Coming to Terms

Today is February 13th, which means tomorrow is February 14th--Valentines Day. Lets recap my last 17 Valentines Day's.

1st-15th: My big sister's birthday is Valentines Day, so my first 15 were spent celebrating with her. She moved to England for college when I was barely 16, so there goes that excuse!

16th-17th: I worked at Papa Murphy's Pizza and Valentine's Day was one of our busiest days of the year. Both years, I worked until about 8 or 9 and then went to dinner and a movie with my coworkers. None of us had dates, so we all just hung out.

So that brings us to this year. My 18th Valentines Day. I no longer have my sister or my job to hide behind. So here it goes.

I don't date and most of my friends don't talk to me anymore; therefore, I have absolutely no plans this year to celebrate Valentines Day.

I sent out a text message to a bunch of girls at the beginning of the week, wanting to plan a home cooked dinner followed by a movie. I even offered to cook! I sent that out to 8-10 people and only heard back from one. And that was about three days after I sent out the text. She said she'd have to ask her parents. I told her not to bother, that it wasn't going to happen.

Honestly, I at first wondered if something was wrong with my phone, if it wasn't receiving text messages for some reason. But every time I convinced myself that was the problem, I remembered that another person had just texted me earlier that night and we had had a conversation (this was usually my friend who lives out of state). So really, there were no excuses there.

I am pretty much giving up on my friends now. I guess I really shouldn't call them that anymore. I only really have three people from my old core group that I would still consider friends. The rest? Well, I am just trying to avoid them because I know they will act all friendly to my face and I will once again have hope that things aren't like I thought. Thats never the case, though.

So now I'm trying to branch out more, hang out with people I haven't seen or talked to in a long time. I'm going to an improv night at the high school with a girl named Rachel, who I've known since 5th grade but had a couple of falling outs with. We 'made up' a couple of years ago. She and my sister are fairly good friends and she and I are friendly with each other as well. It should be a fun night.

But really, I just can't wait to move to Bellingham and then Nashville, to meet a whole fresh new crop of people. Thats the problem with small towns like Anacortes--after a while, you've met everyone. If you can't make many friends, you're pretty much out of luck.

So there you have it. I am spending my Valentines Day alone, save for probably my guitars.

Here's to hoping that next Valentine's Day, I'll actually have friends.

2/4/10

I am currently laying in a hotel bed in SeaTac. I’m down here for a conference for work and I am loving it! This is our second weekend in a row of being down here for conferences. I am learning so much to help me not only in my job but for my life. The whole focus of these conferences is to teach us how to use things like good communication to make the patients feel cared for. This has been helping me build knowledge for my personal life on how to treat people with the respect that they deserve so that they can do the same for me. This includes communication and emotions.

Honestly, the last few months have been really rough for me. When I quit Papa Murphys, I thought that I was good friends with everybody and we would all keep in touch and hang out a lot. Well, I was wrong. I really only regularly hang out with one person from there and even my time with that person has begun to dwindle. Because that was pretty much my only group of friends, the last few months have been really lonely and that has been taking a big toll on me emotionally. I have suffered from a lot of things and done a lot of things that I’m not proud of.

Now I am in a sort of rebuilding stage. I’m trying to change the way I look at situations, stop jumping to conclusions, be more flexible and be less reliant on other people. This is a really tough thing for me because I am such a people person. However, I am making some good progress. That being said, my friendship levels are still quite low. I really only regularly hang out with one person (who is, coincidentally, another Papa Murphys castaway). I love this girl dearly, but I can’t rely on just one person to serve all of my friendship…needs.

I live in a small town with not many people my age and really haven’t found too many people who are on the same level as me and who can be in an ‘iron sharpens iron’ sort of relationship with me. I am so, so ready to move away, but I am not ready yet to do that. I will be moving about 45 minutes away at the beginning of 2011 to a city much bigger than where I live now and I am definitely excited for that; however, that living situation will only be lasting for at most six months. After that, I’ll be moving back home for another year before I can move out of state. This wait is so hard for me and will only get worse. I need to be in certain types of relationships that I just haven’t had for a while.

I feel like the one consistent thing in my life lately—my job—has really been helping me out with getting through this rough patch. I’ve been learning so many of these that will help me become a better person and help me be a better friend to people. But honestly, the thing that I need to cling to is my relationship with Jesus. Its interesting to me that when things are toughest, people will either run towards God or away from Him. And unfortunately, in my case, I feel like its been the away. I tell myself constantly that I will work to build my relationship with Him again, but it just never happens. I guess my goal for myself is to just make it happen.

If you feel so inclined, please pray for me in this.