Dreams, I'm in constant awe of them.

Dreams, I'm in constant awe of them. I have these dreams. Three of them to be precise. They slowly developed over time for me. I didn't have these aspirations right of the bat at all but as I adventured more out into the world, they started to mold into dreams.

I want to be a Music Supervisor. What is that? Well, after I researched choosing music for films and tv shows I stumbled upon this title. It was quite lovely and terrifying at the same time of what I found. If wanting this job you really do not need a ton of education or any at all. It is more about who you are and who you know. The pay can be from 30,000 to 250,000 depending on if you are freelance or working for a company. I enjoy music. I enjoy finding it and imaging what situations or moods go with it. It is like finding the pieces to a puzzle and then putting it all together. When I watch a Tv show I am almost always listening to the music of it.

I want to be an expert in making wooden furniture. I want to develop that skill as much as possible. I want to sell it. My dream is to make a dinning room table that a family will buy and use over and over again then pass it down through out the family. I want my hands to ache from building furniture.

I want to help children and adolescents. I want my masters in Marriage and Family counseling.

You see the thing is I don't know what I will do with my masters. That is the complication. My heart and passion is double dipping. Is this allowed? I'm I allowed to be a professional and then pursue music and art?

Dreams...how do we make these realities? Are these even realities?

I want to dream as much as I can. I want these dreams to become as impactful on my life as possible. I do not want them to separate from reality but conjoin into reality. How does one make these happen? Where do I start? All I know what to do is research and talk about it. Find those connections. Talk to people who have no connection whatsoever to my aspirations and talk to people that feel the same.

I want to make difference in my life to the point where it punctures my lungs. It stops my breathing for a moment and I begin again. Journey...I want to. Make my heart known I suppose. I am not wanting to be hidden in the dark. Expose me world. I always ask to be challenged and life surely makes a big effort in doing that to me. I took a risk and moved to Michigan to be educated by Calvin. I took a risk and applied to the studying abroad program for Spain. I like risks and I want to take more. I want to so many things I hope I can attain my dreams. That for me is one of the most important things in my life. One of my priorities. For my dreams to be dashed or crashed into a million pieces would ruin me. Although, to not act on them is the same.                                                                                                                                          

I Fail to Describe How Beautiful They Are

...I flipped through the pages of a book that I would never of rented. A book about your twenties and how most people do them wrong. If this was my conscious decision to rent it, I may think it was pretentious. However, I picked it up and read it. It brought me back to a moment a year ago. The snow was still crisp on the ground and the icicles hung like spears. The sun was still shy from the Earth and rested behind the clouds. The dead of winter laid upon me. The weekend nights still clung to drinks and late nights with friends. The mornings seemed unfathomable and terribly uncomfortable. Waking up at 8:00 for school seemed more like it was 5:00. I was living a life that I didn't want to change. I felt anxious about graduation and the changes that followed after. Although every time I saw him I had this lingering feeling that made the end seem less real. It wasn't an  overwhelming feeling or even breath taking but it was like the small drips from the icicles when they start to melt. The icicles are there, though they do not seem to be taken notice from anyone. Yet the water drips, they splash into the snow, and when the sun comes out they glisten in the rays. Days soon passed and so did the weeks, nothing happened with the lingering feeling. Life seemed to be moving and making an attempt to be exciting. I talked to others and got myself involved in the lives' of others. I coasted along with my friends and did the same thing over and over again. The repetition wasn't noticed until hindsight. My mind did not linger to his name.

Then I noticed him. He wore a black and simple v-neck. I saw him for the first time. I took an interest in who he was, wanting to figure out what he was about. He seemed cocky and a bit full of himself from were I was looking. Although I mistaken that for a raw form of self-confidence. As the snow melted and started to release the grass and flowers from captivity, I started to make myself revealed. There was no science to this just a clear motive. I wanted to be the smell of breakfast that wakes you from your sleep. When the coffee tastes better at 9:00 in the morning instead of at noon because you cannot resist the smell. I wanted to be like the sun that shines through the blinds gently. I wanted to be the glistening dew on the grass and leaves. My approach was to be settle but then once it was to be realized it would feel like a hug that needed to be embraced.

I left dull but frank text messages for him. They meant nothing and they were suppose to mean nothing. My ways were not to impress or flaunt myself but to reveal myself slowly like when a cat brushes themselves against your leg and you don't notice them until it tickles. However I wanted to take a risk. I was moving across the country it was a risk, maybe even a foolish risk. It wasn't a game. It was noticing the icicles were melting. I waited for a response with no expectations...

    I never write this way. I suppose it isn't like me to do so, I am not sure. This might be a writing style or a way to push myself into a different form of writing. When I write a blog my intentions aren't to ask for help or to show the world how "depressed" I am. My aim is to be honest and raw. It just so happens that my struggles are plastered to the wall of facebook, blogger.com, and my google+ account. But this is my choice and I'll do it over and over again. For whomever my audience is I tell you this, I'm ok. I am fine. I am living. I am doing life. I am experiencing the life I was given. My blogs might be tainted with struggles or might seem like a desperate cry for help but what would happen if you posted your daily struggles publicly?
This past Monday I got in a minor car accident and busted one of my headlights. I stressed out my back from it. And now I have to figure out how to fix and pay for it. For the last few weeks I have come to the conclusion that I don't like my job. It is so med focused that I kind of can't stand it. I wanted to write about that. Yet, I didn't want to seem like I was complaining or that I'm still in this shitty spot of figuring out adulthood.

I discovered that life in it's self is a struggle. If I happen to be the one to write about the struggles then so be it. I will be the one to do that. Sometimes at the end of the day there is no resolution but you just forget that it was a crappy day and move on to the next thing. This week a lot of things happened that I didn't like very much because it made other things very difficult. Yet, some awesome things happened. I needed extra money this month. My cousin contacted me without knowing my week was not so good and that I needed the extra money she asked if I could babysit. My boyfriend spent his entire day off with me, without me asking. It was the day after the minor accident. Things like that make me feel special. Those are some moments I live for. The small great moments make me see the big hard moments smaller. I will continue to write about what I write and maybe some day I will be raw with my big great moments. Though right now I am not willing to publicly air that as weird as that may sound. Those moments mean more to me than the hard moments. I do not cherish the hardships. I cherish the beautiful moments that I fail to describe how beautiful they are.

Trying to make it is what I have to do

Life. I do not think I am good at it. I don't know what being good at it is really. I felt a huge weight on my shoulders today. As I come more into the light and of the darkness of anxiety I see that all I am doing is growing up at the age of 22. However, I have barely achieved all my independence.

Yesterday I figured out my student loans. I have one that I have to pay right away, of course monthly payments. Though the sum is the same as my rent. That sum...I hate it. I hate money. I do not know how to live on a budget because I find myself buying people dinner or gifts. Then when I need something I have get it....aka food, winter gloves, and etc. I don't know. I'm learning to survive in this crazy and harsh world. The land of the grown ups is not where I belong.

Yesterday I found myself giving homeless people a ride to a food kitchen. I don't have the gas for this. Though I did it anyways. They told me they lived in a tent. It has been snowing for days...I had a blanket in the car and offered it to them. Luckily, they didn't accept because I needed the blanket. When I had that thought it kind of made me sick. It's a weird twisted thought.

Yesterday or sometime last night...my license fell out of my wallet and landed somewhere I will never know. It was one of those things when you take your license out then out of pure laziness you put it in your jacket pocket or just some other place than your wallet.

Lets just say I didn't have the most exciting time last night or today when I came to understanding that my license was misplaced.

I don't know how I will pay for rent. I guess I am now a resident of Michigan if I get a new license.

All these things are troubling. My life is chaotic at some points. I don't quite understand this adult world or what it means to be one because I have never felt like one. I do not know how to be sufficient in this type of world. So I go to church and I record the songs in the service. I go home and start making my niece's christmas gift. I start stopping my complaining and just try my best to deal with it. This life is never easy nor do I think it will get any easier. But trying is what matters I suppose. Trying to make it is what I have to do. I try to be better than I was yesterday and maybe something good will come out of it.

Though what I am thankful for is that I am not alone. I have house to live in. I have car even if it is old. I have things to keep me warm. I have love in my heart. I have food in my belly. I have a bed to sleep in. I have work even if it isn't enough I still have work. I have a life to live. And I don't have a cold anymore just winter boogers. I suppose this is life and I work towards no matter how hard it is.

I'm friend dating? Here's my number?

The moment that change enters my life or the taunting knock at the door I get very resistant. Eventually I let the change happen and I work with it. Though it takes me a bit to take it all in. I haven't had a "easy" year in a long time nor do I think I have had one. Though what is a easy year anyways? I am not sure. I have noticed that I am getting comfortable. I'm not pushing myself I suppose.

In the past years of my life they have been dramatically filled with situational events. Healing from my mother's death has been constant and very often intense. I have filed through things of what I thought were important to deal with and then I accepted what life brought at my door to file through. Then ever so often other family affairs started to happen. When they died down it was time to graduate from college. So I can say now I'm pretty content even if things are very different and not too exciting.

Until I realized that I need something. That being an introvert can have consequences if it isn't played right. I'm too selective when it comes to friends. Of course it has done me well in the past and I have met and kept some pretty awesome friendships up but right now I need that random chat over coffee.

You see a lot of my close friends aren't in the area anymore or they are still in California. Or they perhaps are leading very work focused lives. Which isn't bad at all. I'm in a stage of my life now that isn't totally similar with everyone at my age.

I'm friend shopping? I'm friend dating? Here's my number?

If you have ever been in that situation of a new environment or your current environment has evolved into something else...I think you know what I am getting at. I'm not lonely just mostly alone on my days off. It's something I don't hate and I am fine with. However, I've never lived in my comfort zone for too long and its time to spread out and see what can be done.

One thing here. This is weird. This is a weird topic and weird to write about it. Though if I write this blog I want to be transparent. I need to be transparent. There is something enticing for me there when I am able to do that.

I have had it in the past where I have moved back home it was the hardest thing to do...to make new friends. It was hard to fit in and understand where people hang out or the kinds of people. I always long to be accepted like everyone else in my own way. I like to be funny and have people laugh at my corny jokes that don't always make sense. I also find it completely weird when we automatically think its easy to make friends for everyone. Its easy for me sometimes because I tend to put a lot of myself in friendships though I rarely do it because of my personal insecurities. I tend to be less confident and less myself with people I don't know. What can I say putting yourself out there for friends to hang out with is the weirdest thing ever to do....Its great but a strange concept because we think that everyone has friends and that people are hanging out all the time. False. Just not true.

Well after babbling and not really having a clear blog entry I invite you on my journey of....finding friends in the area?

P.S haha yes I have friends they are just not here...or very very busy people

So I cried and then woke up with a smile.

This might be my way of dealing with whatever is going on or maybe not dealing with it. I’m not sure. I asked one of my best friends if my blog entries were sad and depressing because people will message me and ask me if everything is alright and etc. She said no because its about struggles, something that people tend to not share and you are sharing that. I’ll take her word for it because most of times when I write my blog entries it’s because whatever happened already happened and is in the process of being dealt with. You, the reader, do not hear about the good times or you don’t necessarily see the good in my struggles. Now before I go on I do have a disclaimer. This blog entry will seem sad maybe very sad. Although it isn’t entirely actually. It is my life and something that will be apart of my life till I die. It follows me where ever I go. It is the entry about my mom. 

I tend to write this entry (once a year) mostly for myself when it becomes close to Halloween. It frees me from the thoughts that I didn’t know I had. However, I am noticing it has become an useful tool in allowing people to get to know me on a level that is hard to open up about. 

Every year I come to this month of October. Every year it has been very different. Every year it has gotten better and better. The third time this month came around after my mom passed away I went into this intense depression. I shut out the world and let in the vile creatures that lived outside of it. Vile creatures, I don’t ever want to see them again. I had this traumatic night when it set off things inside me that were horrible and terrifying. I was messaging the best friend that I spoke of earlier. The conversation went wrong and I eluded to suicide then shut off my computer. I put on my jacket and took a scarf then went outside. I could feel the devil taunting me. I called someone that I thought I would never call. We spoke and after I felt better. But my phone was going off from my friends who were so worried about me. The third year...the shock or numbness finally dissolved and left me. I became real with what I had in front of me. I was alone and distant from my family. I was in a place I was semi familiar with. That was a very dramatic and intense time in my life that I do not want to experience again. I am terrified of that time in my life. It was something that lead me to the deep end. 

This October. I can feel the crisp air on my face and my eyes are amazed by the colors of the leaves. The air smells fresh and I can feel winter knocking at the door...ready to come in. I can enjoy pumpkin carving even when I do mess up. I can start planning somewhat of what I want to be for Halloween. I became proactive and took work off on Halloween. I felt sad a few days ago. So I cried and then woke up with a smile. If living will be like this then I can handle it. I’ll take it. I’ve finally accepted that I’m an introvert. I do not get energized from people. They actually drain me. I can sit in my house for a few hours without having people over or me going to them. I don’t think I can express enough how awesome that feels. Being alone and not feeling lonely. 

My brother Brandon woke me up on October 31st, 2007 at 4:09am. All he said to me was “It’s time.” I knew what those two words meant and he left my room as soon as he said them. I put socks on and went to the “nice” room where my mom’s hospital bed was. She laid there...lifeless. She laid there and I could feel that her soul was gone. It’s ironic now that I saw death on Halloween. This is the first time that I find it quite amusing in a very dark comedy way. My family will make jokes time to time. They are pretty inappropriate jokes about my mom, death, and the present together. It helped us and helps us deal with it. Last October it was the day of Halloween and it was the first time I went out in the States for Halloween, the first time I went out on Halloween after my mom passed was in Spain. Daniela and I were sitting on her bed. I let her in the most I have ever let someone in. I don’t remember the exact words at all. But she made an inappropriate dead mom joke. I knew at that point we were family, where ever we would be in life. I laughed so hard at the joke. It was hilarious. 

October 2013 is good. I’m just breaking even every month for bills. Its painful but it is the best incentive to make it to graduate school and finish. I live in a semi shaddy neighborhood but the house is awesome and the church across the street is always full. The church makes me feel like I am in Europe again. All the people that go there are walking around all the time nicely dressed. I’m dating an awesome guy who is as stubborn as me. I’ve realized that I invented a recipe. My friends are calling it Brenna’s Potatoes. I also have been noticing that I love a clean living environment. I need the house clean or else. Something that is very interesting has been coming alive in me also. I have being paying attention to things I do. Some of my traits, quirks, and characteristics are like my mom’s. The cleaning...is one. The weird sense of what goes with what while cooking and making up recipes...granted I have not always known how to cook at all but I forced myself to. The stubbornness is a given. And the ambition to succeed in life in whatever form that is....is also from her. She may not be here. She may not be able to give me relationship advice. She may not be here to send me packages or sooth my cries. She may not be here to tell me how much I’ve grown. Though these things are true...the more I see her inside me and my siblings I feel as though she is. October 2013 is good. 

when my heart is calm and my head is light

I have these moments in my life when my heart is calm and my head is light. I have a lot going on but I seem to be content. I don't know how I will afford some bills right now but I have a roof over my head. I have food in my belly. I have two jobs whether they are good enough or not.

I got a tattoo a few months ago. It is three arrows. I got the idea from my culture induced brain. However, I designed the arrows and made each one different. The middle one is further down than the left and right one. It represents my family. The right one represents my friends that turned into family. The left one represents my best friend. Arrows are meant to hit their target. They are meant to go straight. With the people in my life I'm going straight. I have seen the path and I am going there. For some reason its always been hard for me to not rebel. I've wanted to rebel since I could remember. But I thought about it more than doing it.

I put myself in hard situations. I tend to do it subconsciously. When the situation is figured out the benefit is amazing. The feeling you get when you get that first pay check is stimulating. I suppose I learn the hard way. I haven't really learn things the easy way or even had the chance to at most cases. I suppose I like to fight and then be held when it's too much.

Lately, I have been looking at my arm which as the arrow tattoo. The weather has been warm and the leaves are starting to change. This is my favorite season to be silent in and just watch the commotion of mundane activity through out the city. I've been able to see my tattoo. Most of the people that are behind the tattoo aren't present. So maybe looking at this symbol in my life makes it feel like they are right there with me. I don't know to be honest.

But I feel content. I feel struggle. I feel loved. I feel tried. I feel pushed. I feel relieved.
Though yesterday however I started to miss someone so bad that it hurt. I didn't want to reply to the text. I wanted to be with them. When you love a person whether it is a friend or the person you are with there will always be hard moments. Moments that you want to be ceased. Though to be honest in some of those moments I feel my most content. Because I know I'm doing something right when they miss me and I miss them. I know I'm doing something right because it takes work to make something better.

Most of the time I'm selfish. Most of the time I have walls that I don't even know I had. But I fight...I fight for something better. I fight to be content in my situation and when I achieve that I feel a very intense emotion. The emotion makes me want to sing.

It doesn't seem real.

I never knew what growing up was or what it meant to me. It has always looked different. On my roadtrip from California to Michigan, I was driving through Colorado. It was so beautiful to me. I haven't seen beauty like that in so long. It reminded me of so many things...the beauty in my friends and family. It reminded me of the feelings I got in Spain. I couldn't quite place a finger on it about how it felt in Spain until I felt it again that day. I saw what I felt, the beauty. Spain was a place where I grew up and so many things about that trip made me feel alive. I feel alive again though in a very different way. I'm unleashed by undergraduate school. Life is an empty salad bowl. I have chance to put what I want in it now. However, life's normal occurrences have been interrupting exactly what I want in that salad bowl.

When I arrived in Michigan I had decided early on that I would have no expectations of the place or what it meant in the past. My mind was left blank to allow the weird turn of events to wedge themselves in my life. My life here is different, very different from what it was in college. No one expects anything out of me besides work. I have to put on my own demands and constraints. Like always I learned the hard way in the first two days. My rent and security deposit was more than I expected which resulted in a depletion of my money. If thought that was bad...it got worse. My credit card was stolen. It never seems to end. I had a bed...just a bed in my room. No food....and a dad that was angry with me.

There are times where I just want to curl up in my Mom's arms and have her stroke my arm until I fall asleep. This period of life is defiantly one of them. Though obviously I couldn't...it's not possible. So I took a big bite of the bullet and pressed on.

I'm not totally sure how I am going to pay for rent or the payments on my car or for bills and food. Hopefully the two part time jobs I am working at will pay off.

This is life. I've pretty much grown to just adapting to it and not letting things really get to me. I've evolved into someone else over the years. Someone different and I'm getting to know this new person. Life is a bitch. It really is. It's only going to become more of a bitch but you have learn to adapt to it. Change the things that aren't working for you. I've had to cut out a ton of things that I love because it costs money. For 4 years I had the privilege of budgeting those things into my monthly expenses.

I'm trying. I miss my best friends like crazy and I know it would be easier if all of them were here. But I don't have that so I have to change and adapt to it. I miss them so much. It doesn't seem real.