Cheers! :)

You know what's interesting about a late night, how deep and mystical people become. Sitting in my living room on my favorite spot on the couch, listening to the blessed sound of silence, I can't help but transform into a pensive pool of reflective nostalgia. Even though It's a little early, I'd like to use this time to look back on 2010 and send a New Year's message out into cyberspace. There are going to be names of people you may or may not know and I apologize for not being witty or insightful, but I hope you get something out of it anyway :)

2010 was possibly the most eventful year of my life aside from 1992, which of course, was the year I joined my fellow humanoids on this life sustaining planet. It was a year filled with major mile stones that got ran over almost all at once: senior year, graduation, and of course my first semester of college which was (thankfully) successful.It was a year full of football games, basketball games, wrestling matches,and sitting in the computer lab for hours on end, just chilling on tumblr and shooting the breeze in good company. It was the year I discovered the beauty of Shakespeare, when I met the simply spectacular men of suite 201 and Michelle, and Chelsea, Brittany, and fell in love with NC State. It was the year I got to go to Church every Sunday with Matt, John, Mikey, Kayla, and later on, Chey. It was the year I met my wonderful roommate and new Best Friend Kelsey and started really understanding my faith. It was the year that Zack, Kshea, Ella, Tristan, Tyler, Charlie, Nathan, Ali, Jackie, John, Alberto, BAM, April, KJ, Gretchen, and everyone else in NSPEN, waltzed into my world and began to make every single day the best day of my life :) It was the year that I met Kristen Shank and grew even closer to my best friend Katie Liguori and shared a wonderful night at the ROTC Ball with them and our extremely attractive, very wonderful, dates. Come to think of it, we definitely had the best looking table in the whole ballroom :) Oh, and it was the year that Coleman and I finally went to a dance together. It was the year I went Clubbing for the first time and became friends with Josie and even better friends with Chrisany. 2010 I spent the night with my best friend Katie Vornheder almost every night our senior year and I am eternally grateful that she has wanted to be my best friend for what will now be 7 years this year. 2010 was the year I dated my best friend Zak which, unlike most best friends that break up, made our friendship stronger and positively wonderful. It was the year my best friend Brooke met Caleb and my bestie Ashley met Taylor. It was the year of hanging out with Dalton, Drew, Caleb and Dan the Man, all of whom are guaranteed to put a smile on your face. It was the year Tara and I became friends again and she found her wonderful boyfriend Jon. It is the year I spent all of my time at the Major's house, loving everyone in it and enjoying their existence. It was the year they moved away and I was heart broken. It was the year Kayla and Tunisia and I went to the C-store on Easter wearing Gospel Baptist Goin' to Church hats and Kayla and Chris and I stayed up on Halloween watching the strangers. It was the year of spending hours on end in my best friend Kayla's driveway, just, talking. 2010 was the year when all the cool kids came to my house to watch Glee and eat junk food every week. The year Gabby and I became friends. The year that hosted the best Christmas in Christmas history, when all my family from both sides came to our house for the holidays and my little cousins ran screaming through the house-it was marvelous! It was the year that my gov school peeps and lejeune peeps met for the first time and lived together in a beach house for a week. The year that gave me the most beautiful summer I have ever had. It was the year of Quidditch. The year I became friends with Sean again. And, the year I met Allen's family and best friend and had the honor of being his date at his sister's wedding. It was the year I met, fell in love with, and married (on facebook), Patrick McMillin. And it was also they year my first husband (I guess we're still married from our crazy illegitimate gov school wedding, I hope so anyway) Ashton, took me out on our anniversary :) It was the year I met my Acting 1 class and began, what I hope will be, life long friendships with everyone in there. It was the year Katie, Katie, Brooke and I went to Warrped Tour and almost died!!! And the year Katie L and I saw Tosh.0 live and Katie V and I almost died when we went to see Spring Awakening! Also the year that Katie V and I took a road trip to see Ash on her graduation and we had a happy jaunt in Savanna and ended up in some sketchy town with creepy people on the way back to jville. It was also the year that I got to see Kate go to her first high school dance and watch my little cousins Anna and Sarah try on my gowns for their dances. Which by the way, gave me a heart attack. 2010 was also the year Kari and I grew closer and I found out that like Bo, she is a wonderful photographer.

On a more serious note, 2010 was the first year my Dad has lived with me full time since I was 12. It was the year that I got really close to my cousin who is now like a big brother to me. In 2010 I was a cheerleader for the last time after cheering for 10 years of my life. It was also the year that I was on the stage for what I painfully admit, will probably be the last time.

But 2010, 2010 was a year I will never forget because of all the wonderful memories that were created and the people I got to know. So, instead of making a resolution to lose weight, I'm making a resolution to continue to enjoy the spectacularly phenomenal life God has blessed me with, and spend as much time as I can with all the people in it. Thank you guys for shaking things up and being absolutely fabulous human beings, and for making 2010 one of the best year's of my life. Here's a cyber New Year's toast for many many more to come! <3

Princesses, Party Boys, and Finding the Meaning of Love

On my 17th birthday the woman in my Church whom I had always seen as my Jacksonville grandmother, told me that turning 17 was one of the most memorable moments in her life. It was memorable, she said, because 2 days after her 17th birthday, she married her husband. As of today, they will have been married 63 years. When asked how she felt about her long and seemingly happy marriage, she grinned and said "You know what, you always love em', but I acutally still like him."

They are my heroes. Married for 63 years and they still like each other! But, as much as I idolize them and the beautiful life they live together, a love like there's is a completely foreign concept to me. After all, I went to a high school where love was conjured in a matter of weeks and people changed romantic partners like they changed their socks. College isn't much different, there are just fewer taboos and a lot more booze. But still, even though I don't quite understand it, or see it everyday, I truly believe that love exists, it just doesn't exist in any of the forms we think it does.

Example A: Disney movies-ALL LIES. Riding off into the sunset isn't all it's cracked up to be because guess what ladies and gents-THE SUN GOES DOWN EVENTUALLY. Sure Prince Charming looks great in the glow of the evening, but can you handle him in the pitch black darnkess of night when the snakes come out and the horse is tired? What about after you've been busy being in distress and he's been busy fighting dragons, and because he was saving you from your tower, he forgot to pack a tent in those armoured saddle bags and the next town doesn't have a Holiday Inn Express so your forced to sleep on the ground? There is a reason we don't get to see the Princesses after they live "Happily Ever After", and it's because you can't explain the trials of marriage to a 5 year old girl who probably won't want to own everything Cinderella if she knew that her and Prince Charming are barely hanging on because he accumulated too much debt from horse racing and lost the castle.

Example B: Chick Flicks-MORE LIES. I do love a good tear jerker, but let's be honest, how many rich hot guys give up a life of partying and ridiculously gorgeous jezebels for a girl who's kind of a a control freak,pretends to hate him half the movie and ends up being pretty stubborn? I've never met one in the flesh, and I'm not entirely sure I blame rich hot guys for forgoing commitment with a doozy for one night stands with a floozy. The reality of the situation is that guys don't change. You know why? Because they're human too! I don't want to change who I am for a guy sooooo why would I ask him to do the same?

Example C: Romance novels-LIES AND SLANDER. I admit, they are a lot of fun to read, but they combine both examples a and b and magnify each of them by infinity and beyond. It's cruel really.

So what can we take from all fo this? Well, I can't force you to have an opinion or to agree with mine but, this is my blog so I get to say whatever I think and I think this: that love isn't what makes people get married, it's what happens between all the memorable moments in life. It's not the anniversary presents or the propsal. It isn't the ring, or the wedding, or the night you met it's actually wanting to share your life with someone else. It's riding off into the sunset and not killing each other when you're cold, and broke, and have lost evertyhing. It's being there when the world is crashing down and it seems hopeless. It's doctors visits, and soccer practice, and bills. Unemployment, poverty, bad days, foul moods, deployments, business trips, labour pains, tooth aches, accidents, and everything else that rains on your parade. But it's also being happy for someone else no matter how your life is shaping up. It's celebrating births, new jobs, good grades, success, homecomings, vacations, birthdays, holidays, and just reveling in the existance of another person. Love isn't seeing someone and concluding that they are flawless, it is realizing that the other person is human and accepting their flaws flawlessly. It's missing someone when they are gone.

Love is continuous. It changes, it evolves, it grows faint, but it never disappears completely. If it did, how else would marriages and friendships be able to survive in the tumultuous storms or life?

I know I'm young and have a lot to learn. I know that I'm no expert on love, or sex, or relationships: but there are so many people in my life that prove to me each and everyday that love is all around me. And sure, nothing is perfect. But, to lose faith in love, to assume that it does not exist, would be to ignore all of the people in my life that love me enough to throw a rope ladder down to rock bottom and remind me that there isn't anywhere to go but up.

Everything we Needed to Learn we Learned on Facebook

Facebook is ruining lives. It is. I know because it's ruining my life. I can't go a full two hours without jumping on to find out how every single person I have ever met is doing and why they're now single, or their status is a happy face, or why they decided to like the peperjack fan group, but simply ignored cheddar! I also can't stop changing my status to fit my mood, because for some sick twisted sociological reason, I alos want to make people wonder why I liked Chedder but completely ignored brie! I also want them to show their approval of my status choices by "like-ing" it as many times as they can! I need them to like my status! Otherwise I just feel like I'm not interesting enough and it makes me want to scream "DEAR LORD ABOVE TAKE ME NOW FOR I AM A WASTE OF SPACE UPON THIS EARTH" (actually I never want to say that about my unpopular facebook status', but when it comes to people not reading my blog...)

Apart from seeking cyber approval from my 800+ "friends , most of whom I have only met one time, I have to go on facebook in order to carry on a conversation with my closest friends and family because they won't answer their phones because-THEY'RE ON FACEBOOK TOO! So, if I want to say "hey mom I love you so very much and apperciate you suffering for almost 24 hours to bring me into existance" it's better if I leave her a wall post. Or better yet, make it my status. Otherwise, she simply won't see it in her inobx when she picks up her phone. She might also be too distracted to hear it if I told her on the phone because while we're having a heart to heart she is facebook chatting her sister and 3 closest friends, who aren't on their phones either because facebook gives them all the information about their husbands and children that they will ever need. Sometimes, even too much information.

However, even though everyone's lives are being ruined by the social networking phenomenon, facebook taught me a valuable lesson today.


Whilst procrastinating on a paper that actually isn't due until monday (please, me procrastinate? I'm too type A and neurotic for all that. If I had to pull an all nighter I'd shake like salt shaker and lose all my hair faster than you can say chinchilla), I started playing that stupid numbers game on facebook. You know when someone messages you a number and then you put that number in your status and then write something nice about that person? Well, anyway, I started playing. And you know what,it made me truly appericiate all the people I have ever met in my life. Because, even though I may not see all 800 facebook friends everyday, heck, I don't even see my closest friends everyday, all of the people I have encountered in this life have touched my heart. They have made me laugh, cry, sing, dance, get angry, feel stupid, feel beautiul, feel loved, feel hated; but the point is, for the moments that we knew each other, or have countinued to know each other, they have made me feel, well, alive. And, in a world were impersonal communication can leave you feeling deathly robotic, I couldn't be more greatful for the gift of life all of you out there has given me. Thank you :)

Jays or Stilettos, I'm always Barefoot.

I'm a feminist. I believe in equality. But, I'm also not easily fooled, and ladies and gentlemen, it is my inherent belief that women everywhere are hoodwinking society into believing they truly want equality when really, they want their own set or rules. Confused? Allow me to explain.

When women wanted the right to vote, they did everything in their power to make it happen. Now, women vote just as much, maybe even more than men. In this respect, women are equal.

When women wanted to go into the work force, they fought and are still fighting to get payed just as much as men doing the same jobs. In this respect, women are becoming equal.

When women wanted to join the military however, they made their own rules. They decided that there had to be, for lack of a better term, "easier" physical requirements because they were weaker than men. They decided that even though they wanted to serve when they chose too, being excluded from the draft was just dandy. And, when women decided they had the right to attend the academies, they shouldn't be exposed to the traditional hazing and ludicrously strict and uniform environment, because they were women. They needed privacy from each other in the bathrooms, blinds on their windows so as not to tempt peeping toms, and yet again, they should not be expected to physically perform on the same standards as the men at their institution.

I know someone is going to hate me for saying this, but that is not, by any means, equality. In fact, as a feminist, I am disgusted. Not only are military men and the male students at the academies held to higher standards only because they are men and women do not feel capable enough to meet said standards; neither the men, nor the women at the academies, are receiving the education they signed up for. Take VMI for example. The last military academy to remain males only. It was an institution grounded in tradition, formed on brotherhood, and revered for it's commitment to the scrupulous training of young men who wished to serve their country. They had rules that did not allow doors or stalls in the bathroom, showers were open and communal, blinds were never installed on windows, beds were rolled each day to avoid napping, freshmen or "rats" were hazed in good humor by upperclassmen, and traditionally, before the rats graduated to sophomores, they had to climb a steep mudded hill to both literally and symbolically join the upperclassmen on the other side. These things, along with many others, made VMI, VMI. When women joined, all of this changed, therefore making VMI less than what it was. So really, women aren't even receiving the education they wanted so badly to be a part of because it has been watered down to accommodate them. Again, this is not equality.

Now, women in the armed forces want to be allowed in submarines. Historically they have been excluded because having men and women in close quarters with each other almost always leads to more passengers if you know what I'm saying. I would have no problem with a co-ed submarine slumber party, if women also wanted to be allowed to be drafted. Or, if they were striving to meet male physical requirements, but the cold hard truth is that they aren't. Everything is on female terms, and I can't stand it.

Equality for women will not come if we simply try to fill men's shoes or cobble them down to fit our feet, but when we fill their shoes and then start designing our own.

In historically male professions, we're going to have to play by their rules to get any kind of credit, to eventually "design our own shoes", just as men in historically female professions have to play by our rules to design theirs.

Only after these steps have been taken can I dream of a world when I no longer have to worry about who's shoes I'm wearing, because I'm going barefoot on my own path that I have forged, not by bending the trail to my will, but by stumbling through the brambles and transforming into a stronger woman by the time I reach my destination.