i love my brother. i really do. i admire the way he will tell you how it is and tell you whatever he's thinking straight to your face.

my mom kicked him out. just now.

i heard them yell at each other for about 15 minutes. and then he left. he tried to take my sister with him, because apparently my mom was scaring her. my sister's still here, but my brother is gone.

the past few months have been weird. my mom has been overreacting to everything, even to the point where all of us kids think she's being irrational, which is something she has never been before. she's yelled at me more since i moved home then ever before, even though i'm more responsible, more clean, and more secluded in my room. i have a job, i save my money, and i normally clean up after myself. i wasn't this grown up even last summer, and i was never like that in high school.

my siblings and i have made such an effort to make her happy, and it seems like none of it has been appreciated.

my brother, sister and i have been talking a lot lately about my mom. we think she may be going through menopause, but she denied this while my brother was yelling at her...

so i guess it all started tonight when my brother got home from our dad's. he took my sister to target to buy some things and then picked me up from work. he called my mom to tell her they were waiting for me to finish. i'm not sure what he told her, but i guess she got kind of annoyed, so he asked her why she had been getting so mad lately, and she started going off on him, so he hung up. when we got home, i went into my room and i heard her tell him that he is not allowed to borrow her car anymore. then all of a sudden they were yelling and cursing at each other. i think the gist of the fight was that my brother doesn't respect my mom, or our house or whatever, but that my mom doesn't respect us either. she's taking things away from my brother, like his phone and car privileges, which doesn't help him find a job. my brother asked if she was on menopause or something because she's been a bitch lately, and then she yelled that he had to get out. she tried to call my dad and tell him to come pick up my brother by tomorrow morning. then they yelled at each other more. my brother tried to leave with my sister because she was scared and didn't want to be here.

i think my brother could have handled things differently. but my mom could have handled them differently too. my mom denies being in menopause, saying that the stress of not having money is making her this way, but honestly i think it's both. last year, she never would have been like this. i can't believe she just expects my dad to come down here and get my brother. i have no idea if he will, but my dad lives two hours away and has a full time job.

my brother wrote me a note and put it outside of my room where my mom wouldn't see it. it says, "i'm sorry i had to start this."

i feel all of my happiness that i've had over the past few months quickly escaping. i feel almost empty without my brother here. he's only been gone a few minutes, but i can't believe my mom would ever do something like that. all because my brother was trying to ask why she was being so different lately.

after he left i could hear my mom talking to my sister. she thought my sister was on her side. she thought wrong. i could hear my mom complaining about my brother and wondering why he was being like this, and then my sister saying she didn't want to talk to my mom because she agrees that my mom has been extremely rude to us the past couple months.

there was one moment before my brother left when he said my mom would be sorry when all of us moved out on her.

i hope he's right. because i think it will happen soon. i'm leaving in a couple months for drumline. if i don't make an out of state drumline, i'll move into my own apartment. i'd let my sister stay there whenever she wanted. if my mom stays like this, i can see my sister wanting to move to her dad's house again though. i wouldn't blame her.

i miss my brother. i miss my mom. the way she used to be. the loving, tolerant, successful, accepting mom that i used to have.

for the first time ever, i like where i am, and i kind of don't want to leave. not even for drumline.

if i make a world drumline though, i'm for sure outtie. but if i don't, i'm staying, which i never thought i'd say.

i never thought i could be happy in chandler.

:D

motivation.

this year has definitely been a new experience for me. never have i focused so much on goals and worked to save my money and be healthier. summertime is usually when i gain a couple pounds, not lose 10 pounds.

at first everything was so easy. i had more motivation than ever to get in shape and lose weight. i exercised everyday, started running 3 or 4 times a week, and thought about my goals the whole time. i stopped eating unhealthy foods and felt great.

in the past couple weeks i've realized that one of my goals isn't exactly... obtainable? or that it probably isn't. my main goal this year was to audition for music city mystique, and seeing the progress i've made is great, but it doesn't seem like it's enough. now that my time is running out, and auditions are getting sooner, i'm thinking more about other drumlines than i was about mystique. mystique's auditions are so late in the year and others are so early, that if i were to make another line, i would feel bad about auditioning for mystique too. i have no idea if i'll make another line, but if i can't make another line, i probably can't make mystique...

anyways, now that i've realized that mystique is kind of out of reach, i've stopped being motivated. i'm going to audition for pulse, and i really like pulse and will be so nervous/excited to audition, but something about it just isn't motivating me to work harder.

as excited as i am for the upcoming season of winter drumline, it's slightly unsettling. in the past i've always known which drumline i would be doing. i never had to make huge plans for auditions or for the season.

i decided i don't want to do drumline in arizona anymore, which means i need to go out of state. all year i've been preparing for this, and it's still what i want. but i'm finding it hard to think about leaving, because i actually really enjoy my life here right now. i love my job and the few friends i have here.

i'm trying to figure out if it would be cheaper to live in california or just drive there every weekend... i think it's cheaper to live there, but when the possibility came into my mind i was like, "I CAN HAVE BOTH!" hahaha

i hate the uncertainty of where i will be in a few months times. i guess it all depends on whether or not i even make a line... because if i don't make an out of state line i obviously won't move at all. but that's my goal, so i'm not going to think about the possibility of me not making a group... haha i probably shouldn't but whatever. i don't like i don't know where i'll be, if i'll be able to find a place to live, or if i'll be able to find a job. there's a tropical smoothie about 30 miles away from where pulse rehearses, which is totally not bad. but they would have to let me work there... maybe i'll call them after auditions if i think there's a possibility of me making it. or if i make it... haha.



i wrote this last night and i never finished but now i don't know what else to write so

fathers, be good to your daughters.

my dad texted me this morning about my car. at the end he added, "i miss you." later that day i learned that he texted my brother about something else, but also saying that he missed him. then at dinner my mom said he texted her that morning, telling her how much he misses me and my brother.

my relationship with my dad is kind of a sore subject for me... it didn't used to be. i was actually a huge daddy's girl when i was younger. i barely have any pictures with my mom, but i have so many pictures with my dad. when my parents got divorced, i still loved him more than anything. i wanted to live with him, and i looked forward to every weekend i spent with him.

after a couple years though, i started to grow up. i realized that i didn't have very much in common with him. and the things we did have in common are what kept us from being close.

my dad doesn't always speak his mind, but when he did, for some reason it always seemed to hurt me. he used to make comments to me and my brother about what we ate, what we wore, what we looked like. as a kid, all either of wanted to be was accepted. at my mom's house, we got that everyday - acceptance. my mom never told us who to be or what to like. she let us have our own opinions and let us do what made us happy (within reason of course). but my dad thought that anything out of his norm, or anything that would other people think less of us, was wrong. he would ask me when the last time i washed my face was, whether i really needed another serving of food, whether i really liked the clothes i was wearing, or the way i did my hair, or if i really thought that what i was wearing was pretty. he would criticize my brother for not liking the same things as him, for going on the computer too much, for wearing the clothes he wore, for eating what he ate, for growing his hair long. everything. he was pretty subtle about it, but when i got into my early teens, it really started to bother me.

after high school started, i stopped going to his house as often. marching band kept me from having a consistent schedule, so i went when i could. whenever i was there, i sat in my room all day. every weekend i would ask if we were going to do anything, and he'd always say no or ask if i wanted to do anything. he would ask what i do at my mom's house on the weekend. and i'd tell the truth, that i do pretty much the same thing, watch tv. but, at my mom's house we have one tv in our family room, and we all watch it together, and my mom let us watch whatever we wanted. whenever i tried to watch tv with my dad, i always had to watch whatever he wanted, and i never wanted to watch what he wanted. so i stayed in my room most of the time. after a while the only reason i went was because i thought i had to.

since i've started college, i've only seen my dad when i made the effort to go see him. i can count on one hand the amount of times he's come to see me since then, and i'd still have fingers left over. and every time he has come to see me, it's because i had to ask him if he wanted to come. after a while, i felt like i was the only person putting any effort into our relationship, and i knew i shouldn't, but i kind of stopped for a while.

last summer my mom and i had a long talk about my dad. about how when i was a baby, he wouldn't even realize i was in the room until my mom told him i was. about how she always had to make him put an effort in when i was younger. it made me mad that i always thought i was so close to him when i was younger... still kind of makes me mad.

my first semester of college, i was going through a slightly rough time one week. everything was just kind of going wrong and i was homesick. i still hadn't made very many friends, so i was alone on a friday night. i decided to watch my sister's keeper. and i'm just going to put it out there that i'm not a very big crier. when i do cry, not very many tears come out, and i really don't know why. even when i want to cry, it usually just doesn't happen. and up until then, i had only cried while watching a movie one time. anyways, so yeah the movie was sad and all, but whenever the dad would do something nice for the daughter, i'd start bawling. and at first i had no idea why, but i couldn't help it. it happened every time the dad was in a scene. for the next couple weeks, it was all i could think about.

and then i realized that i missed my dad. not just because i was in school and away from my family, but i missed him because he hadn't really been in my life since i was little. technically he was, i saw him every other weekend for almost 15 years, but i felt so distant from him for so long, that i just missed him being a dad.

you know, the reason i joined marching band in the first place was because he convinced me to. and all he had to say was that he had done it in high school and that he liked it. i joined so that we would have something in common. he came to a lot of my competitions and some football games, but other than that we didn't really talk about it. and now that i've continued on with it after high school, he doesn't understand. he doesn't try to help me like my mom is. he's cutting off my child support and isn't going to pay for my car insurance because i'm not in school anymore, even though i'm taking time off from school to save money for drumline. he doesn't understand why i would put my life on hold for drumline, why i would pay so much for it, even though he himself was in drumline. of course, they didn't have winter drumline when he was in school, but still. and honestly, i don't think i've told him how much it means to me, and that i'm putting my entire life on hold to be able to march for the next three years.

on my birthday this year, i asked if he would come up to flagstaff to have dinner with me. i could tell he didn't want to make the drive, but he came. and i had such a hard time appreciating it for some reason... it should have meant the world to me that he actually came. he actually put in an effort. but he didn't sit by me, he didn't even really talk to me. my mom told me that he said he remembers the day i was born like it was yesterday. but still, he doesn't put in much effort to talk to me, or even get to know me. he knows who i was when i was little i suppose, but i've changed so much since then.

a couple weeks ago the registration on my car expired and he kept telling me i needed to give him all this information like record numbers and stuff that i didn't have. he finally called me and said that i needed to renew my registration myself, and that he's going to put the title in my name soon and that i would have to start paying my own insurance. we talked for a little bit, but i was just getting frustrated because i'm trying so hard to save money, and if i have to start paying for a bunch of stuff, all of my money will be gone. the next day though after he called me, he said that he got an email about my registration and that he took care of it. i thanked him and we were very polite and what not.

anyways, the whole point of this is that every time i read or see anything about good father/daughter relationships, i can't help but cry. my dad isn't a good dad because he doesn't know how to be a dad. he doesn't know how to be there for me when i need him, and he doesn't know how to be there just because. he doesn't put in much effort, but i know that if i stop putting in effort, we'll never talk to each other. i honestly hate putting effort into relationships that seem too one sided, so i usually stop putting effort in when the other person does as well. but i have to keep reminding myself that this isn't some random person, it's my dad. and i don't want him to not be a part of my life.

so i'm going to be the better person. i'm going to be a better daughter than he has ever been a father. and i'm going to put in some effort. his birthday was a couple weeks ago and all i did was text him... maybe i'll send him a late present... i have no idea what kind of things he likes anymore.

also, i hope whoever i marry is the best father any daughter or son could ever have.

it's been a while

i can't believe it's been so long since i posted on this blog. on a whim, i opened it up today, had to sign in (proving that it's been a long time since i've been on, since it always just remembers me...), and then looked at my feedjit live thing. a lot of people have been on my blog lately? haha more than normal at least. i even got another follower... hi by the way :D

anyways, i've been using tumblr so much lately that i've forgotten about pretty much everything else in my life. i don't really use facebook anymore, i obviously haven't been on here in a long time. but, i felt it was time to come back to my blogger, at least for a little bit, to write everything out like i used to. i'm not the best writer, so i'm sure this isn't what everyone wants to read, but writing helps me get everything out, helps me feel better about different situations, and i feel like it's been a while since i sat down and wrote out an extremely long rant.

first off, i saw this picture on tumblr,



and thought about how this is so wrong for me. some of my summers have stories, but most of them are completely boring and can be told in a couple of words. last summer... was horrible for me. a summer filled with nothing but misery and longing to be somewhere else, someone else.

the story of this summer, kind of starts in november of 2010. i stopped going to school and was focussing on work and rushing for my fraternity, kappa kappa psi. there was some drama, but all in all i was pretty happy. i thought i had grown so much in the year coming up to then, and i had. but i had no idea what would come in the next few months for me.

i got into my fraternity, i signed up for classes for the next semester, i came to terms with the fact that i would not be doing drumline for the first time since 2006. i was in flagstaff and i was happy.

but then for some reason, i started to change my mind. i wanted to do drumline so badly, but i knew i shouldn't. all the growing up i had done didn't seem to make it okay for me to stop marching. i had so many dreams for myself, and i felt like taking the season off would completely squash any hopes for a future in the marching world. i emailed a few people, i started weighing my options.

my options were these: 1. do drumline in chandler, live in flagstaff, work about 60 hours in 4 days so that i can afford everything. 2. stay in flagstaff, not do drumline. 3. do drumline in chandler, move home to save money.

i chose number 3. even though i had offers from my friends to let me live with them for extremely cheap, there just seemed like no way out of being able to afford drumline. i had already told the director i would be there. i had already committed myself. there was no going back on my word to him.

i spent my last month in flagstaff, being miserable. my roommates moved out, my friends were all away on winter vacation, my big brother was too busy to see me most days. i left right after the semester started and didn't get to see many of my friends.

moving home after living on your own is the weirdest thing. my brother and sister were used to having me gone. i guess it was worse last summer, because when i left for college i was quiet, unconfident, and untrusting of anyone and came back confident, loud, sarcastic and with a new understanding of love and trust. coming home this time was different though, it wasn't just for the summer, or just until i realized what i wanted to do, it was in the middle of the school year and it was for an indefinite amount of time. i had a purpose though, to save money and get ready for the next season of drumline.

i was always thinking of my future, always am thinking of the future. i dealt with some of my issues when i got home, and wasn't as miserable as i thought i would be. i got a job and had friends in drumline, no matter how much i hated some of the people in it. i could have been happier, but my plans for the future, the few friends i had, and the fact that i was finally making money kept me going.

when drumline ended, my first free weekend was spent in flagstaff. i told everyone how chandler wasn't actually as bad as i thought it would, that i was actually happy there for the first time. as soon as i went home though, a wave of depression hit me and i couldn't help but feel like i was alone in the world.

i stopped spending time with people. i went to work, the one thing that made me somewhat happy. i spent all of my free time in my room, alone. my mom noticed because i wouldn't even spend time with my family. i didn't eat with them, i didn't sit around with, i preferred to spend my time by myself.

i started working about 40 hours a week around this time. i took any shift anyone ever asked me to cover and i finally started to really bond with my coworkers. i felt like work was where i belonged, because no matter who i worked with, i always had fun. sometimes i never wanted to leave work because i knew i'd be going home to sit in my room and do nothing. i got tired of being so lonely. i got tired of spending every night alone. i tried to reach out to my friends from high school. i even tried hanging out with new people, only for it to happen once, and not again.

my twentieth birthday came. in all honesty, it was pretty bad. i was so excited in the days leading up to it. i made plans with my friends and my family. when the day finally came i tried so hard to be optimistic, but i was let down all day. all of my friends cancelled on me, except for my big brother, who only came to dinner with my family because i guilted him into it. i felt like crying all day long. i'm still convinced that birthdays will always be horrible for me.

when i got home i decided to start doing more towards my drumline goals. i started running. three days after my birthday i went running for the first time with two of my coworkers. we started slow, only running for a minute at a time, and then walking for 2 minutes and repeating that 7 times, but i had so much fun. i started going running about 3 times a week with my coworker kelli, and we've been going ever since then.

i'm not sure when it happened, but my coworkers became more than that at some point, they became my friends. i hang out with them, talk to them, and work with them on a daily basis. i'm not supposed to work today, but i'm going in just to see my friends because they asked me to. i don't need a ton of friends in my life to be happy, just a few good friends, and i finally feel like i have that.

on a different note, a couple days ago i officially lost 10 pounds. i know it's probably been more than that, but i've also been gaining muscle. i don't know if anything i've been doing is good enough to make a world line, but i've had a number of people tell me i look really good lately. i've been taking care of myself in a way i never have before. i care about my health for the first time, i care about how i feel. i'm trying to tell myself not to care about my weight, but not only do i want to care about the way i look, but the way i feel. eating the way i used to makes me feel so shitty, i get a stomachache in the worst way.

i've been trying to see beauty in everything lately. every person, every object, every situation. i've been trying not to let things get to me the way they used to. and it's been working, because i've been so happy lately.

i took a super long break from writing this... anyways.

i was going to go teach nau's cymbal line during their band camp which is next week. i emailed their section leader and she sounded really happy that i still wanted to do it. today she emailed me saying that the band director doesn't think the drumline needs any outside help. i almost started crying. i already asked for the week off, i really wanted to see my friends, and above everything, this is my first year not doing marching band, and i wanted to feel like i was at least a part of something...

it's been a couple hours, so the initial shock has warn off, but i still feel slightly sad. i'm trying not to let it get to me. i was put back on the schedule, so i can't go up to flagstaff anyways. i was supposed to make time to hang out with t.j., but it'll have to wait.



this is a super long story of what my summer has been... i'm sure no one will take the time out to read the whole thing, and i'm sure that if they do, it probably wouldn't make any sense... it's more of just a ramble. but i guess the one important thing that happened this summer is that i learned to be happy with what i have.

i've changed this summer. i've grown. i didn't realize it was happening until a couple days ago, but i've finally learned how to accept what life has given to you, and to focus on the positive. to stop worrying so much about the future, and live in the present.