The angsty part of my life.

So I'm going to start this post with a warning.

WARNING: This is a very angsty post. Lots of depressing things are said and several sad rants happen. I apologize.

When I started this blog I promised myself that I wouldn't hide the suckish parts of my life from it. It's part of my goal to be open and honest with myself, and to quote my all time favorite movie "What better way to share my private thoughts than to broadcast them on the internet?" Hence the "angsty" part of this blog's title.

Now for the most part I really try to stay upbeat and don't like to write about the cruddy things because they pass pretty quickly, and I don't like to dwell on them, especially given a whole lot of really difficult stuff I went through last year. But today has just sucked. 

And I can only think of two ways to make me feel better. 

A)Rant, get it out of my system, breathe, be thankful and cry a little.

B)Eat bad food and play Legend of Zelda.

Part B comes after this.

So lets start with the bad stuff.

1) I was up all night studying for an American Heritage Midterm. I've really been putting it off all week  (and all of my other assignments for this week) and needed to take it by 11am this morning. I also had to pay $7 for the late fee. I will admit: I was tired, cranky, out of caffeine, and I got super distracted several times. I finally pulled myself together and left around 10.

2) It's freezing cold outside, and at first it was raining, and now it's snowing. Given that I was tired and cranky (still am), and halfway there I realized I was WAY underdressed, I just ended up being COLD, tired and cranky. Not a good way to take a test.

3) Sat down to take the test. An hour and a half earlier I left, hoping that I had at least passed, since I'm already failing American Heritage. Nope. Got a 63. (Admittedly, this is 10 points higher than my last midterm, a 53, which is definitely an improvement...) There are only four graded things left in the semester, and I need to achieve perfect scores on two of them and mid 80's to low 90's on the other two to *hopefully* get a 70 in the class. THAT SUCKS.

4) By the time I left the testing center it was snowing. I was wearing a sweater and gloves. I'm freakin freezing as I'm trying to bike home, and I can barely see as it is. 

*Side note: I saw a kid walking onto campus wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. No coat. IS HE INSANE? Three possible explanations for this phenomenon. a) He's from Antartica and this is warm weather for him. b) He's insane/an insane friend made a bet with him. c) He's trying to kill himself by hypothermia. 

As I'm biking down University Ave (Those not in Provo: Giant highway-like road that has a steep incline as it goes down the last bit of the mountain.) a car cuts me off. I swerve, fall off of my bike and fall into a puddle of freezing street water/slush. You have no idea how hard it was not to just lie there and cry pathetically until someone came and picked me up.

Oh, and the car, just zoomed right by me. Didn't even slow down. Now if I was in NYC, this wouldn't be unexpected. But this is Provo. A guy accidentally bumped my rear tire once and stopped traffic so that he could get out and see if I was ok. I hadn't even fallen.

I guess I'm not the only rude driver on Provo streets. I thought I was the only one who cut off people so rudely. (Hard habit to break I must say, it's in my blood.)

5) Found out the last Lab for one of my classes was last week. Not this week like I thought. I was 1 lab short. Now I get an automatic fail. I signed up with 15.5 credits. Dropped one class for 12.5 credits. And now I'm going to fail one? And I'm not doing so hot in the others? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!?!?! I suck. Major suck. Ugh.

Note our awesome christmas decorations. That post is coming up soon. Promise.

They were really small flakes, until...

...they got massive, and super pretty.

7) The worst part of all of this is, today is my big brother's birthday. He's 24 today, and I can't believe it. It's so hard to realize that he's an adult himself, about to move off to Seattle for an awesome job after he graduates this December. He's changed so much from the little kid I grew up looking up to and hoping that he wouldn't always think I was just his annoying little sister. And even harder for me to accept, is that since he is an adult, with his own life and own situation, is that I will end up following in his footsteps. Not in the exact same way, but I will also end up out in the world on my own, in a way college never will be, and it's scary enough as it is to watch him do it. 

Ever since I was a toddler, I was always comparing myself to him. I always wanted to be just as big, just as interesting, just as cool and just as smart as him. One of my mom's favorite stories is from when I was little, and I had an earlier bedtime than him. I was angry that I had to go to bed first, and was throwing a fit about it. Mom gently tried to explain that since I was younger I needed to go to bed first, to which I responded, "I'm not younger! I'm just shorter!"

Imagine a little blond, curly haired girl with a huge pout on her face and hands on her hips yelling this line in defiance. Yup, that was me.

Even though we're six years apart, I always felt like I had to be as good as him in everything I did, something that I found extremely difficult given our different personalities. Throughout high school he struggled with just being social, and talking to people. Meanwhile I had the opposite issue, I liked to be social, but couldn't make the same grades, test scores and I distinctly remember him being a senior in high school, and everything just "clicking" for him. He was doing really well, in school, with friends, and on an even keel on every front, preparing for college in a slow but steady pace.

I on the other hand, struggled throughout high school, especially in the last two years, and I kept waiting for things to "click" like they did for him. But instead things got worse and worse. And while things have improved since, I'm still not much closer to clicking like he was. 

He tells me things weren't easy for him. He didn't always get really great grades or blow everyone out of the water with everything he did. No, that's not what I wanted. I wanted his steady pace, his stability,  his quiet and calm demeanor and his emotional center. He tends to take things internally, while I explode outwards, letting everything out. He has self-control, and I don't.

I watched him go on a mission, and see him blessed a thousand times over for his service. He came back a stronger person, a more confident person, and a more stable person. As I consider, and prepare, for my own mission, I can't help but hope and pray for the same change. Maybe not in the exact way that he changed, but with a similar end result. I want to be a more stable person, and I don't want to feel like I'm a volatile bomb waiting to explode at the next possible moment. He made a slow but steady upward trend and I look at where he is now, and all I want is to be there, not stuck in the middle of this muddy bog trying to make enough sense of myself to get to the other side.

So I guess today has a good thing. It's his birthday, and since it's November it's only appropriate that I just be thankful for him. Thankful that he's here with me now. That we can both live in the same city as adults. That everyday he finds a way to show me how much he cares, that even though I'm an outpouring of emotions 24/7 (and I can promise you, I've rotated through sad, mad and happy several times whilst writing this post) and he's not, he knows just when and how to be there for me, even when I know he has NO IDEA how to deal with, or understand the rapid-fire and ridiculously strong emotions I'm presenting, he still loves and cares for me, no matter what.

So that's what I'm most thankful for, for today, and this week, for my brother, the BEST BIG BROTHER in the whole wide world, who I wouldn't give up for anything.

Happy Birthday. I love you more than you could ever know, and I hope you aren't super weirded out by this post. :P

Live, Laugh, Photograph.

Up Next: A light and fluffy post or two (snowless snowball fights, christmas decorating) and another long emotional one about another special birthday... THE BFF's (which was yesterday). She more than deserves her own post, and I've got a couple of good and embarrassing stories (embarrassing for both of us, but that's ok.) to share from over the last ten years. ;)