since graduation was long ago, please somebody get me out of this hole

Lately, it's been hard not to think about how my life was at this time last year. On Thursday, my cousin Mercedes graduated from Hannibal High School just as I did one year ago. And it was weird to sit there and watch her walk across the stage. To know the things that must have been going through her mind. If I know based on my own experiences, it was a lot of "goddamn why is this gown so hot and why are they talking so fucking much". And also a lot of "oh my god, this is it."

High school graduation is something that people talk about for your whole life. When you're in elementary school, it's a joke. That far off, never-gonna-happen thing that your parents talk about in an almost longing way. In middle school, it seems a little bit closer with cries of "six more years!" when you're in 6th grade (I still can't believe it's been that long since I was in 6th grade) and the pressing of your parents and teachers to write papers entitled "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up". And then you reach your Freshman year of high school and suddenly it's a whirlwind of getting good grades, because you want to get in to college, don't you? And then slowly, it's your senior year and then you're sitting on the field and you're thinking "holy fuck, this is it."

That, and that the gowns you have to wear are hot and there's not a possible way to sit in them without being uncomfortable. They're a bit unforgiving.

To watch Cede graduate was magical. I loved seeing the way that she looked so high and proud, her self esteem bursting. And that's the way she should have felt. High school graduation is a gloating moment. A "look what I just fucking did" kind of thing. But it's also scary as hell. It's the end of comfort, the end of knowing exactly what to expect.

But Cede can do it. I have nothing but faith in her. Although in college she might want to stop smacking everyone's butts and saying "good game!"

I could really use a wish right now

I've been holding off on writing this post.

For any of you that know me personally, or have visited my blog at least once ever, you know that my family is extremely important to me. Especially my great-grandma. I spend a good majority of my free time out at her house. Whether I'm out there just to visit or to help clean, I enjoy every minute of it. And it might not seem like that because well, who really likes to clean? But it's not what I'm doing that makes me love it, it's the fact that I'm there.

When I was a little girl, I held on to the belief that my great-grandparents were going to be around forever. And I didn't have anything to make that be untrue. In my eyes, my great-grandparents were healthy as can be. I was too young to see the underlying health problems that I'm now seeing. So, as you can imagine, the death of my great-grandpa came as the biggest shock. I didn't think I'd lose them, so it hit me twice as hard when I did.

Ever since then, I've held on to every memory of him as though it's a piece of gold. Memories are priceless. In my great-grandma's house, I can still see him out of the corner of my eye. Him coming around corners to tickle me, asking me if I was "his girl" - which I always was. I had so many years in that house with him that it was hard to find something that didn't remind me of him. Or of my great-grandma.

Well, a couple months ago my mother informed me that my great-grandma was looking in to moving into one of the Senior Apartments in town. It'd be a one-bedroom, tiny thing about a mile from my house. And while I realized that this was probably the best decision for her - her house was falling apart: there was mold in the basement and the foundation was crumbling - I couldn't help but feel that my heart was breaking. You see, my great-grandparents had lived in that house for longer than I've been alive, and I grew up there. Ruth tells me not to get so attached to places, but I can't always help it. I felt this same heartbreak moving out of my home last January, and when I moved out of my dorm room a couple weeks ago. I get attached to places. The memories overwhelm me and I can't help feeling sad when I leave.

My great-grandma moved a couple weeks ago, and last weekend I got to see the house I grew up in nearly empty. Gone was the kitchen table. Gone was the couch that my little cousins and I used to use as a backseat in our imaginary car. Gone was the swing that was my comfort after my great-grandpa died. And you know what? It hurt. A lot more than I expected it to.

But there's always comfort in pain if you know where to look. That house was destroying my great-grandma's health. The mold was getting to her and making it hard to breathe. The stress of living next to my great-grandpa's bitch daughter was getting to her. And now that she's out of that, it's like having my old grandma back. She's happier. Healthier. And if losing that house means that I get to have my grandma a couple years longer, it seems like a good trade.

if you wanna be scene

take a shit where you sleep, and smile for the paparazzi.

My story

Now that I have more than five minutes/the initial shock of getting my tattoo is over, I want to take a few minutes to write about the experience and the reasoning behind my tattoo. My story.

My story starts in May 2007, at the death of my Great-Grandpa. I was sixteen, and it was my first loss. He was like my father, I can barely remember a day that would go by that I wouldn’t be at his house. From the time I was a little girl, he would always spoil me rotten. And I never got too big to sit on his lap. He was someone I admired, and someone I never saw myself losing. Then one day, he was gone. It wasn’t as though we’d seen it coming. It was a freak accident. It happened when he was mowing the grass out at his church. He’d gotten too close to a ditch and he fell and died instantly. And it was the first time I can honestly say that my heart had broken. My whole world had fallen apart.

The day after he died, my best friend Ruth texted me. The words were simple, and I didn’t know that they’d change my life: “I’m sorry that in your condition the sunshine’s been missing but don’t believe that it isn’t there. This world can be ugly, but isn’t it beautiful?” And yeah, I’d been a Jack’s Mannequin fan before that, but that wasn’t a song that I’d heard before. And I looked up Katie. All I could find was the chorus, but even with just that, it was slowly becoming my favorite song. Those were the words that I kept close to my heart as we buried my great-grandpa. As my mom pulled further away from me to be there emotionally and physically for my great-grandma.

I spent the following year in a blur of depression. I threw myself into friendships that were bad for me. And then, at the beginning of the next summer, I became reacquainted with two people who would change my life. I’d known Malissie and Dennis since my freshman year of high school, but we were never that close. But we bonded, and before I knew it they’d practically taken me in. I found myself pouring my heart to them. About five years of cutting and battling depression, something that had only amplified since my great-grandfather had passed away. And they became the people that were there for me at every moment.

A couple of days after the two of them rushed to my house at 2am to stop me from cutting, I asked Malissie to drive me to the hospital. I was either checking myself in or I was going to die. It was that bad. Both Malissie and Dennis and a friend of ours, Brandi, held my hands that night as I went through checking myself into a hospital.

The following eight days were the most difficult, magnificent days of my life. I started to figure out who I was, and the real reason behind all of my sadness. I’d tried so hard to cover up how sad I was because my great-grandpa died. I found myself smiling again. Laughing again. They would ask me if I wanted to hurt myself, and for the first time in five years, I was able to say no and mean it. I would talk to my mom when she would come to see me, and I would be completely honest with her.

After I got out, things were relatively okay. I got my drivers license. I became a senior in high school. I wasn’t sad all the time. I started my fall in October, when a friend of mine was forced away from me for a month. Around that time, I’d finally pulled out Jack’s Mannequin’s The Glass Passenger, and it became my soundtrack. I got particularly stuck on Swim. Something about the words got to me, but the first time I really heard it, I was driving home from my friends house, and I just pulled over and I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. But then in December, I slipped. I cut for the first time since I’d been out of the hospital. And I’d never been more disappointed in myself. But I didn’t slip back into depression, I picked myself up and I kept going. Until April.

On April 23rd, 2009, I cut. Six or seven lines across my thigh. And I cried. And I hurt. And for the first time, I hated it. I hated the blades and the cuts more than I hated myself. And that was the first time I felt like I’d made progress. After I’d stopped crying that night, I picked up every blade I had and I got rid of them. I was done. I didn’t know if I would manage to quit, but I had nothing but faith.

I’m not sure when the idea first popped into my head, but one day I listened to Swim again. Really listened to it. And the line “The whole world is watching, you haven’t come this far to fall off the earth” stuck in my head. And I fell in love with that song. With that line. Because, while that song means something for everyone, that line had special meaning. I have come so far. I’ve battled with depression and loss and self-injury for years, and I’m still alive. I still have a heartbeat.

It was sometime in the middle of my first semester of college that I decided that I’d get swim for my first tattoo. Right on my wrist. But I wouldn’t just get it for anything. It would be a reward. It would be the celebration. Of me. Of one year without self injury. Of who I am and who I have been. Who I will be. My self-injury was a part of me, and while the physical scars will fade, I never want the memories to. I am so incredibly strong, and I don’t want to forget that.

I settled on my design right before Easter. It would be in the Jack’s Mannequin font. In lowercase. With the asterisk right above the ‘i’ instead of the dot. And when I showed it to my grandma and the rest of my dad’s side of the family, they all cried. They all hugged and congratulated me for this accomplishment.

On April 23rd, I woke up with my stomach in my lungs. I was nervous. Excited. A long list of emotions that contradicted each other in reality, but inside my body they just made me feel as though I was going to throw up all day. But I was proud, because I’d made it. 365 days had gone by without a single cut on my wrist. And those days hadn’t been easy, they’d been full of heartache and sadness and I’d done it. I did it. So that night, I found myself at Living Canvas, my wrist stretched out in front of me while they put the stencil on. My roommate was by my side, my camera in her hands. And it hurt. More than I’d anticipated it to hurt, but different than I’d anticipated too.

And then it was over. And I’d looked down at my tattoo and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Here it was, the physical proof of my triumph. But it was so much more than that. It meant the end of an era. The end of me as a cutter, as a self-injurer. The end of the phase in my life where I sought out pain to make myself feel better. And I cried as I walked home, I cried because of what I’ve gone through. But I know what I can do. I know what I can pull through. I just have to keep swimming. Even when I don’t think I’ll make it through the day, just keep going and it’ll be alright.

There's a light on in Hannibal and I know I should be home:

Last week, my family gained contact with my cousin, Grant, a boy that we have never met. After his dad died when he was two months old, his mom whisked him away to Colorado, and we didn't have contact. Period. The only time we've ever talked to him was when he was ten and he called my step-dad. But it was a lucky google search that led my mom to his facebook, and she was joyous when he accepted her friend request, which gave us access to photos. To his likes, dislikes. Activities. Things we've never had before.

I grew up hearing about how much they missed him, a baby they've technically never seen. But he's family, and as I've learned with my step-dad's family, that means that there is so much love spread to you. I've heard stories about his dad. I've heard stories about how we lost him.

So when we gained contact last week, you can imagine how excited we all were. For the first time in almost sixteen years, we had hope of getting to know him. And it was exciting, thrilling. The possibility of getting to know my cousin.

But I've come to realize that you can't ever get your hopes up too much, because then you have farther to fall when things go wrong.

When my mom logged on to her facebook yesterday, she noticed that Grant was mysteriously gone. It was as though he didn't exist in her friends at all, and so she called me, panicked, to check if he was there. But he's not. And it's heartbreaking for me.

We still have a few options based on the information that we got off of his facebook, but it's not the same. It's scary to think that we might lose him, again. Like my mom said to me on the phone a couple minutes ago:

"I feel like my heart is broken."

I told you I go to Hogwarts, and spend my holidays in Wonderland

Day Twenty-Eight: Your Year In Great Detail

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this year, simply because I do that at the end of every year. But if you're curious about what has happened to me this year, you should either a) talk to me more often, or b) visit my photo blog