A Little Bit Brave

Dear friend, watch this You weren't invited. You weren't noticed. You weren't chosen. It's past midnight and you're scrolling through Instagram, seeing the fun photos and exciting captions. And you weren't there.  Why?  You wonder. After all your effort and time spent, they overlooked you. And the lies seep in. You're not funny enough. Not pretty enough. Not fashionable or thin or curvy or good enough. The friends you thought were your best stop responding, stop speaking. But friend, this is not who you are. I've met Rejection a few times, and he's not a nice guy. He weasels his way in and replaces your expectations with disappointment and pain. He steals joy and brings down weeks. When this bully walks into your life, there are a few things you must remember: 1. You are accepted. Darling, there is a love, a friend, who will always accept you. Yes, you've heard it before. He may not seem like enough now, but when you...

4.7/5 Stars The Lost Girl of Astor Street by Stephanie Morrill Tornado sirens went off while I was reading the Lost Girl of Astor Street. My first thought was that I’d have to keep reading in the bathroom safe area. This book had me at the edge of my seat even before Lydia went missing. From Piper to Mr. LeVine, each character came alive within the first words they spoke. I was enveloped in the 1920s, not with flashy name dropping but with living, breathing people who showed me around without showing off. The Plot **** The primary plot is the mystery of Lydia LeVine’s disappearance. Piper refuses to be useless to the investigation, gradually doing more and more to aid the officers involved. But the mystery isn’t the only thread pulled through the novel. Plot lines surrounding Piper’s family, friends, and enemies work together like players in a jazz band. The twists and turns caught me off guard, exactly as a mystery should, and yet were set up so well beforehand. I laughed,...

This is my last semester of high school. Last year, I was desperate to get out of high school. My junior year was, in a word, terrible. There were good moments. It got better towards the end. But I was miserable for a significant portion of my 11th grade year. My sophomore year, I saw my high school career ending a whole lot differently. I imaged a graduation ceremony with my friends, staying in touch and even as close friends with several of my current high school friends. Now, I'm not good friends with most of the people I was friends with that year. Six months ago looks much different than right now. I had no idea what the semester would look like. I didn't know who my friends would be, what dual credit classes I would take, or when I would get my license. I didn't know I would get a smart phone, a job, and a two hour drive to debate club. I had no vision for the rest of the year or the next. I spent the fall semester figuring things out. I found myse...

In case it slipped your notice, we just had an election here in the US. On an unrelated note, the planet is exploding and the world as we know it has ended. It seems that wherever someone stands on the election, this is their view of the situation. Each side is spewing acid at the other. I got so tired of the endless Facebook posts about the election results I delete the app off my phone. Of course, I'd been sick of the election since March. Like any reasonable person, I started listening to Christmas music after Halloween. Meanwhile, everyone else was freaking out about that wonderful  Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning. And now everyone is freaking out because everyone else is wrong and how dare you have that  reaction to the election? Are you crazy? Here's a novel idea: no, they're not crazy. They have a different opinion from you. You know what we can agree on? Christmas. Even if you don't celebrate it, the season surrounding it is straight up wonderful (...

I don't like busy. There are big things--elections and terrorism and school shootings. But there are also things that seem small--biology tests, writing speeches, keeping the kitchen clean. The noise that was once in the background grows, quietly growing until it's all I can hear. This is the busiest I've been in my life. It's my senior year of high school, and there's so much to do. I have dual credit classes, speeches, more speeches, work, writing, more writing. Which is why I haven't written a blog post in almost two months. I don't know how to be busy. I need time to slow down, take a breath. If I don't have time, I get anxious and I'm still learning how to handle anxiety. I barely know how to talk about it. There's another reason I haven't written here in so long. I haven't been sure about what I wanted to write. I've had writer's block with a lot of things lately. People think I'm good with words bec...

We've all heard it said that "home is where the heart is." In my loneliest moments, crying on my bathroom floor, the cry of my heart has been I want to go home.  It didn't matter where I was. It didn't have much to do with who was with me. I wanted to feel home. There's more to home than where our heart is. Our heart can be anywhere. I know my heart has been with the wrong people before. It's been focused on the wrong things before. My heart has been wrong before. My heart is wrong a lot. Our hearts are fickle. They change so often, especially as teenagers. We think we know what we're doing, we think we know what we want. But things change and suddenly what we thought we knew is gone; what we wanted is broken. In the last year I feel like I've watched person after person get exactly what I wanted. It's broken my heart again and again. If our home is where our heart is, our home is on fragile ground. When I started writing this, I wa...

I don't usually write responses to these sorts of things, even the biggest ones. Not because I don't care, but because I don't ever know what to say. But this time it hit 20 minutes from my house. Twelve police officers, twelve people shot, five killed. In Dallas. How many times can we stick #BlackLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter on our tweets before we actually realize that's true? The value of life can't be summed up in a million hashtags. Prejudice exists, and it's good that we've brought attention to that. But now all we're doing is bringing attention to it instead of fixing the problem. The problem didn't start with gunshots and protests. It didn't start with national outrage or Twitter trends. It started with hearts. It started with people. It started with people who didn't know the value in others. Maybe because they didn't know the value in themselves. The more we shout "#LIVESMATTER," the le...