunion was almost impossible to get off. Everyone was going somewhere or spending time celebrating Father’s Day. My job had asked me if it was possible to move that week up or down. I had told them that it wasn’t my decision and that it was my Dad's since this was his trip. With much understanding they gave me time to ask and with no difficulty we moved the trip up a week. So we made plans, I told my job and they were happy that I could make the change. Were pretty laid back so it was an easy change to make. We then decided to go Helen Georgia to do some hiking and for me to see this little town since I had not been before.  It was quite the little town. I called it the town that magically appeared in the mountains. It pretty much was just that. Very small, you can walk all around town with a couple thousand steps and everything was laid out to be that way. It was around the seventies when we arrived and the town was bustling with people. It originally was inspired by the Germans so the architecture was magnificent and they had beer at every turn. The food was very well done and from what I understand they did most things by hand. They had Fudge shops, coffee shops, and plenty of beer stops. For me it was quite the event since it was pretty much was I imagined every town in the world would look like as a child. I had always hoped that, the world would be as beautiful as it was there and I wished it more than anything when I was younger. Now that I know reality though, it’s a nice refresher from the cities and towns that have no mountains or nature parks. It was like a little fantasy land. 

We spent the most of the evening walking around and just enjoying the air. We bought some alcohol and had some good food. We went to bed and the next day we decided to go for a hike. As it turned out we had also run into trouble that morning. We both drink coffee and my dad had gotten my hopes up with this little coffee shop that was in town. It was called Higher Ground and he said that the coffee was exceptional. That sounded amazing and that morning I had high hopes that we would get away from the usual water tasting coffee that most hotels provide. Sadly I was wrong. That morning it seemed that all the shops were still sleeping because we waited for an hour for the shops that had coffee to open and they seemed to have become ghosts. With much frustration, disappointment, and unhappiness we moved on and went for the hike without caffeine. Once we got to the road that went to the trail we ran into a part of the road that was just flooded enough so that the car couldn’t make it over and up the hill to the beginning of the trail. With a short talk about if we should go or not we decided to do the little walk up to the trail. Well a little walk turned into a uphill climb for an entire mile and a quarter. No real breaks just up the entire time. 

Instantly I became a devil. I regretted every step but I tried to stay optimistic, for the sake of my father and I. Sure i'm evil when I don’t have caffeine and I made it clear how unhappy I was with my little short dialogues. and unwillingness to be a decent human being. The reward was worth it though and once we were at the waterfall it was quite beautiful. You were so close you could look straight up at it and feel the water coming from the waterfall. It dropped a good ten degrees because you were so close and that was a good enough reward for me to feel like, even if I didn’t get my caffeine, that it was worth the crazy uphill part of the hike. It was nothing like the Grand Canyon (now that one kicked our asses) but it was definitely one for the books. 

Even if it was hard I still did it and I may have been an evil bitch in the beginning but, that’s ok. We both made it and we both thought it was worth the almost five mile trek. Even if you don’t have caffeine you can still do human like activities. It may be harder but it is still worth it. 

 

I went through a downwards spiral when I was in my Senior year. I had lost my Best Friend/Girlfriend and because of that I went to the only outlet I knew. Food. I went straight from being a runner to being a food addict. I loved the taste of food and the thought of it being my one and only way of fighting off the sadness made me go back to it time and time again. It didn’t matter if I was hungry or not, I just wanted to eat and be lost. I didn’t want to be in this world we live in and I wanted to just tell everybody to go to hell. It was so hard to stop and eventually it became a habit. In the middle of the night I would find myself at the fridge two or three times before I would finally give up and realize there was no more food. On average I was having about five meals a day and the weight started piling up slowly but surely. 

One day I remember looking in the mirror. It was so scary to see. My baby face was back, I had a bump where my stomach was. My arms were bigger and my thighs were now what people call "Thunder thighs". In total I had gained twenty five pounds. Yea, it seems like that’s not a big number but let me give you some perspective. My height is around 5'3 to 5'4 and the "appropriate" weight for that is around 120. My usual weight was around 125 and that was perfect. Everything was level, I could eat little snacks throughout the day and be fine and I only ate when I was hungry. When I started eating all the time it became an epidemic. I wasn’t snacking anymore I was eating full meals. Every time I ate it was like I had to eat a dinner sized meal every time. My weakness? Spaghetti. I loved the hot foods more than anything and to me spaghetti was an outlet that could almost go with anything. You wanna sit in the hot tub? Let’s have a glass of wine with some good old fashioned spaghetti. Watching a movie? Spaghetti with a Martini, done. You wanna sit in a bath rub and cry? Spaghetti as an outlet but not in a bowl, no sir. I had it in the pot with a fork. 

For months I kept feeding myself this sadness and after six months the mirror broke the spell. I saw someone who was ugly, unwanted, fat, lazy, and just ridiculous. I had let myself get this far and it wasn’t stopping. Every day from then on I got more and more obsessed with the numbers and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself. I used to look decent and I was happy with just that. Now I had let myself stoop so low to overeat and let it go. It was one of my lowest points in my life. It’s not the worst but at the time it seemed like it. For months I struggled and struggled. The more I tried to lose the weight the less weight I lost. The numbers were screaming at me and I couldn’t help but not want to go in public or be around my family. Pictures showed that I had gained weight and my style in clothing then didn’t help in any way. It was like I was fourteen again. 

When I was on the verge of leaving for Michigan I had acquired a boyfriend of sorts. We had talked for months and we had talked about possibly having sex sometime if I went up there. Being a responsible person I got on birth control. The name of it? Depo Provera. Its a type of birth control that you have to watch your calcium levels. If you are on it for too long it can make you bones very thin and could cause problems in the future. But it was the easiest Birth control. The doctor that talked to me was so excited but had warned me that it could cause me to gain weight. My heart was beating so fast and hearing that it could cause me to have weight gain made me almost back out. Then she explained that any birth control could make you have weight gain but in the case of Depo Provera, it is harder to control. You just had to watch what you ate. With very little confidence but seeing the benefits to it and how I only had to go to the doctor once every three months to get a tiny shot that prevented me from getting pregnant outweighed everything else so, I started the birth control. 

I have heard some pretty terrible stories from my friends who have been on this type of birth control. One of my closer friends got on it and she gained twenty pounds. She didn’t remember who had told her to get on it....truth? It was me. See during my two years on Depo I had lost all the weight and it had helped me manage it. Everyone else seemed to have bad luck with it but for me it saved me in a way. It made me not want to eat as much and so I started to stay away from the food and got in the habit of eating ONLY when I was hungry. Quickly it had stuck in my brain. In six months I had lost about fifteen pounds. The difference was insane to me. A tiny body loosing fifteen pounds makes a huge difference. As I lost the weight I got back into sports again and started to transition to a healthier lifestyle and not eating as much. 

To this day I am around 125 and I am so happy to be at that weight. I’m no longer on Depo since I am no longer dating anybody. If it weren’t for Depo I don’t know if I would have lost the weight at all. 

So if you are struggling with weight, keep striving to lose it. Sometimes there are solutions that you never knew would work for you. You have to keep moving and trying things out. Not everything works for every single body type. Everyone is different. You just have to find it and stick with it and eventually you will get to where you want to be. Don’t give up, keep going, I promise that eventually it will change for you. 

 

Pretty much everyone I know is married, has babies, or is dating somebody. I get these people who ask me every once in awhile if I am dating somebody and my answer 95% of the time is no, i'm still single and they then reply with "awww it'll be ok, you'll find someone eventually" and my response is usually to smile and shake off what I really want to tell them. Today though I just want to tell you guys how I feel about the dating world today.

I'm no stranger to dating and I have had one or two good dating situations. I was happy and I felt good being with that person. I wanted to make them happy and they in return did the same. There were lots of good times, laughter, and just happiness all around. Liking someone turned into love but it never got farther than love. After a while the path to dating is eventually engagement and afterwards then marriage. For me I just don't see that end of the rainbow. So far i've been happy just with the whole dating portion of it and going any further almost sounds like a fairytale dream. When I was little I used to think about that perfect wedding. A nice big crowd of all my friends and family and me having the perfect husband who smiles and almost cries when he sees me coming down the aisle. My father leading me down to him and his proud smile as I kiss him on the cheek and make my way to the stand where in front of everyone we know, we become unified by a single kiss and a piece of paper that is given to us by the government. I would then take his last name and eventually have his children. Sounds pretty standard but just imagine it all girly and with nothing going wrong in this scenario. Complete paradise in wedding form.

Now as a twenty year old I find that to be unreachable and almost undesirable. Weddings, in my opinion, are all for show on how much money you can spend. They say a lot about the people getting married and it says a lot about how much money they have. Really that's the tradition. To show yourself off as a couple to your community. So far my little insight on weddings has been on the low level side. I have only been to one good wedding and it was very low key, quick with the formality and all party afterwards. Nobody cared what you dressed like, looked like, how you could dance, or how drunk you were. The other weddings I have been to were very boring, traditional and for the most part...normal. I had to HAVE a wedding I would make it as crazy and be as **** faced as possible. I mean you are signing yourself to the government in a way.

Besides that though, I really do think that dating leading to marriage is so mainstream and to me seems to be far away from my thoughts. Its nice to have someone there to cuddle, kiss, and sometimes get romantic with but, it is also nice to not have to worry about the drama that comes with that person. You don't have to worry about what they think, how their day was, where they were, how work went, etc. Sure you do that with your friends and you usually don't mind listening and sometimes you are actually interested but dating someone else is another category. Every detail of your relationship counts. Every word, every kiss, every thought, everything you do or don't do with them can effect if you stay together or not.

In today's age though it only got harder and more ridiculous. Most men my age want to have a quick bang and gone scenario. You invite them over, the play a movie, something happens, next thing you know you've had sex and he's out the door and gone before you have a moment to really understand anything at all. Nobody wants to go out on a real date and get to the know the person. It's all about the pretending who you are over the net and then faking it till you get some and then your good. It makes trusting people really difficult and awkward situations rise quickly when you aren't wanting anything. Anything can happen to set off the other person and its a little nerve wracking. Dating just doesn't exist to people my age. If you do get someone that you actually like enough to want to spend more than usual time with then it's like finding solid gold in a pile of needles.

So yes, I am single and yes I enjoy every second of it. I like my independence and it makes my life easier to move around in. It doesn't mean that i'm not open to dating someone sometime but, you have to be exceptional for that to happen and so far there hasn't been anyone that makes me have second thoughts. Sometimes it's better just to get to know who you are then follow the standard that most people live up to. I don't want to be a typical woman who dates somebody, gets engaged, married and has kids just because that's whats in front of me. That's just not my cup of tea and even if it was in front of me, I don't like tea so it would quickly be put down the drain.

I'm just waiting for the most exceptional human to come along to join me, for now i'm good with getting to know myself more and more each day and being alive. That to me, is what matters most right now. Being who I am and living.

 

Jobs are a way to dictate who you are. They are a way to control a human being. So many of us are doing jobs that we don’t want to do to make money that we need to buy the things that help us survive. Food. Shelter. Medicine. Liquids. Essentials for us to live in a comfortable matter. Yet we also get a value tag stamped on us when we work. The more you do and the better you are at the job then you expect a pay raise or some form of compensation for all your hard work. Sometimes that’s a long and paid for vacation which is wonderful because you don’t have to worry about money being low when you return home. You get paid to pretty much go anywhere and do almost nothing. Maybe it’s a promotion you’ve been striving for to make more money and life a little easier. Then you can finally pay off those Credit Cards or that car that you love so much. Maybe it’s treating yourself to something you’ve been thinking about buying but you just haven’t had the chance to get funds for it. Whatever it is, you want to be able to get something in return for all you do. You expect that pay raise, that promotion, that vacation and we all just wait around for it to come to us. 

Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way though. I know so many people who are amazing workers and in the end they get laid off, fired, or left in the position that they are in. No pay raise, no promotion, no way to say "hey you did an amazing job and I appreciate you". Just nothing and, we take that to heart. We think about what we may have done that would have caused us to not get that appreciation. Sometimes we get so caught up that we lose heart to continue the job and go looking for one that will make us feel good. Make us happy. Give us words of appreciation for what we do for the company that you’re hired under. We trudge onward hoping for something, just the tiniest of things to come our way. 

Some of us get luckier than others and just climb the ladder faster than ever. Usually it’s the people you don’t like at work that get this happiness and appreciation. They get your spot. They get your paycheck. They get that vacation you’ve been dreaming about for months. Your stuck with having to look up to the one person you don’t want to. The person who made you raise eyebrows. The person who looked down on you and made you feel like you were smaller then you are. The one who talked about you behind your back and made others look at you differently. 

There is always one in every job place. I call them the evil bitch whenever I do run into one at a job. Usually I can spot them right away and I do my best to avoid conflict. Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen and somewhere down the line something happens that makes you blow up and cause a scene. Other times it may be them thinking something is going on and they tell someone higher up about it and you get in trouble when you didn’t even do anything. All of it becomes a circus and one that you didn't want to even star in. 

Yet there you are, in the center and trying to fight your way through it all. Jobs are important, yes but not for the sake of selling your soul, happiness and self-worth. If you feel like you are in the wrong spot and you aren’t getting what you deserve then maybe it’s time to move onwards. Maybe you aren't in the right place. Maybe you needed that little push to realize where you were and what was happening in your workplace. 

Happiness is key to a good life. Don't let that happiness be sapped out of you. Take hold of it and go for it.