28 Days Later....

....I have been waiting to use that title for too long.

So how are things?

I'm doing good.

A little leaner. Still terrible at math. No longer crushing on a certain you know who from the you know what club.

....I'm so happy to be back. More than I can express in words. I'd first like to apologize for leaving so abruptly without explaining. If you couldn't tell by my last entries I was not in the best of spirits. Maybe it was the beginning of the semester. Maybe my anxiety was at higher level than I liked to admit, perhaps it was my increasing self doubt and spell of bad days, but I simply felt...LOST.

So I decided to take a 28 hiatus, not particularly from this blog, but from my routine. There are just those moments in life, when you wish you could be someone else. You have this idea that if you could change the things about yourself that you hate, all will be great with in your life. I was simply sick of being the sad girl, I am simply sick of being the girl with increasing self doubt, with bouts of insecurity, or teary days and grey skies.

So I decided to give myself 28 days(based on my favorite movie) to see what I could accomplish, to figure out the small things, to stop feeling so bad about who I am. To stop feeling like I'm too inadequate to have friends, or a boyfriend, or a piece of mind. And in 28 days I hoped to have some greater sense of myself, I hoped that I would have "it" figured out. "It" being if going on like I had been going would be the course of my life. If I would forever give in to being the sad girl...

BUT

...In about 3 days I figured that I liked who I was, have to work on my anxiety problems, and that life is full of ups and downs but that it's worth living regardless of the shitty moments....

I know you were probably expecting something more dramatic:

That I literally ran away for 28 days and found out the secrets of my life 500 miles away in a new town/city.

Maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew and totally had a nervous breakdown, my own little Girl Interrupted episode.

Maybe I had met a boy and was spending all of my time with him curled up in blankets and kisses.

The last one would have been nice.

Unfortunately, but with much more simplicity, I simply took time to get to know myself. Away from everything.

During the beginning of my 28 days later scenario I discovered, not really discovered but embraced, that I have anxiety problems. My psych teacher calls them anxiety disorders, but I hate that word, I'd rather have anxiety problems than anxiety disorder. When it developed, that could take a while to pinpoint, but I do know that for the last several years it has been ruling my life. It has been the cloud over my head, the rock I hide under, the figure that holds me back. It is something I wish not to live with anymore, or something I hope I can learn to cope with. But I don't want to be it's victim, I don't need it to hold my hand and lead my down a path I cannot find my way back from.

The last 28 days I have:

Watch an endless amount of "Are you Afraid of the Dark"

Danced in the library

Eaten way to many Peanut Butter Cookies

Went to several club meetings

Ditched Amnesty International.

Been stalked by weird dude who works in bookstore/eating area/movie theater building on campus

Worked out a total of three times(bad I know).

Talked to someone in my class.

I think I flirted.

Made up a nickname for all of my co-workers

Slept in class

Kicked my lab partner in the leg

Dumped Gavin Degraw for Sufjan Stevens.

Made up a dance for the following items and occasions: Cheez-its. Doritos. Peanut Butter Cookie. Passing Bio Test. Pending concerts. and occasional nothing dances. All simply involve small rump shaking and cabbage patch arm movements.

Slept through a fire alarm.

These 28 days have been liberating in a sense that I have allowed myself to be okay with who I am. So I still don't have any friends, and I don't even have a crush worthy guy to drool over anymore(unless you are counting Sufjan Stevens who I will be talking about in the next entry. FREAKY dream stuff, I feel like a dirty whore.), but I am learning to accept myself. I am learning to love the things that I have, because I know I have so much to give, that there is an endless amount of possibilities that I possess, which all lay before me.

So:

My hair may never fall in the right place

I will never manage to pull off wearing a skirt without looking uncomfortable

I will always have one foot firmly planted in my dreams

I may always be a little shy-

-and insecure-

-and perhaps a little sad-

I may always find small comfort in being a homebody...

Who fancies eating cereal in bed while watching old school nick

My musical taste may be a tad bit sad and folkish, but never EMO.

I will always have bad posture

and love wearing jeans and a T

BUT:

I am content with all of that. And am learning that my self worth is dependent on how I view myself and not how others view or treat me. I have learned that I am who I am. And that no matter how many tears I shed over the complexity that is living, no matter how slighted I feel about my circumstance, I have every single day of my life to improve on it. To work with it, to learn to cope. To laugh, to cry, to feel, to be, to live. And that makes the shitty stuff easier to deal with.

I refuse to be that girl anymore while maintaining the things that make me...ME. And it will take a lot of work to get to a place where I am truly happy. And not the sad, lonely, bitter...I could go on but for the sake of everything I won't .

28 days later, and I feel like I am on a journey. Not to a new destination. But back home to me. I don't expect it to be easy, I am counting on more tears, to feel insignificant and small somedays. But there is a slight difference, I am learning how to deal with it. I am learning to not let it consume me, I am sick of it consuming me. I am sick of it being my rock, which I lean securely on.

28 days later, and I feel a little free.

Once again sorry about the 28 days hiatus, I should have told you before hand but I didn't know till after I wrote the post that I would go on the hiatus and I couldn't write a new post because that would totally go against it(not counting the post-scripts I just didn't want anyone to think I died).

I hope I have not made anyone too mad, you guys are a huge part of the girl I am learning to accept( I can't say woman yet, that's too adulty), and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart

Back to regular postings, I swear. There will not be anymore long periods of no posting, it sucked not writing down things about work(creepy short dude and Sir-smells-a-lot), school(Mike,math,Katherine) and generally reading your blogs. The last part I missed the most. I am ready to fall back into where I fit snuggly in. And I also am looking forward to ranting and raving, but you know..

So how have you been?

I have some catching up to do, it may take me a while(probably tonight).

Today I received my first paycheck from new job and I now have to splurge on 2 Sufi(my husband pictured above, isn't he...LOVELY) CD's, a poster and a T-shirt.

What is a girl to do with all this part-time job money she is rolling in.

Until tomorrow.

Beckett A. Hughes.