You meet no one by mistake

okay so. ive thought about an intro for this for weeks and nothing feels entirely right because there really is nothing to prepare you, reading this right now, for months of bottled up emotions and sappy stories that im about to share. but the stories feel like sunshine and smell like vanilla sunscreen mixed with about 300 vanilla iced coffees from starbucks.

this part kinda hurts

one of the most warm, healing, and god-given days i’ve ever had. the kind of warmth that you can feel in your skin even in the cold northeast ohio snow. :) the kind of warmth that makes you just want to jump.

in my ‘these moments are so kind’ post, i had written it in an afterglow kind of state of a day that i had this past summer that made me fall in love with life again. as DRAMATIC as that sounds, its the truth. probably because i am dramatic. oops.

if you had read my prior (accidentally deleted) blog posts before i (accidentally) deleted them or even just know me, you would know i struggle with anxiety. i am nostalgic, optimistic, and always willing to see the best in the worst of people and that has inevitably led to let downs—some of which have been a ‘top thrill dragster’ drop compared to others. up until a few months into this year i struggled with truly being who i knew i was—which was someone who was unfathomably in LOVE with being alive. i loved strangers, the endless possibilities of where life could take me, to even being grateful for the harsh lessons of life just as much as i despised them because it was who i was/what i truly believed. i was loudly a glass half full kind of girl. but as selena once said, my ~rose colored glasses became all distorted~ and in an instant my glass half full was now empty. this won’t be a sad post though, sad is not warm no matter how comforting it can be :) it was almost 2 years without feeling that same kind of naive love for the world i used to have.

warmth

some days just kind of hit harder than others. this past summer was entirely filled with the sweetest memories: my brother got engaged to his fiancé, my other brother moved to indiana and my sister to south carolina. i realized these were some of the last moments as a family we were really going to get to fully enjoy. i dont mean we’ll never have a happy moment together again, but i mean a no regrets, no responsibilities, let’s do everything we shouldn’t—kind of moments. i realized quickly that this extended to my best friends as well. Hal had already been gone for the entire summer living in D.C where she will probably eventually end up, Cam reminded me that this is his last year in ohio and i stood in front of him, sobbing over the memories made with him and all the ones i wont get to have when he leaves, and we helped jake move into his first house. his first HOUSE. i waited to cry until i was leaving so they wouldn’t feel bad about me crying AGAIN.

from every last minute decision to go to a concert or cedar point to cliff jumping in Puerto Rico, i made sure to feel the pain in my lungs from screaming lake street dive’s “good kisser” with my sister, the pain from the cuts my hands got trying to get back onto the cliff, and the clench in my stomach when my friends and i laughed at Cam joking about the dead fish we found at headlands beach. i wanted to feel every moment that 2019’s summer gave me. i wanted to feel all the love again. and that was a choice.

you meet no one by mistake

my ‘tmask’ blog post, as ya know, was written on the car ride home from my brother picking me up at the airport where i cried the whole way home :) while in FLA with my friend Leah, I met a boy. HOW LAME RIGHT?! only it wasn’t lame, it was pure, energetic, eye opening, and i want to finally share it with you. (aka my mom who has probably read this far, hi mom) No name necessary, let’s call him B. When leah and i first ran into B, it was a right place right time kinda thing.

this isn’t a sappy love story, well maybe about myself. but its still fun keep reading :)

B had the type of personality to make flowers bloom (in the most sincere way of course) and he was always saying things that would make you go “oh he just said that out loud” (in the best way possible) and in the corniest, cheesiest, simplest, and only way i know how to say—B was 1 in 8 billion. thats corn, i know. it has to be though, or else it doesn’t do his personality justice. i think we all live in different versions of ourselves for different people and and i know i personally have lived so many different versions for so many different people and for once in 2 years i had re-met a version of myself that was truly and deeply in love with life and in love with myself.

but like how right?

the day after meeting B, he was always ready for the next adventure. i am usually not the first to be all in for adventures that make my adrenaline go but it truly had felt like this boy was here for that exact reason. “just jump” B said. it would be okay. just. jump. it was okay, it was more than okay. i felt like an 18 year old reclaiming the teenage years she had lost, like life should feel exactly how it did in that moment. it was the feeling of the tiny splashes of water hitting my face as i looked at leah and told her “this is the best day of my life” under a pool waterfall of a resort B’s wits alone got us into and the feeling of us somehow being entertainers not too soon after they found a mic. Later that night we talked. we talked for what seemed like forever.

i still promise this isnt a love story :’)

we talked about our faith, something that recently had been a huge part of my life. i remember the exact moment when he asked me for my testimony and suddenly everything in my head clicked. i will always be one for believing that you meet no one by accident and that everything happens for a reason. i believed this was my reason for meeting B, not to have him make me feel alive with just the thrill of life, but remind me that i was never alone, not through the worst of times. before he had asked i had never thought about my testimony, or my reason for having a faith even though i grew up with it. i had never truly felt a connection as real as my first time back at church with my friend Hal after we had both been going through hard times. it was NOT by accident that the teaching that morning was about learning to let go of everything and give to God. we both were in awe and with tears flowing down our eyes for each other and I knew then that my relationship with God was something that i wanted to grow and blossom. it was something that never went away even if i couldn’t feel it as strong at times. B helped me see that light in my life, he helped me rediscover parts of me that i loved, parts of life that i loved—meeting strangers and finding versions of myself that i never knew were still there. that night was a memory that feels so warm to think about it, it almost still feels like summer.

2020 i will be far from everything i know best for a bit. my siblings will be going back to their separate homes, my friends will be living their own lives...and its occurred to me now how good 2019 has been to me. it was full of love, lessons, hopes for my future, and strangers who changed my life.

i was hoping this post would clear some of the fog i left behind from the last post on this, but im unsure if i did or not. this life feels like a glass overfilling, dripping down the sides with love, and im here for every bit of it. :)