I. August 22, 2010

I was clearly struck by my nephew’s question a few weeks ago and have been thinking about who exactly I am. This is just a collection of things about me.

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I go slightly out of my way to step on crunchy looking leaves.

I drink way too much coffee, knowing that I shouldn’t.

I leave Facebook up all the time, but I’m always doing other things.

I don’t like talking on the phone.

I would rather talk in person or text.

I don’t trust people easily, but once I do, they pretty much have my trust forever.

I like to talk.

I love to listen.

I am actually beginning to like my hair.

I am absolutely fascinated with my college and its president. (and his wife)

I sing at the top of my lungs when I’m alone in my car.

I also yell at all the cars around me.

I say shoot, golly, darn, Jeez, oh-my, and yikes.

I laugh at inappropriate times.

I don’t wear shorts…. it’s a thing.

I am a cat person.

I stare at the clouds.

I am slightly obsessed with musicals.

I don’t like waking up.

I love driving.

I say what I think, even when it’ll get me into trouble.

I hate all pictures of myself.

I would do anything for the ones I love.

I wear Sperry’s or flip-flops all the time.

I might possibly be slightly judgemental sometimes.

I read more into things than I usually should.

I would be lost without my iPhone.

I am aware how sad my dependence on technology is.

I will be a teacher one day.

I am waiting for you to ask me, “what’s wrong.”

I think for myself.

I read Postsecret every week.

I listen to Pandora more than iTunes.

I can pretty much quote most episodes of Gilmore Girls.

I think bubble wrap is a great form of therapy.

I give second chances.

I can lick my elbow. (no joke. I really can.)

I rely heavily on my sister’s approval.

I like hot tea, not iced tea.

I wish I played the violin. Or the cello, guitar, or banjo.

I have a guitar that I don’t know how to play.

I am unbelievably low maintenance.

I am a little obsessed with apple. The company, not the fruit.

I tend to trip over my own feet and fall up stairs.

I like to make lists.

I am left handed.

I wish I had said, “Yes” and taken that risk.

I cry at sad movies and books.

I am on my way to finally being happy.

I try to just be a normal girl.

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what about YOU?

I’m from Kentucky, and yes, I do wear shoes. August 16, 2010

But not in the summer.

I grew up with almost magical summers.I mean, truly perfect Halmark worthy summers. At least that’s how they appeared from my youthful perspective.

This is the first year that I’ve noticed that summer has changed.

Growing up, my summers consisted of waking up around 10, and then preceding to do one of two things. Most days I, along with my sister and my cousin (who lived next door) would spend the day outside, only to be seen when it was dark. We would grab our bikes and explore the area, biking for hours. We found abandoned barns, little streams, woods, everything. In reality, our parents would not have been pleased with our explorations, but none the less, we had fun.

We spent weeks having on going water gun fights with the guys who lived across the field, racing around the block on our scooters, creating entire communities out of sidewalk chalk, and building forts in the woods behind our houses. We freely ran from the house barefoot, hair pulled back in a messy pony tail, and never cared about getting dirty or getting hurt.

Every July we would go down to the TN/KY line to buy fireworks, the good kind, and on the fourth we would watch with amazement as the sky exploded. We lit bottle rockets as we pretended to be Harry Potter,  and threw those little poppers at our cats. We drank lemonade and ran around in the grass catching lightning bugs while the cicadas and mosquitos buzzed around us.

Life was easy, there was no stress, nothing to worry about. Money didn’t matter, and getting a job wasn’t even on the radar. The prospect of school always seemed like it was forever away, and next thing we knew,  we were complaining that summer went by to fast.

I could spend the whole day laying in the thick grass watching the clouds go by. I could just lay there with my cat listening to the birds and cars with the sweet smell of honeysuckle and fresh mint from the garden in the air. There’s something magical about that sound. The cacophony of birds, the crescendo and decrescendo of bugs, the rustling of leaves in the wind, far off children playing, the occasional plane in the sky, and all of this gently accompanied by the steady beat kept by the sound of swooshing cars, my cat purring and my increasingly deepening breath.

I miss this. Summers as they once were, I mean. But they will never be like that, and it’s something I can accept. But even kids these days don’t enjoy summers like that. They just sit inside and play video games all day. It’s “too hot” or “too humid” or they’re stuck inside because whoever they’re with doesn’t want them running around alone, and they don’t want to go outside with them. It’s sad that they won’t grow up with memories like mine. Of actually burning ants with a magnifying glass, running through corn fields, riding your bike down an old country road as you watch the steam rise off the road from a recent summer storm. They won’t know how terrible it is to mistake a crab apple for the real thing, or how pretty the sunset can be from the roof of your house.

But I’m still from Kentucky. I still run around barefoot when possible. (and always seem to forget how hot pavement can get in the sun) I complain about the humidity, cursing it as my hair once again gets pulled into its customary ponytail. I still manage to spend some evenings at the Drive-in, and am a frequent face at the local Frosty Freeze. (they will always make the best milkshakes I’ve ever had)  I still go to the same family owned place on the line every July, and I still catch the occasional fire fly. I pick fresh cherries straight from the tree, and help my sister make pies and homemade ice cream.

I still get to run around the yard as I once did, now with my nephews.

But it’s not the same. It never will be.

Who are you, Liz? August 5, 2010

That’s what my nephew asked me the other day. He’s three, and with the seriousness of a national news correspondent, he looked up at me and asked, “Who are you, liz?”

How do you respond to that? At first I was confused. “I’m Liz,” I responded. But he looked at me with total stupor and said, “No, who ARE you?”

Who AM I? Who AM I? ……who am I.

The depth of his question threw me off guard. Like I knew he did, he knew I was his Aunt Liz. He knew I was Granny’s daughter, and DaDa and Aunt Line’s sister. But still he asked who I was.

…

Sure, we can label ourselves. We are daughters, sisters, students, friends, teachers, leaders, followers, the list can go on forever. We’ve labeled ourselves for years. It helps us, and others, neatly put us into boxes where we can be catalogued and indexed for future reference. It makes things easy, and it gives us a way to hide behind who we think we are.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” ~Kurt Vonnegut

We accept the labels given to us and keep them throughout our lives. Yeah, our labels change. We lose some and gain some. And sometimes we even mold ourselves to better fit a given label because it’s just easier. A label we once feared becoming, now doesn’t seem so bad. Sometimes we don’t like our labels and strive to change them. And sometimes, we are changed irrevocably by those around us.  And sometimes the labels get stacked one on top of another like clearance isle items so that it’s hard to tell which label is actually a true representation of  us.

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But I don’t think we ever actually know who we are. And more importantly, I don’t think we ever should. Figuring out who we are is a process that requires growing up. It requires exploring, wondering, questioning, searching, trying new things. It’s a result of making mistakes, coloring outside the lines, asking forgiveness, taking a leap of faith. It requires you to live. And the moment that you know for certain who you are, is the moment that all this stops.

The moment that you grow up and stop learning, or worse, stop wanting to learn is the moment everything stops. When you’ve decided that you’ve already grown up as much as you can, you’re done, there’s no purpose. When you decide that you are fully confident that you know who you are, you stop living. And that’s just sad. The wonder and amazement that my nephews posses just makes me smile. The surprise when one of them finally figured out how to use a water gun, or the shocked look where they can’t quite decide if that crash on the pavement hurt more than it scared them is wonderful to watch.  The fact that right now Benjamin wants nothing more than to grow up to be a fireman just makes me happy.

You see, we’ve lost this. We’ve stopped reveling in the small surprises, and hoping for simple things. Heck, those wax string toys from Zaxby’s? Yeah, those can amuse me for an hour. I still get excited over a cupcake or a new tube of play-doh. And I still wonder. And I still dream. I still hope, and wish on shooting stars (or airplanes if its cloudy), and I still throw coins into wishing wells. I love kids because they haven’t been ruined by life yet. With the wave of my hand, I can steal their nose, and they always laugh at my knock knock jokes. We have to regain some of this wonder. Captain Hook had it right when he said “Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience!” But unlike Peter Pan and the lost boys, we have to grow up eventually. But we need to enjoy the process and take the time to figure out who we are. We don’t yet know who we are, and we can’t pretend we do.

Only one thing in life is a constant. And that’s Time. Everything else can change… and will change. We change, we have to.

…

So who am I, Benjamin? I don’t know. And I’m okay with that. But I look forward to figuring it out.

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“We don’t know who we are,

but we know who we aren’t.

And we know who we don’t want to be.”

Hide and Seek July 27, 2010

I was always good at this game. I was lucky to be small enough to fit in rather unlikely places (like Ski baggage, “full” trunks, and top shelves of side closets) and was often the one that had to give away my location. If you played the game as frequently as I did, you learned where certain people looked first, and how to switch rooms and hiding spots without people noticing. And you also learned that if you wanted to be found, sometimes you had to choose obvious spots like behind a squeaky door or under the guest bed.

I hated being the seeker. Oh, how I hated that role. I think this is why I tried so hard to have a great hiding spot. But I enjoyed hiding. For a few minutes, everything is silent. There’s a slight rush in the air, and you can hear your every breath. Every movement feels exaggerated and seems to be accompanied by a foley artist.

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I still like to hide.

But it’s not the same type of hiding, not really. Oh, I’m still really good at it and I know all the best hiding spots and how to throw people off my trail. But I’m not in a cupboard or behind a curtain. It’s a different kind of hiding.

You see, there’s never really a seeker. Occasionally people may notice that I’m hiding. They catch me while I’m searching for my secret place. But I’m a good hider. And they’ll never know what they’ve stumbled upon.

…

I don’t really know why I hide. I found this quote. (yeah, I told you I like quotes) I feel like it pretty much sums things up better than I could. (I don’t think I’ve very eloquent. As you can tell, I tend to ramble a lot) :

“Do you ever just get that feeling where you don’t want to talk to anybody? you don’t want to smile, and you don’t want to fake being happy. but at the same time, you don’t know exactly what is wrong either. There isn’t a way to explain it to someone who doesn’t already understand. If you could want anything in the world it would be to be alone. people have stopped being comforting… and being alone never was. At least when you’re alone no one constantly asks you what is wrong and there isn’t anyone who wont take ‘i don’t know’ for an answer. You feel the way you do just BECAUSE. You hope the feeling will pass soon and that you will be able to be yourself again, but until then all you can do is wait.”

I feel like that sometimes. And I feel that way just because. And so I hide.

…

But I like my life. And I have awesome friends, so I usually snap out of this rather quickly. Everyone can relate to this, or  at least I hope so. Some days you just aren’t in the mood to deal with anyone, you aren’t happy, but you aren’t necessarily mad, you’re just a little blah. And you’re not sure why. But you hide.

You go deeper and deeper into yourself and just sit with that feeling for a while. (let’s not call it sulking, sulking has a negative connotation, but we all know that’s basically what it is…. that and whining.)

…

I keep typing words into this post. I get about three lines down and then delete them. I just hold down the delete button instead of just highlighting it and hitting delete to make it more dramatic and so that it takes longer. (I told you this was one of the problems with blogs. in my journal, I would have wasted about half a page marking things out by now. Actually, no. That’s a lie. I would have left it because only I would have read it. And I’m not scared of facing my own thoughts. I’m scared of you all facing my thoughts)

I’m not sure if you will get the point that this makes in my head. (I tend to draw conclusions that no one else sees) Especially since you’ll never know what was once written and then deleted from the preceding lines. But just know this:

Sometimes, I hide.

And no one seeks.

But, that’s okay.

Know when to bite your tongue… And when to scream as loudly as you can. July 18, 2010

“Think before you speak”

This is something we’ve all been told. I have struggled with this concept for um, about 19 years. (you see, I seem to think with my mouth, and it just never turns out well) I also don’t believe in sugar-coating the truth, and am therefore pretty blunt, which also tends to not turn out in my favor. But regardless of the fact that the application is a little rusty, the concept is clear: just be careful about what you’re saying. Think about it, and if you think it might get you in trouble or if it’s inappropriate, just don’t say it.

But it’s not that easy.

Sometimes, you have to say it. Sometimes you have to risk it and just speak up. Say something. Tell a friend when their outfit doesn’t look right or when you don’t like their haircut. Don’t lie. They asked, they should have the truth. If you see your friend heading down the wrong path or making what you think is a stupid decision, tell them. Offer your opinion. We’re lucky enough to be able to form opinions, and should voice them with the certainty they deserve. If they disagree, fine. That’s their prerogative, too. But don’t be a bobble-head friend. Don’t just agree and nod because it’s expected. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, and don’t be afraid of an argument.

I actually enjoy arguments. Not stupid messy ones, but actual arguments. I have been known on occasion to provoke someone (usually my sister)  just to start an argument. I think it’s fun to defend a position and explain your opinions. But I’m also able to admit when I’m wrong.

I know that there are some arguments that should not be pursued. Sometimes topics should just be avoided because of past arguments that just didn’t quite turn out friendly. But some things must be pursued regardless.

Like this…I have an argument that I refuse to abandon. I simply refuse. This argument means too much to me to settle for anything less that I demand. I realize that it will require a compromise, though. But this compromise isn’t like most. It involves you getting everything that you want, and me doing twice the work so that I can please you and do what I want in life. It isn’t fair, but that’s life, right? So forgive me if I continuously bring this topic up. It isn’t just some stubborn persistent argument to me. It’s my future; it’s my dream. I WILL NOT give up on this argument. I was raised to be a strong outspoken and independent woman, unafraid to stand up for her convictions. Do not underestimate my determination in this matter. I know that I might lose, but this fact remains: I will not stop fighting you on this. There’s just too much in it for me.

silence July 9, 2010

Silence. Does it scare you? Intimidate you? Make you nervous? Do you even know what it sounds like?

No, really. Do you? It may be because I have the attention span of a goldfi…… squirrel! but I have yet to hear silence.

Okay, back to making something resembling a point. For some reason, silence is scary. It’s unsettling. It’s always the moment in movies when the person with the [insert deadly weapon here] appears out of no where. Or it occurs right as you’re going to sleep, just as you’ve gotten comfortable. And it’s TOO quiet. Uncomfortably quiet. Or it’s when you’re standing with some friends and you reach that moment when you are all out of stuff to say. The conversation lapses for just a little too long and you’re all stuck in that awkward silence. In most cases silence is something that we all try to avoid.

We listen to music, have the tv on as background noise, text or message people and do just about anything to avoid getting caught in silence. But why? Why are we so afraid to sit in silence?

One of the best times of the day is just when you wake up, and you know you don’t actually have to get out of bed for a while. You can just lie there and stare at the ceiling or the wall (whichever you prefer) and just think. And as a side note, this is where I don’t think we actually ever reach true silence. Just saying. All you can hear are cars passing, birds chirping, and depending on how late you woke up, people moving about. And you can hear yourself. You can just lie there are let your mind wander as far as it wants, replaying certain exchanges, moments, days in your life. Thinking about the shapes on the ceiling or how you want to redecorate your room. You can obsess over the test you should be studying for or complain about that song stuck in your head. (because there’s ALWAYS at least one song stuck in your head… don’t lie.) And that’s relaxing. It’s comforting, almost. And it’s silence.

And maybe that’s precisely the reason we avoid quiet time. Because as wonderful as silence is when you have a migraine, or are stressed to the point of psychosis, leaving ourselves alone with our thoughts is scary. There’s a reason we all try to stay as busy as we possibly can, overcommiting ourselves and overstimulating our senses. We don’t want to stop and “chill” for a moment. If we really stopped and thought about what we were doing with our lives, would we be happy? Do we want to dwell on unpleasant things and impending deadlines? Should we risk unearthing past events and people we’ve tried so hard to forget? Of course not. So we just keep going and going like the energizer bunny until it catches up with us, and we crash.Personally, I’d rather nap than sit and just think, because at least then I wouldn’t have to think about what I should be doing. (I’m a big fan of napping, btw)

But sometimes silence is all you really need. Time out? Where you just sat and thought about whatever it was that you did…. or where you sat and stared blankly at the air in front of you? See, silence was all you needed. That and a healthy dose of parental fear. And even in some friendships, the lucky ones, silence is comforting. In those friendships, silence doesn’t seem awkward. It’s just… well, silence. And it’s not the result of running out of stuff to say, just the result of not feeling the need to fill the void with pointless chit-chat.

Home is Where the Heart… WANTS to Be July 6, 2010

“Then close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself: There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home!” ~Glinda

Home is where the heart is…. that’s the cliche we’ve all grown up with, right? Merriam-Webster defines home as “a place of origin” or “one’s place of residence” but we have always carried the intuitive definition that it’s where we grew up. It’s the place that raised you, and the people who got you to where you are today. My home is this tiny picturesque town that resembles the dysfunctional fictional city of Stars Hallow from Gilmore Girls. (It took a village to raise this girl).

More importantly though, Home is a feeling. It’s the feeling when I turn off of I-65 after a long car ride of nothing but bad country music stations and construction. It’s that feeling where I sit a little straighter in the front seat, where I let go of the breath it feels like I’ve held for 3 hours, and where everything feels familiar again that tells me I’m home. It’s how I know I’m on my road because I know how it feels to go over that sharp bend in the road and over the pot hole they’ve never fixed right before I turn into my drive way. A combine, Semi, and lawnmower are all driving down the highway……. no, it’s not the beginning of a joke. It’s my home.

But something’s changing. All this time Home has been a set location. It’s been that place I’ve ached to return to after a bad day and where I’ve always felt I’ve belonged. Now, I AM Home. But it doesn’t feel the same. It’s a result of growing up, I assume, but something is different. For one, Franklin is different. It’s petty I know, but I the places I’ve grown up, the places containing my childhood have changed. Buildings are gone; land once the ideal sledding location has been plowed and paved. But this is all tangible stuff.

In the “home is more of an idea” or a “nebulous cloud of mushy warmth and love” field, something’s changed too. My life isn’t really here anymore. In the month or so I’ve been back, I can tell it’s just not the same. Sure, it’s fun to be here for the summer, but I’m counting down the days until I leave. It’s not that my heart isn’t here, because it is. Part of it always will be. No matter how far away I move or how long I’m gone, I’ll always know the road back to where I grew up…. it’s just part of coming from a small town. It’s just that my heart is now somewhere else, too. It’s at this place I spend about 9 months out of the year: Centre.

That feeling of going Home? It goes both ways. There’s now a reassuring feeling of coming over the hill past Walmart and reaching the point where “walk sign is on” rings out over campus. And I have a hunch that as the years wane on, that feeling will grow stronger.

I know I will always have a home where I grew up, this is certain. But when your heart isn’t confined to one place, Home becomes a little harder to pin down.

“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.” ~L. Frank Baum

Trust me, I’m Fine June 30, 2010

Trust. It’s a rather curious thing. I believe with all my heart that it’s something that must be earned. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Every emotion I have is hardwired to my tear ducts, and it’s usually blatantly obvious what I’m feeling. However, I still manage to hide a lot.(mainly through my charming wit and sarcasm).  I have walls set up so thick, that sometimes I think I keep myself from knowing what I’m really feeling. I recently heard someone talk about how we all enter this world as open, trusting people. Something happens to us, usually life, that makes us put up those walls. And as one of my favorite quotes says: (you’ll learn I really like quotes) “At times you build walls around yourself not to keep others out, but just to test who cares enough to tear them down.”

I’d like to believe that I’m a trustworthy person. I’ve never done anything to disvalue my creditability, and can almost always be expected to keep secrets. I’m a great listener, I have that ability to nod and smile while “mm-hmm”-ing “I see”-ing at the perfect time. Frankly, I enjoy being trusted not only in a job setting, but on a personal level by my friends. There are many people in my life who I can trust…. with small things. With simple secrets, personal belongings, favors, stuff like that. And there are certain people, I can count them on my 2 hands, who I feel like I could absolutely trust with everything I have. If only I could.

If only I could allow myself to lower that wall enough to let them in. I think about some of the people I grew up with, the people I spent 18 years of my life with. Most of them don’t know me at all. And in a town where the graduating class was 172 and I traveled with the same kids from preschool through 12th grade (where our teachers taught our siblings and parents), that’s saying something. Some of my friends from college, all of whom I’ve known less than a year, know me better than my high school friends.

Trust must be earned. But then I have to be willing to trust. I HAVE friends who have earned my trust. It sounds crazy, I’m completely aware of this, but it scares me to death to completely be myself. Don’t get me wrong, I AM myself. And to sound even more like an emotional girl, since joining a certain sorority and gaining a certain group of friends, I’ve been truer to myself than I ever have been. But while it allows you to be free, being yourself also makes you vulnerable. Because if you show all your cards too early, you’re screwed. Someone can hurt you…. someone can hurt me. And maybe it’s because if I was hurt, and if I needed someone to confide in, I wouldn’t trust anyone enough to talk… to REALLY talk.

So I’m stuck in this psychotic vicious circle. And while I sit here, thinking of those who have been able to confide in me, I’m trying to think of those who I would actually turn to. Those ten or so people?

Yeah, I’d trust them with some effort. But the thing that makes me sad, really actually sad, is that at this moment I can only come up with 2…… maybe 3 people who, right now and without hesitation, I would trust with something that was really bothering me or that I needed to confess. And that kinda scares me.

New Kid on the Blog June 26, 2010

Just to give you a heads up, I’m pretty undecided about this whole “blogging” business. I mean who are “you” anyway? Am I so pretentious as to assume that people actually care what I think?

I’m undecided on that, too.

PS: I ramble a lot…. I’d like to blame it on the coffee. I usually have about 4 cups a day. What can I say? It tastes good. mmmm……

anyway… I like the “idea” of a blog. I’ve always been one to write my feelings down. I by no means would call myself a poet, but I always wrote viciously until my emotions returned to normal. There’s something reassuring about actually writing something down. I guess it has to do with leaving evidence that you felt something, that you were there. There’s something comforting in knowing that years from now I can go back and look at what I wrote and still be able to muster up some of those feelings. Because at the time, whatever it was WAS important. And it MEANT something to me. In a world where we are all taught to suppress and resist our urges and emotions, it would be a great shame to simply forget those times when we DID feel, when we DID cry.

And this is where the whole blog thing gets messy for me. I like journals. I like the careful choosing of the pen and the folding back of the pages. I like feeling where tears have warped past entries or where excitement almost jumps off the page. I like to see how my penmanship changed with age, maturity (which don’t necessarily correlate) and feeling. And I like the fact that once I write it down, it’s there to stay. I can cross it out, but the evidence remains. It’s like the hard copy to my life. The back-up file to my emotions and memories. With a blog, I can edit and update. With the click of a button I can wipe away any evidence of my anger, my rage, or my elation. There’s too easy of an escape hatch. If I make a comment I later regret, I can delete it. Done. Simple. Gone. But my feelings remain. By not expressing myself because it’s out there for people to see (which is my own blasted fault, since it’s MY blog) I’m lying to myself. And that’s not why I write. And I like knowing that it’s there, beneath the mattress of my childhood bed until my parents or I clear it out.

But that’s the thing. It’s there. Under that mattress. I might forget about it. I’m certainly not conceited enough to think that my innermost thoughts and ponderings on the world warrant a passing glance, but a tiny part of me (and perhaps because I’m only human, and humans by nature are vain) wants to offer my thoughts to my peers.

And so here we find ourselves. Hopefully, you (I still don’t know who that is yet and I feel foolish typing it as though I’m talking to my macbook) have made it through my semi-coherent ramblings (I warned you!)

I am curious though…. Is anyone reading this? Does anyone care? Probably not… but then again, I blame this whole thing on the coffee.