Snapshot!

So obviously throughout life we evolve and so do our interests so for this blog I thought I'd take a look at top ten things that make me happy and the top ten favorites so, in a specific order:

Top 10 Things That Make Me Happy:
1. God
2. My family, particularly my dad
3. Serious/deep/thought provoking conversations
4.My roommates
5. Volunteering
6. Having moments that make me pause, realize how petty my problems are, and feel enormously grateful for my blessings.
7. shopping
8. Fall
9. a good laugh
10.reading for fun/learning

Top 10 Favorite things:
1. color - purple
2. past time - reading for fun
3. class - the dangerous 18th century and/or public finance (ironically the two I expected to like the least)
4. weekly occurrence -the turn out at our weekly STLF meetings
5. Movie - Dirty Dancing
6. TV Show - the new girl
7. food - spinach and tomato pizza
8. drink - caramel macciato(no idea how to spell that) from starbucks
9. my future - it's super open which is a little scary but mostly exciting
10. learning - current lesson, who trust, how much to trust, and when to love

There is a snapshot of 22(honing in on 23 in a few months) me. My life is good, and I am so blessed. I feel bad when I let days like yesterday when little things go wrong all day cause me to forget that. I am healthy, I am young, I am smart, I have a good skill set, I am loved, I have good shelter, I have my faith, I have plenty of healthy food. I am blessed.

My biggest struggle right now is figuring out who to let in my life, in what capacity, who to trust and to what extent, and attempting to pull myself back from relationships - current and past - where I clearly was the one loving/caring/working more than the other person. It occurs to me I am no one's number one, but I let so many people be mine and I think that I need to be my number one. For now at least, until I can get a handle on how to open my heart again and who to open it to I need to love me most (excluding family and God obviously). I don't love this idea, but I don't think anyone can love us more than ourselves. I have an enormous capacity to love, and I do. When I love someone, friends included, I love their flaws, their assets, their insecurities, and I see them honestly but lovingly. I don't ask them to change because love doesn't demand such things, but I'm observing that this is not the norm and until I can sort out how to mesh my love with the rest of the world's definition I'm pulling it back and focusing it on me and my well being.

Til next time...

Sometimes I wonder...

I wonder if anyone else really loves the same way I do. Completely and not just with who they should. Not to just a romantic interest, but to a friend, to a person in need, to a fall afternoon, to anyone who ever had to wonder if they were loved, and even to the ones who knew they were.

I love moments with the same intensity that someone loves a spouse.

I cry at movies because I feel the characters and the stories and the millions of very real people they represent.

I can't actually watch the episode of grey's anatomy where there's a gunman because somewhere, all to often, it is real - and seeing it tears my heart apart.

My only regret about having to someday die is that I only get one life to give to trying to make the place better for the future.

Shows like criminal minds make me physically sick because people actually commit these acts and I can't stop them and that pain scares me to the point of illness.

I'm not ashamed of the way I am, in fact I like to think sometimes I remind people of how they used to feel about those things before the world and media desensitized them, but despite my acceptance I wonder...

...Will there every be any person; friend, lover, husband, coworker who will ever experience the world like I do, and if they can't, would they ever be able to accept the fact that I do?

So far no one has outside my family (and even they struggle, regularly), though I'd believed otherwise 4 times now(1 boyfriend, 3 friends), it always ends the same. I have a broken heart and another ended relationship. My dad guesses someday I'll find a man I can tolerate because he's never met anyone who cares like me and advises I don't hold my breath.

I pray he's wrong, despite his wisdom, I pray he's wrong because my best asset is my heart and it seems a shame it should go a lifetime without sharing that love; unconditional, accepting, honest, love.

And as selfish as it is, it seems a shame that it should never know that love either.