That Love, That Music.

I am in love. I am in love with the way people love each other. I am in love with the way music can make people connect in a way that cannont be explained in one single word.

It isn’t your typical love story. These people have never met each other, they have never spoken to one another. The music rings in their ears, and the beat pulses through their bodies and they just move. They move together. We all move together. It is magic. So many connections made all because of the sound of the music. You can dance alone, but you aren’t alone. The people all around you are feeling the same vibes, the same flow. And there is no judgment. You jump, they jump. Someone starts cheering, others cheer too. You look around to see the hands going up, the bodies jumping through the fog and lights and you really can’t help but feel that connection.

I’ve always had this idea that a rave essentially included a bunch of drug induced bodies and that’s where the love came from. And yes, sometimes that is the case, and I’m OK with that too. You do you, man. There’s no judgment there. It wasn’t until recently I realized where the real love comes from. The music that makes you move. You notice someone feeling the same rhthym that you feel and suddenly you are dancing with a complete stranger. But somehow you feel so completely connected with this stranger, if only for a little while. It’s not trashy dancing, not the normal, bumb and grind that seems to take over in most places. It’s the care free, arms flailing kind of dancing where you just move how you wanna move. How ever the music moves you, you move. And it doesn’t matter if you move differently than someone else, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. All that matters is that you feel that freedom, the comfort of knowing that everyone is there, just like you, to have fun and to move to the music.

It’s strange for me to feel so comfortable in a group of strangers. There was a long few years of my life where my anxiety about being alone really affected my ability to enjoy myself. I wouldn’t dare drift away from a friend, and if they drifted from me, I would get offended and sad about it. But when you find yourself at one of these events, where the people who have been invited, have been invited because they too, just want to have a good care free time, it becomes easy to drift. It is easier to find another person who is drifting too. With a “hi, my name is Kelsey what is your name?” suddenly you have made a new friend.

The world needs more of this. We need to see the connection that we share with each other. There is always a connection in some way, even if it is hard to find. Don’t be scared to be alone, you are never really alone. Dance even if you think you can’t dance. Dance to feel that connection. I promise, it is worth it.

That’s it. A short post for today. A huge thank you to the organizers. They really know how to give the people a night to remember. I hope my donation helped, even if it was a small one. I can’t wait to do it again, and again.

A Lengthy Thanksgiving Blog Post

It is thanksgiving after all, and when I think about doing the whole lengthy Facebook status I cringe. I mean, I’m not judging the rest of the people who do do that, I kinda like to see them sometimes. People who show their thanks in anyway is great. We should be thankful. We are alive, we are here together in some way or another and we are living in a great time.

A lot of things can happen in a year. Things can get really difficult to overcome at some point. We’ve all had some sort of pain in the year. We’ve all found the good throughout the bad. We’ve lost things, but we’ve gained other things. Life turns and tosses us through some crazy situations, but it always keeps turning and we find ourselves back in some sort of mild comfort again. It is difficult to overcome the bad when it seems like the bad is taking the good out of you. I know. I’ve been there. I am there. But there is still so much I can and should be thankful for. So here it is: a lengthy thanksgiving blog post.

I am not sure where to start. I’m thankful for a lot this year. Family, friends, nature, life. I’m thankful that it rains I am thankful that when it does rain I am sheltered. I am thankful for the people I’ve met, and the friends that I’ve kept after many years. I’m thankful that life gives me everything I need, that I truly need, to be here. I am thankful for the people in my life, from the old friends, old boyfriends (ex’s, I guess.. Even though I hate that word, that’s for another post that is still in progress) I am thankful that I have me, that I have learned to love me in the best of ways and I am happy that my self awareness has grown so much that no one can seriously damage me anymore. I am thankful that relationship have ended in the worst ways; it has seriously helped me grow more than anyone could imagine. I am thankful that others have ended smoothly, because it shows that not everything leads to yelling, tears and fighting. I am thankful that I have stopped yelling, and fighting, it has changed me entirely.

I am thankful for the people I’ve met, and thankful that I can meet people any time I like. I am thankful for the people that I’ve met in Stephenville. I am thankful for the best two years of my life. The people I’ve grown to love and cherish there have been the most understanding, comfortable, chill and exciting group of people. I’m thankful for meeting another lady friend who found comfort in me, and that I found comfort in her. I am thankful for the experiences we shared. I love you guys, you know it, and I hope that I can remind you for the rest of your days how much you mean to me.

I am thankful for possibly the most comforting, amazing, relaxed relationship I have ever, and probably will have ever jumped into. It was wonderful from beginning to end. It remains wonderful, no matter what. At least to me, it will.

I am thankful to have met a friend in my first year of Video Game Design who introduced me to most of the people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. I love him still, and will always. You were a light in my life and those memories will stay close to me for life. You are my best friend, whether you want to be or not.

I am thankful for my family. For my parents and their patience. For their advice and the struggles. I am thankful they are so good to me, and I am aware that not everyone has this luxury. I am lucky to have this family. There is too much to say about them.

I am thankful for this life. It is not fair to say that I hate my life, although sometimes those words escape my lips. We need to understand that we have been blessed to live on such a wonderful island, in a wonderful country. Things might change, but right now, this is the life. This place is beyond beautiful, if you look for the beauty. The ocean crashing on the shore line, the colors of the rocks and the sky. The way the sky changes through the day and night. The stars act as a great reminder of how small we are, and although that can be a sad thought for some, it is uplifting to me now. I am thankful to be so small. I am thankful that the world is so much bigger than I am and that I am only seeing a small portion of what is. It means that there is so much more to this life then the hardships and fights we face. It reminds me that life will go on and send more adventures my way. And I am more then thankful for that.

I am alive, I am awake, and I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before. Even if I’m stuck in a small town with no friends within an hours distance, I have so much more than I realize sometimes. I am going to keep looking at the stars and the clouds, and I’m going to watch them change and I’m going to keep changing too. If the world throws me into a dark place I will adapt and find the light.

I friggin love everything. There’s no use in being a sad person all the time. Life is what I’ve got, I might as well see the good in everything. I am thankful for being me.

Happy Thanksgiving you crazy kids. Smile today.

I’m Dating People

I’m Dating. It’s a first. I’m meeting new people, eating food, snuggling and getting into interesting conversations and finding new experiences. It is definitely a new experience. I’m used to jumping out of a relationship and into another almost immediately. Only recently have I vowed to myself that I will not do that again. I mean, I don’t want to, anyway.
I said that before, though. I wanted to be single. And then I met a guy, and suddenly that plan crashed, then I moved in with him. And it was awesome. Until I ran away. I do that often. This time was different though. I was still in love, I was still cozy and happy with him. But I didn’t feel like it was there, on the other side. We were so comfortable and everything was going so smooth, it was like a dream. I got scared. I thought I was making the love up in my head, and maybe I was. I really did think I’d be there forever.
Anyways, because of this recent run, I’ve been unable to jump into anything new. I’ve met a guy, I’ve met a couple. I like things about them.
I should be clear though, before I continue. I am not sleeping around. I like to have happy, but healthy lady parts. So if I’m sleeping with you, I am only sleeping with you. And I will inform you when I am no longer going to sleep with you. But it doesn’t mean I am not spending time with other people. Meeting new people is so much fun. Getting to know a new personality and doing things out of my comfort zone is a new love of mine. It keeps me occupied and helps me figure out what I want, and what I don’t want.
I can easily say I found what I want over the past two years. But I am sad that it didn’t want me in the same way. So I’m working to move along and find that again, but to receive it in return is a difficult task. I’m not about to sit and wallow in sadness about it but I know that a lot was left unsaid. So I’ll do what I do best and just write about it. It is a shame that I let it go before everything was said.

I’m sorry, if this is a surprise to you. If you are reading and feel like this is about you, it might be. I’m not going to name people I talk about. I want to keep our business, our business. I am a dating noob. I don’t know dating etiquette. I don’t know how to tell someone I’m Dating other people. That I can get myself out there easily and find others to talk to. That I want to snuggle you but yet still eat food and meet someone else later. I’m Dating. I’m getting to know all kinds of different people and doing new things because I’m sad about other things.
My head, is mixed up, messed up and turning to mush. I want to love and be loved so hard I don’t ever want to run away again. But I also want to run forever until I get what I had back. But I ran away from that so fast, and made questionable decisions along the way, that it is impossible to get it back. So for now, I’ll keep dating. And I’m going to attempt to talk to the people I date about where I stand during the dating.

I love everyone in one way or another. And I find everything new, interesting and exciting. I hope this is all understood in some way, hopefully the right way.
I’m Dating, but I don’t know how to do it right. If you have stories, advice or ever just wanna talk to me, please do. I’m here, I’m open to conversation.

There’s more to say. But it is time to go make some money. Thanks for reading. 🙂

Writing you Letters

I want to tell people things when I write. I want to tell people how I feel, or how I wish I could have felt during a time when feelings were mixed up. As long as I can remember, I have never been very good at just saying things, with real words, from my mouth. I’ve always written it down a bunch of times, read over it and over it again wondering why I couldn’t just say it out loud. There is always this pressure in my brain when I’m trying to say it out loud and then when a train of thought is broken in the midst of saying it out loud I forget my purpose and emotion takes over.
I used to be a very emotional girl. The words trapped inside that I wanted to say festered inside of me and made me crazy. Crying in my room under blankets and pillows trying to understand why I couldn’t just say the words that I wanted to say. Paralaized by the inability to expose myself verbally to people I thought I felt closest to. Hearing the words “what’s wrong with you” from sigificant others is a torture that I can not overcome in dark times. I could not explain to them why it is so hard for me.
Words can hurt people, they can make people feel good. They can cause hate and love so quickly and so easily, or cause the craziest reactions.
It is easy to blame the others for my lack of ability to speak up. “He never listens to me”, “He doesn’t understand”, “They will get so angry,” “He will make me cry”. But I don’t wish to blame anyone else. This is how my brain works. I’ve been writing notes and hidind being a paper and pen or blog or lengthy texts my whole life. I once wrote a letter to my parents as a small child about failing a test and  forging my moms signature so they would never find out. An apology. That I was too afraid to say out loud. Too afraid to make another mistake. Too afraid that they wouldn’t listen, or that I would be misunderstood. They yelled at me for writing that note instead of talking. And so goes the rest of my life.
I wrote notes throughout highschool, to my best friends, to the boy I had a crush on, to my enemies (they would never see them). Sometimes I would pass them along, other times I just kept the letters in a book for my eyes only. Some how it helped get it all out on paper and let it go. Writing it released me from the pressure I felt. And it seemed to work.
But I am a 25 year old woman now, who still cannot talk to the people I love about anything that relates to my feelings. I’m still a scared little girl trapped in my head. But I am far less emotional and I know that I can get over things easily. I move on almost too easily for some people to handle, which hurts me.. But I get over it. I write it down. Read it and read it again until I’m convinced to share it or hide it.
I’ve loved a bunch of people. I’ve tried to open up to these people about the tough feelings that grow during our time together, but it still gets hard for me to handle. I don’t think the feelings are that important. While some have not even questioned, others have asked heavy questions, digging for the answers to things I would normally push out of my head and avoid feeling anything. The lack of interest in my feelings is almost as stressful as the need to know how I feel. Even if I have trained myself to feel nothing, I have to come up with an answer. The answers are always a thought process, one that needs to be on paper; thought out, lengthy rant of feelings.
I’m still writing down my feelings, my thoughts and strong words regardless if the people I write to find it childish or weak. I’ve been told to grow some balls, use my big girl voice. But I’m not that person. I am a depressed, anxious and sometimes mentally unstable person in reality. But somehow I get by without medication, without the help from another and without tearing myself up about it everyday. So to you I may appear pretty normal at this stage in my life, but I wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t aware of all of my faults and troubles until I wrote them down and read them over and over again. So maybe this has become my medicine, my friend when I need one the most and my way of getting through my troubled mind.
Noone listens to me like a pen and paper does. And noone understands me quite like I understand me.
So if I’ve ever written you a letter, a poem, a lengthy text of ramblings, you should feel flattered that I felt so much I wanted to share. If you could read the things I do not share, you would know much more. Please don’t give me a hard time for sharing feeling through paper. It is just my way of reaching out to you in the only way my mind will allow most days.
I’m not like you, and you aren’t like me. We are all different, and I need to write to be me. To be open and free in my mind. If I am to be judged by my inability to say things out loud, then so be it. I’ll write it down and then I will forget about it.

That’s all I wanted to write today. There was something creeping up on me when I woke up this morning. Time to stop dwelling on the past and reach out to the future. We are all alone. But I have this keyboard, pen and paper and myself. So I’m doing alright.

Moving and Moving On

I did lots of this in my life. Since I was 12 years old I’ve been leaving best friends behind. Leaving my home to go out of province, and after spending 3 years there we were moving home again. 3 years after that I became an adult moving out on my own, and 3 years after that I found I had to leave friends to rid myself of drama and hard feelings. Even after that came another move, this time for school and mental well being. It only takes 3 years to meet your new best friend. It only takes 3 years to find the love of your life.  And it only takes moments to say goodbye.

It was sad, the first time I left. And when I moved home it was harder. It made me nervous and uncomfortable, but I adjusted quickly. 
But some things have stuck with me, the way distance and your heart changes but stays the same after a decade of being away from someone you can find yourself feeling the same as you did when you were forced to leave.

The problem with moving away (beyond your control) is that you never really know if you could of had a chance with that person you thought you might have loved.  This hurt me for a long time. Of course I was too young, and I didn’t think I’d ever get over it. Now, I realize that if I didn’t had left, this person would have been my first true relationship. We were growing close and it was painful to have to end it abruptly. We shared notes back in fourth since we didn’t share classes, and due to my stupid teenage behavior, I was confined to my house. He came to visit and sit in the yard, eating kd and hotdogs and doing what we could to spend time together. I wanted to get to know this person so badly. It was unlike my other childhood boyfriends that were much less personal, this person was more then a random person. This person was my good friend and I wanted to be with him.

I moved home, sad to leave behind the best lady friend I would ever have and a guy that I was sure I loved. Now I’m sure I wanted to be with him, I wanted to know him and I wanted to love him, at least for awhile. I wanted him to be the first. But when I moved, he moved too. To a place where long distance communication was not an option. I thought about him for weeks, months, even years later. I still do.

I know now, it wasn’t love. I was in love with the idea of love. We talked off and on the whole time and eventually that spark of love vanished from my mind. But he did not.
It was 5 years later when I was finally able to visit my friends. I spent the week at my lady friends house, we immidatley fell back into the best-friendship that we shared 5 years ago. I was nervous to see her after all of this time, but part of me knew that it was going to feel so… Normal. But when it came time to see this person, who was a boy when I left, and now a grown up like me… I felt so scared. When I seen him, again, all of those emotions came rushing back. I felt like that 14 year old girl again. I wanted to hold his hand nervously and tell him how I felt.  Parts of me just wanted to hold on to him and never go back home, but I was in a relationship. I was terribly unhappy, but I was faithful. I knew that I would remain that way, and I did. So we spent the night head to toe, crammed on a couch trying to sleep. But in my mind I was playing through ways to get that cuddling, the comfort, the real life feeling that we were together for just that one time.
But I didn’t.

The next day the three of us drove to the big city. I was staying with my uncle for the night and catching my flight back in the morning. When I stood in the doorway, I turned to hug my lady friend and felt that sadness again, but I knew we would never stop talking no matter what happened.
But when I turned to hug him, I noticed that look; the same damn look I remembered from before. The same damn look that was stuck in my head; one I attempted many times to forget and move on, was in front of me again. It was a longer hug, one I wanted to feel and one I wished could speak. I don’t know if he felt it too, maybe I created the entire illusion in my head. But when I returned home, and when I looked at the life I had, I no longer wanted it. Whether it was him who made me think that way or not I will never know, but I ended my relationship and began to write about him again.

But we move on. Day after day, our feelings change, our lives keep changing. Some of us are terrified of change, scared to move on and leave friends and lovers behind. At a young age I had no idea how big the world actually was; how small and insignificant I am in comparasion. Now I consider leaving easier and I can adjust to my surrounding quickly. I find that people are consistently interesting and worth getting to know. People come and go, we love and we lose and we grow. Losing love is hard but necessary; the beautiful feelings and happiness that love brings are wonderful. Learning to move on is a difficult task but when you seriously consider all of the people in the world; the people around you, it starts to seem easier.

We are all here together, and I wanna love you all. I won’t forget the ones I love. I will always have love.
On to new adventures.

(I wrote this in early June, 2014, but I was nervous. It is against the point though, so I’m posting it now)

The Better Days

Do you remember when life was simple? Or rather, do you remember your past and feel like it should have been simple? It probably felt like a big deal at the time but now, it seems like nothing. Bad dreams that woke us up screaming, are now laughable and those childish crushes that were ‘so much more then a crush’ seem pretty childish and silly after all.  In the moment, these feelings were real. Now those feelings might seem embarrassing or hilarious.
Our  feelings change constantly with our surroundings, age, consumption of substances; the people who we surround our selves with, and the things we have been through. This isn’t something that affects us as children exclusively. It is something that happens constantly. Something that we do not control.
Our minds really mess with us in certain situations. We might not realize that the ways we analyize a situation are corrupted by the people around us. Our ideas and decisions get altered at some point; brainwashing in a sense, but so subtle it goes unnoticed.

It starts as a child, and it is practically unavoidable. As a child, you were not in control. Your parents/guardians led you into life showing you the way; you might have followed, or not, but either way it will have it’s effect on you. We know this, we hear ‘you are just like your mother/father’ constantly, or we’ve caught ourselves doing something that reminds us that we have developed habits and personalities quite like the people who have raised us.
This doesn’t stop here, though. Because when we are old enough and prepared to share life with another, it happens again. –Of course, let me be clear that I don’t want someone to read this and say ‘I don’t do that! Not everyone!” I realized I’m using ‘we’ and ‘us’, because this is how I have analyzed life. Remember ‘we’ are all different. (But that’s a conversation for another post.)–
Anyway, I’ll get back on track.
When we have found that special someone(s) (because that happens too) we are once again subject to a clouded judgment. We are essentially currupted by love. We stand by the ones we love so strongly, that we put everything we had planned behind us. We want to change who we are sometimes to stay with the ones we love, and we want to remain with them for as long as possible. We will change who we are to make them happy. At first we do things because they want us to, and before you know it, you do it without thinking. It becomes who we are.  This is when life starts to feel complicated; when we start to think about the simple times. We start to remember our goals and personalities and how our perspective has been changed. We ask ourselves how it got to this point, or what caused it. Searching for ways to reverse the effects.
But you can’t reverse it, you just change. You remind yourself that life is about you, and you remind yourself that you will feel better. Your feelings will change and your heart never stays the same. Life is tough. Some of us have been through unimaginable things; terrible things. Some things will haunt you for the rest of your life. But it is a wonderful life; you are here, reading my recent rambling. You are alive! You have control, you just need to take it and use it. Life is tough, but you can move on. It didn’t seem simple then, and it probably doesn’t seem simple now and it will not be anymore simple.
Life is what we make of it. I’m making it mine, and I’m going to keep thinking ahead. I’m going to keep thinking about me.

This post is a rambling. I’m not sure what my point originally was. But I felt like I needed to express how life is led by our feelings, and a helpful way to get through them is to remind yourself that you will feel differently in a matter of time.

Stay cool peeps. Better days are around the corner.

The Blog is the New Journal

I have boxes full of journals. I have journals full of embarrassing, troubling and crazy ramblings of a quiet, struggling, growing young lady.

I’ve always been deemed a creative person. I’m ‘very talented’ and I ‘excel in the arts’, and I can roll with that; I have been doing it for a long time. But what I don’t quite understand is that because I’m artistic I ‘express myself through my art’. I don’t think that is true. My art has been very systematic, very reliant on reference pictures; a realistic style artist. There is no expression in the way I draw or paint. I find something that is a challenge, and I give it a shot. I get into the drawing, and I typically forget anything that is going on around me and I start to relax. But as soon as I’m finished my current “masterpiece” (I like to call everything a masterpiece…it is more dramatic that way) and I put the pencil or paintbrush down and I’m back to reality, and all of those problems come back; they haven’t been expressed at all.

So really, where do I express myself? What happens when I have?
I know that I’ve been expressing myself for years through the power of journal keeping. The boxes say so. Although, I’m terribly afraid to read the words on the pages of the journals, that the boxes hold. I wonder if, by writing all of those ideas, problems, and ramblings down in what has (and will remain) private journals, I’ve only created a lot of issues with opening up to others. I became ashamed of how I felt, and kept everything to myself. Now that I have reached an age where I’m nearly prepared to share my life with someone else, I find that I’m really not ready. I’m still that girl trapped in my own mind, using pen and paper to talk to myself. So maybe all of the years of dumping my mind on sacred sheets of paper, I’ve talked to myself this whole time.

So here I am, writing a blog. It will save a tree, hopefully. In an attempt to be more open, this is one step forward. Instead of talking to myself, I’ll talk to the internet. I’ll talk to everyone at once. Work my way to legitimate personal conversations.

I’ll share some of my crazy ramblings too. I’m sure it will be fun times. Besides, if I’m never going to get rid of them, someone is eventually going to read them. I’d rather be around for that.