Time for a little rant

We'll I'm going to tell you right now...this is going to be a ranting post.

A lot of things have been bothering me lately but I didn't want to say anything cuz I figured it wasn't a big deal and people would just think I'm super dramatic. Well maybe I am being dramatic about this and blowing it out of proportion but oh well.

I am really getting tired of people acting like they are my friends when really I know they aren't. I'm not as stupid as people may think. I know a lot more about people than I let people believe. I hear a lot of things and let's just say that when you talk bad about people or you lie to them, it will eventually get back to them. Sometimes I don't have to be told of the things people say behind my back...I have actually accidentally heard some of it. I'm sick of hearing people think I'm some slut or some fake. 

Yes. I flirt. Is that a crime?! 

No. It's human. 

Just because I flirt doesn't mean I'm a slut.

Now about being a fake...I feel like I'm pretty real when I talk with people. I'm the same at home as I am at school...crazy, sometimes a bit blonde, sometimes I get angry at people or get frustrated at stupid things. That's who I am. Yes, there is a side of me that I keep hidden from everyone but that's because it's my personal struggles. I'm not going to load everyone with all the trials I deal with, that's just unfair to all of you. So I deal with that myself. Does that really make me fake? I don't think it does. Everyone does that. If it makes me fake then it would make you a fake. And I don't think you like being called fake...do you? Then stop calling others fake when you know nothing.

One thing that really has been bothering me is the fact that people are pretending to be my friend so they can get something from me. I'm sorry but my biggest pet peeve is people using other people for their own personal gain. I am not some stepping stone to the next best thing. I have feelings and if you want something from me just tell me. Don't just pretend to be my friend for it. I'll be blunt with you. Try to use me for something and I'll try and make sure you don't get it.

I was once used by somebody a few years ago as an ego boost. I have never felt so broken when I found out that they didn't actually care about me the way they had led me to believe. Then they apologized and told me they had changed and I fell for it again. The last time they tried to come to apologize I had had enough and finally had learned my lesson. I learned a lot from them and now I can catch when people just want something from me. And I may not act like I know...but boy do I know. 

So in short...don't use me or anyone else for that matter. It hurts and it's wrong and some day karma will bite you in the butt.

Well I guess that's enough ranting. Sorry for all the negativity in this post...I just had to get it out.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

So I feel like the past couple of posts have sort of been downers so I want to focus the majority of it (hopefully all of it) on good things!

Life is never perfect. Things happen all the time and we go through little bumps in our lives, but that doesn't mean we don't have things to be happy for! My life has been crazy and I'm sure you all know how that goes. But I have had some great things happen because of all the crazy things in my life. I want to start out though thanking the cast and crew of Mountain View's show Of Mice and Men. You guys did a great job! I want to explain why this show impacted me so much. I've talked to a few of you about this. As a lot of you guys know my oldest sister has autism. I love my sister Sandra to death...but you do have to give rules. She doesn't understand that you can't always have what you want. There are days when she'll come home and just want to eat and eat and eat, but we can't let her do that for obvious reasons. Some days we have to fight with her to get her to stop eating and she will fight back because she doesn't understand the consequences. It wasn't always about food though. And sometimes she'll fight back so much that it did get physical. She's hit me, sat on my head, bitten my sister etc. But it's because she doesn't understand. Just like Lennie, she doesn't understand things the way you and I do and sometimes she reacts in a way that only she can react in. Duncan did a fantastic job on his portrayal of Lennie and Collin did an amazing job being George. I see myself as George. With a struggle of how far you take it. I loved how Criman decided to make it so the play wasn't about the gun shot. There was so much more to it. Thank you for the amazing play you guys put on. I hope you remember the lessons it taught you.
My favorite part was seeing Lennie transform into a perfect being after he died. I can't wait for the day when I see Sandra in her perfect being. I love her more than anything in the world for who she is. She has taught me more than anything or anyone. She may not be like you and me but she is beautiful in her own way. She is a daughter of God. Her heart is pure and I know she's being watched over. She is so much closer to God than I am and I envy her relationship with Him. She loves making people feel loved and I love that about her. Sandra, I know you aren't going to read this but I love you and I will always love you.

So this week has been a huge blessing for me. A lot of you know how I am going to be going on a choir tour soon. Well I'm paying for this trip all on my own...which has been sort of insane and crazy. Anyways, this week I was stressing out that I wouldn't get enough money from work because I was only scheduled to work for 11 hours. Well that changed pretty quickly because a couple of the girls from work needed people to cover their shifts. I ended up working all week except Friday and not only that, Monday night at work I had a party that I hosted and they ended up giving me a very large tip. I have never felt so blessed! It was the craziest week at work but I got through it and I'm thankful that I was able to get in more hours. I want to say a quick thank you to my amazing coworkers. Because of them I was able to make it through each night :) Thanks guys!

School has been super stressful. I am struggling in a couple of classes but I am getting through it and I'm hoping that it will all work out! I want to say sorry to my teachers because I know I've been a pain to work with these past couple of weeks. I especially want to say sorry to Andrus...I feel bad that I haven't been giving it my all this term and I'm working on changing that. Anyways, I still love my classes and I believe they have me on the right path on where I want to go.

I think that's a pretty good transition to college...don't ya think? Alright. I'm super excited to talk about this! So I was blessed to be accepted into 4 schools. I was accepted into SUU, USU, BYUI and BYU. My top two schools have always been USU and BYU when I applied for different colleges. It has been crazy this week as I have tried to figure out which school I want to go to more. I have felt like BYU was what everyone expected me to go to because I'm Mormon and it's the "Mormon school." If you know me well then you know I don't do things because it's expected of me.

At the beginning of the week I had no idea where I was going and so many people told me their opinions, it just made me even more confused and I kept having anxiety attacks because of it. Near the middle of the week, I thought I finally made a decision on where I wanted to go but it just was settling with me. I was happy with the school I chose but at the same time something didn't feel right. So once again, I didn't know where I was headed and I was stressing out because my deadline was coming up. I started stressing like crazy over which school I'd be going to because whichever one I chose, it would change the rest of my life. I believe choosing BYU or USU would both be good paths. I knew that either one would be a good choice. It wasn't a "bad" or "good" choice I was dealing with. It was a "better" and "best" choice. And that is why I was so stressed. I wanted to make sure I'd choose a school that was what was best for me. Not what other people expected me to choose or what people thought was what was best for me.

This is why I chose the school that I did. And I am sooooo excited about it!!! I really couldn't be happier and I have no regrets! Nobody knows which school I have chosen. My family doesn't know, my friends don't know...NOBODY KNOWS! Hahaha :)

Until now.

I am now going to let you all know and I'm super excited to finally let everyone know! I figured it out just yesterday and have been dying to let people know! It's a really scary thing going from high school to college. I have waited for this day for a really long time and now that it's finally here I am going crazy with all different kinds of emotions. But I now feel a little bit more at ease. This upcoming fall I will be attending Brigham Young University and I am so stoked!

I chose this school not because my sister goes there and not because I feel like it's the school my mom wants me to go to. I chose this school because I want to go there for myself. I know I can get a good education there and that is why I'm going. I know it's a place I can grow and I need that. I didn't expect to go to BYU. For a long time I didn't want to go to Brigham Young because my sister went there and I felt like my mom was pushing me into going there too. I hate feeling like other people control my life and I felt if I went there they would have won. But then I started thinking about it and thought I'd give it a shot. But I had my heart set on a college outside of Utah. However, once I started filling out my college applications I started finding other schools I wanted to go to more. As I was about to fill out my application to the school outside of Utah, I had a feeling that it wasn't the school for me so I didn't even apply. That's when I fell in love with the idea of going to USU. I was sooo happy when I was admitted and I wanted BYU not to accept me so that I didn't have to choose. But that wasn't the case. I struggled so many times between the two schools this week. I had my heart set on USU, but like I said something didn't feel right. But I am super happy with my decision with BYU. I can't wait to go there and I know it's what is best for me and I'm glad I chose it on my own...without feeling pressured into it.

So I guess that's the end of tonight's post :) So I'm signing off...awkwardly. Have a great week! Love you all!

Sharing My Story...it's about time I did

Alright. So as many of you know I've been supporting everyone who is trying to find help with an eating disorder this past week since it was National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Well I don't know what you guys have thought about me and my affiliation with it so I thought it was about time to share my story. There are very few people who know about this outside my family because I don't talk about it. It's something I like to keep to myself.  This is going to be extremely hard for me but I feel like it's about time I talk about it. A lot of what I am going to say nobody knows about...not even my family. So here it goes...

I have dealt with an eating disorder for the past few years. I have always known what eating disorders do to your body. I went into my eating disorder fully aware of how it all worked...well I thought I was aware of it all. Turned out...I was completely wrong.

A few years ago I was dealing with a lot and didn't really know how to deal with it. I started having suicidal thoughts but I was too afraid to just end my life. I didn't want to just die because I felt like I would miss out on something and I wanted to see if life would turn out differently so I went to an eating disorder. I thought I would be able to control it so that if I ever ended up changing my mind about wanting to end my life I could easily go back to the life I had before. But eating disorders don't work like that. At first, I felt like I had control over my ED but as time went on I started realizing how little control I had over it.

I dealt with anorexia for some time. As the first year went on I started slipping into a different mind state. The way I viewed myself got really bad. I had known about all the physical stuff that comes with an eating disorder but I had very little knowledge of the metal and emotional sides of an eating disorder. They aren't easy to overcome. That's what held me back from wanting to get out of the trap I put myself in. When I heard people telling me that I looked good because I had lost some weight I thought I was doing the right thing and that I was in control of my ED. I was wrong though. I kept giving into my ED more and more and the compliments started to change. I still had people tell me that I looked good and everything but I was also starting to hear other comments along with it. I was told how tired I looked all the time and I easily brushed that off saying I didn't get enough sleep. Granted half the time I wasn't sleeping enough because I was staying up late finishing homework but I had plenty of times where I would catch up on sleep and still get the same comments. But there were other things that people talked about. I often lost balance. I was getting headaches all the time. I got lightheaded doing pretty much anything. I would get black outs so often I became used to it...and there were lots of other things, but I ignored it all. Physically, I didn't see a change. I would look at myself in the mirror as I got ready for the day and all I could see is the fat I still needed to get rid of. I hated looking in the mirror because I always found something else that needed fixing. Even though I hated mirrors, I became obsessed with them. I had to know what else was wrong with me. I had to know what I needed to fix and it just became a crazy obsession. Before I knew it, my life started to revolve around my ED but I didn't want anybody to know about it.

However, one day I was finally called out on it. I denied it at first but it got to the point where I started to see what people were talking about. At first I continued to be oblivious to it but finally I gave up on hiding it to myself and I admitted to the fact that I was dealing with anorexia. Slowly and hesitantly I started on my path to recovery. It didn't take long before I found myself dealing with my ED once again. I slipped back into how I had been treating my body for over a year. It just became like second nature to me. That's when I started to realize how little control I had over my ED. Whatever control I thought I had in the beginning, I no longer had. The rules had changed and my ED was the leader.

When I started my recovery, the only reason I decided to get help was because people were finding out about my ED and I wanted them to stop thinking about it. I figured the only way to do that was to please them and pretend everything was okay. So I tried to recover for other people. I didn't do it for myself and for that reason I failed the first time.

I shocked my body as I "recovered" and I would get sick from eating more than what my body was used to. Finally I figured it wasn't worth it anymore. I thought it would just be better to live with my ED than to recover from it. So I decided to try and hide the fact that I was still dealing with my ED and just pretend like I was still recovering from it. However, I had friends that saw through it and they wouldn't let me give up so easily. They watched me and supported me. Even though I wasn't ready to really recover, they understood that and they helped me in any way they could. So even though my body was having a hard time adjusting to bigger portions and I didn't want to keep fighting, I kept going because of them. The fact that they wanted me to fight so hard made me want to fight just for them.

It's been a couple of years now and I still can't say I'm perfect and have fully recovered. Eating disorders stay with you for a lifetime. It's hard to change that kind of mentality. It's something I am going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. It doesn't just change overnight. And there are times where I fall back and don't progress in my recovery, but I'm still fighting. It's a difficult challenge but it's not one I have had to face alone. I have a long way to go but I now have a reason to fight and I will. I want to live my life in a healthy way so that I can keep doing the things I love. Now I am fighting for me.

This week has helped me so much and I want to thank everyone who has been supporting me this week. A lot of my friends had no idea that I have dealt with an eating disorder but the fact that they were supporting me anyways was amazing! I can't thank them enough. So even though the week is over, eating disorders are still around. They will always be there and it's our job to spread the awareness. I'm grateful that I have been able to start to turn my life around and fight this disease.

Now, I didn't write this to get pity or to have people tell me that I shouldn't think of myself the way I do. I know that I shouldn't, but I do. However, I am healing and I have come a long way from where I was just a few months ago. I plan on living my life a little healthier from now on. I'm not writing this post for attention, it really is hard for me to say all of this to so many people at once. It scares me but I know it's going to help me recover and that is why I did it. For myself to heal. So, here I go. Onto the rest of my journey of recovery. Wish me luck! And if you are dealing with an eating disorder, I wish you the best of luck as well. I know how difficult they can be to overcome. Keep fighting...it's worth it.

Here's a recap from all the things I did this week!

"Mirrorless Monday"
Went the whole day without looking at myself in a mirror!

"Operation Beautiful Tuesday"
Attacked the bathroom at school with uplifting quotes

"Let it go Wednesday"
We wrote our insecurities on balloons and let them go!

"Treat yourself Thursday"
Went to Jamba Juice with some friends and then my sister took me out for frozen yogurt later that night.

"Free yourself Friday"
I wrote a letter to myself of where I want to be by next year

"Selfies for Self-confidence Saturday"
Took some selfies of myself throughout the day