being alone is weird.

a year ago, I knew what it was like to be alone. I had been alone for a long time. I could go days without getting a text from anyone other than my momager. I would wake up alone, I would fall asleep alone, and there would be hours in between there where I would be alone. granted, there were hours that I wasn’t alone, and days when I would hear from multiple people. no one could actually understand everything that I was going through each day because no one actually knew everything I was going through every day. it was really hard around this time last year. I spent a lot of time doing things for other people (which isn’t a bad thing, it kept me busy and gave me something to keep me going, even if it was exhausting at times), and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing with my life.

I had returned from a week and a half in Ecuador, where I spent most hours of all of those days with at least one, but usually two and many times more than that, person. and then when I boarded that flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, I was on my own again. there were people around, but no one I knew. my flight back to Appleton was delayed, delayed, delayed, and then cancelled. I was exhausted, I was frustrated, and I was sad. at this point, I hadn’t taken a shower or changed my clothes in over twenty-four hours, and I might have gotten three hours of sleep on a red-eye flight in the same amount of time. I just wanted to go home. it seemed impossible, but thanks to my father’s assistance, I ended up driving and getting home to brush my teeth and sleep and try to get back to normalcy in the morning.

and then things changed. there was a person who seemed interested in my life and I felt like I had a new lifeline. the thing is, I have a couple super close friends. we’re all busy and it’s hard for us to have the time to be committed to continually growing those relationships. but this new lifeline allowed me to spend time getting to know someone I hadn’t known as well before. it filled my heart with joy to be able to feel heard by someone different. but it shifted pretty quickly. it was rocky for a little bit there, but once everything fell back into place, it blossomed again and it was incredible to me to have someone there, any time. everything eventually shattered. it still stings, even six months later.
it’s different this winter. because I know what it was like to not be this alone. I cherished that, and there’s this fear inside me that I’ll never have that again.

let me tell you a secret. it’s hard for me to meet people and let strangers into my life. I don’t like being around crowds, or going to bars, and I don’t know how else people make friends these days. the people I do meet are all from the same group, and while I feel like I belong to a point, it’s also pretty clear that I am an outsider and I feel like I now have to keep a wall up so that I don’t get too close and have everything ripped away from me again.

it’s not cool for me to say that I don’t have friends because to me friends are people who show that they care and actually reach out, when I haven’t been reaching out either. but it gets to be that I feel like I’m being annoying because I feel that I am always the one who initiates the conversation, and that just leaves me hurting even more.

please, before you think that I’m over here calling all of the people in my life terrible friends, please, please realize that this is how it feels for someone whose anxiety level is just so high that they think they’re bothering someone when they reach out or that everyone is avoiding them for a reason that they know is non-existent, but the little voice in the back of their head is telling them otherwise. please know that as I write these feelings, I can’t sleep and only heard from one non-stranger today. it’s the twenty-ninth, which for years has dragged me down. please know that my heart is filled with so much love, but on nights like tonight, I feel like it’s one-sided. please know that I appreciate it more than you’ll ever understand when someone else makes the first move and that it’s so difficult for me to reach out because of the times I’ve been burned in the past.

it’s impossible for anyone to what my life is like without walking a day in my shoes, but here is the best way for me to try to help someone understand. if you see me and think that I’ve cut myself off from the world, it’s not because I don’t care.

please know that it’s because I care too much.
​
20180129

22/365 :: Monday 22 January 2018
​bedside books. I would be lost if it wasn't for the library.

23/365 :: Tuesday 23 January 2018
​more books, after yet another trip to the library. my favorite part of teaching preschoolers is reading picture books!

24/365 :: Wednesday 24 January 2018
this mirror was the first thing I hung in this apartment, just over two years ago. a TJ Maxx find around Halloween which hung in the bedroom of my old apartment, it's still one of my favorite things here.

25/365 :: Thursday 25 January 2018
a beautiful winter day at the lake.

26/365 :: Friday 26 January 2018
I have managed to keep this plant alive for five months, but I still need to figure out aperture on my camera.

27/365 :: Saturday 27 January 2018
outgoing mail. I really love these top two postcards.

28/365 :: Sunday 28 January 2018
real life uniform. I would love to wear skirts and dresses and boots every day, but it's a lot easier to run around in skinny jeans and Converse.

it was January 21, 2015 the first time I saw it. I was on my way to Cave Point and quite honestly, a bit lost. (it turns out I wasn’t as lost as I thought I was at the time.) for years, I’ve been fascinated by abandoned buildings. they hold stories but yet they’ve been left behind and now the earth is taking them back.

in searching through a hard drive of photos (which always finds me down a rabbit hole of laughter), I realized that I haven’t taken as many photos here as I thought, and that the majority of those times were in the past year. I’ve begun taking photos of myself here to document not only the changes of the house and the seasons, but also changes in my life.

I really lucked out with the sky that first time. that photo was submitted as an art piece for Love On Holiday 2016, and three songs were written about it: Beautiful Wreck, Watch Her Fall, and Try. at least one of those songs makes me cry every time I hear even the opening chords, but the truth is that each of those songs has at least one line of personal pull in it for me. the lovely seven songwriters who wrote these songs weren’t entangled enough in my daily life (and I didn’t talk to any of them about the photograph until they wrote their songs) to know that their songs were already inside my bones, but I guess at the same time, if you listen hard enough, you can always find something personal in any song.

pivotal moments always draw me to this haunting house, and numbers keep bringing me back, too. I’ll continue to visit to watch the seasons alter the sky and the leaves.

it’ll never be my house, but it might be my home.

15/365 :: Monday 15 January 2018
snow view.

16/365 :: Tuesday 16 January 2018
a visit to the snow-covered house.

17/365 :: Wednesday 17 January 2018
mail from China, the Netherlands, and Germany, along with the journal that is my color-coded life.​

18/365 :: Thursday 18 January 2018
a beautiful early-morning view.

19/365 :: Friday 19 January 2018
two sunrises in a row because I didn't expect yesterday's to turn out.

20/365 :: Saturday 20 January 2018
this month's sticker delivery. possibly the best mail of the month.

21/365 :: Sunday 21 January 2018
​another morning window view, this time an eerie fog.

I have to keep reminding myself that we were dealt our hands for a reason.

8/365 :: Monday 8 January 2018
​working lunch of sorts.

9/365 :: Tuesday 9 January 2018
I was going to go outside and take pictures, but then I just wanted to keep reading instead.

10/365 :: Wednesday 10 January 2018
foggy drive to the lake.

11/365 :: Thursday 11 January 2018
I decided to reread A Series of Unfortunate Events this year, which I read when I was in middle school. I really do enjoy Lemony Snicket's writing style (and he has written some beautiful picture books in the past few years as well), but I don't remember the books being so violent.

12/365 :: Friday 12 January 2018
​I love sending snail mail.

13/365 :: Saturday 13 January 2018
if I had daughters, I would have a shelf with all of these books.

14/365 :: Sunday 14 January 2018
Sunday sunrise.

in 2015 (and maybe a year or two before that), I completed a "project 365" in which I took a photo with my DSLR every day. I started this again in 2016, but I don't think I completed it after I stopped blogging in March that year.

after taking what I considered to be a sadly small number of photos in 2017, and missing out on capturing moments that I now wish I would have, I decided that I would pull my camera back out (okay, fine, it's always sitting on the dining room table anyway) and take at least one photo every day. a lot of them will probably be from around my apartment, but I'm hoping that it will force me out into the world a little more often.

1/365 :: Monday 1 January 2018
​starting the new year with a new happiness project journal, even though I still have five weeks or so in the first one.

2/365 :: Tuesday 2 January 2018
a horribly staged photo of an egg with pretty markings.

3/365 :: Wednesday 3 January 2018
​my third set of wings.

4/365 :: Thursday 4 January 2018
bright shining moon as the sun rises.

5/365 :: Friday 5 January 2018
a corner of my home. no, I never learned how to play that beautiful guitar. it hasn't been played in about seven/eight months, and I haven't played it in over a year. I don't have the desire to learn it anymore, but it sure is beautiful.​

6/365 :: Saturday 6 January 2018
I love going out every winter to see this frozen puzzle on the bay.

7/365 :: Sunday 7 January 2018
​cold day, ingredients for a warm lunch.

sometimes I miss my books when I'm at work.

somehow I managed to read what would appear to be a book a week this year, but in actuality, more than half of them were read in the last four months of the year.

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; 1.4-1.8
​2. Animal Farm by George Orwell; 1.12 {ATW > DTW > ATL}

​3. Essential Maps for the Lost by Deb Caletti; 1.15-1.17
4. Paperweight by Meg Haston; 1.17-1.19

​5. I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson; 1.19-2.20
6. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh; 2.21-3.2
7. Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott; 3.3-3.10
8. Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller; 3.13-3.20
9. My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella; 3.21-3.28
10. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman; 3.28-4.10
11. We Were Never Here by Jennifer Gilmore; 4.11-4.16
12. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher; 4.16-4.21
13. Always Pack a Party Dress: And Other Lessons Learned from a (Half) Life in Fashion by Amanda Brooks; 4.24-5.30

​14. On the Road by Jack Kerouac; 4.26-6.17, 8.22-8.26
15. Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs by Henry Carroll; 6.20-6.26
16. Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll; 6.26-7.4
17. Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places by Henry Carroll; 7.4-7.10
18. The Glitter Plan: How We Started Juicy Couture for $200 and Turned It into a Global Brand by Pamela Skaist-Levy, Gela Nash-Taylor, Booth Moore; 7.11-7.16

​19. Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk; 7.17-7.27
20. What to Say Next by Julie Buxbaum; 8.4-8.9
21. Hello? by Liz M. Wiemer; 8.10-8.16
22. Almost Adulting: All You Need to Know to Get It Together (Sort of) by Arden Rose; 8.18-8.20

​23. Songs About a Girl by Chris Russell; 8.26-9.2

​24. It’s Not the End of the World by Judy Blume; 9.3-9.8
25. Class Mom: A Novel by Laurie Gelman; 9.4-9.8
26. Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy; 9.9-9.22
27. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote; 9.23-9.25
28. Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate; 9.25-9.29
29. If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers by Hannah Brencher; 9.30-10.4
30. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; 10.4-10.12

​31. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay; 10.5-10.23*
32. Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu; 10.13-10.17
33. Binary Star by Sarah Gerard; 10.18-10.21
34. Please Don’t Tell by Laura Tims; 10.21-10.31
35. When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman; 11.3-11.8

​36. Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten; 11.9-11.11
37. The Fashion Committee by Susan Juby; 11.12-11.15

​38. Looking for Alaska by John Green; 11.16-11.20
39. The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan; 11.21-11.23
40. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; 11.23-11.24*
41. Space Kitty Blues by pat mAcdonald; 11.26-11.29*
42. Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant’s Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet by Elliott Hester; 11.30-12.4
43. milk and honey by rupi kaur; 12.2-12.4

​44. Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date by Katie Heaney; 12.5-12.8

​45. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan; 12.9-12.13
46. Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy; 12.14-12.17

​47. The Way I Used to Be by Amber Smith; 12.17-12.19
48. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini; 12.19-12.21
49. A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares by Krystal Sutherland; 12.22-12.25
50. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green; 12.25-12.26

51. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Screenplay by J.K. Rowling; 12.26-12.27
52. American Girls by Alison Umminger; 12.28-12.31

​* denotes reread.

Every day I get through is another day farther from what we had, but one day closer to the next time I have to see your face.