Pre-Wedding ripping out of hair!

Hello!
So I haven't posted in a Very long time; this is because I am preparing for my wedding which is in... One WEEK!
In the last year I have had many difficulties and life lessons learned. With all these difficulties I learned a lot what makes me well, Me.
I have always known that I am a fun loving, social, mature, adventurous person. I love being around friends and being social; I love having fun and going on adventures. This hasn't changed since I could crawl and never will.
Something I've always loved was my hair long. I have strawberry blond hair but with a twist. I find every color in my hair: black, brown, red, blond, bleach blond, etc. People have always told me I have beautiful hair or would ask how I got the color. It's natural! My hair is super straight. It hates to be curled, but curling is too much work anyways. I love my hair long. I've had it short twice in my life and it just didn't... seem like me.
Another thing about my hair is there is 4 lucky people that have my same exact hair. Why? Because I believe  in charity. I have given my hair to a program called Locks of Love ever since I was 6 years old. Christmas 2011 was my most recent donation. I donated 12 inches. My hair has grown 10 inches since then. My goal has been give my hair 8 times in my life, but I doubt I'll stop there.
With Giving away my hair I'm also very charitable. I remember when I was around 5 or 6 I threw a Halloween Party and we "Trick or Treated for Food." I donated a carload of food to the food bank. I can't give up the opportunity to help people.
I have always loved baking. I used to bake anything my parents would buy, nothing stayed on the shelves long. I got a job at a Ice Cream shop/chocolate factory. I learned how to decorate cakes, make chocolate, caramel and chocolate covered strawberries. There I found my hobby. I love decorating cakes. I have only taken one class and I have even surprised myself.

Of course I've done many more cakes, I just don't have all the pictures on my computer yet.

I am a fighter. I fight for what I believe and for the people I care about. I fight for truth and things I'm passionate about. I stand my ground and am very stubborn. With this wedding I've been very relaxed. I've only gone Bridezilla a couple times, and the people deserved it. Weddings are about celebrating the Bride and Groom. Celebrating they found each other and they are taking on the responsibility of becoming one and becoming adults.
So what if they decided to get married young or old, where it is, what day it is. All that matters that if you need to be there to support them you are. Especially family. Family means unconditional love. It means you go to your brother's soccer games and he goes to your softball games. It means helping them when they need it and being excited when they move away even if your sad they are leaving. It means going to their wedding and not commenting on the things that you're not 100% happy about. It means helping with the wedding and making it less stressful for them. It means getting to know their new spouse before judging.
I must say, I believe if you TRULY support your family and their choice to get married you don't complain that you have to go, that it's inconvenient.
NEWS FLASH!- All weddings are inconvenient. not everyone can come and people have to get off work. My sister isn't going to make it to my wedding. It breaks my heart but I know she supports me and I understand. Living far away has it's pro's and con's. I love her more than anything and I understand. That's what family is. Understanding. This is My Hubby's day and mine. We get to be in the spot light for now and that's the way it should be. Take turns to be the one everyone is talking about and being excited for. I will go all Pissy if someone get's in our way. :)

I know this is a long weird post, but this post is mainly to release all my stress to be able to finish up the last bit of work so I can enjoy my time, our time, our spotlight time.
Family is there for me and I am also there for them. I fight with my siblings, I get upset with them, but if anyone says something bad about them I'd kill them. They are mine and I love them.
I hope I can get to know my new family well and get along with them so I can feel the same way about them as I do my own.

Thanks for reading my Pre-Wedding chaos. Back to getting things together!

Just a bit about me.

So I’ve never really posted an all about me post so here we go.

Blue has the wheel while Bartholomew bears the pedals.

I absolutely love bears! I have two teddy bears I sleep with and I think they are so cute. I know, a little childish but oh well. I’m a Psychology major photography minor. I want to be a life coach. I love helping people and making people’s lives easier. I’m a perfectionist so sometimes I fear I won’t be able to help people but I realize a lot of my friends come and ask me for advice and I am able to help them so my fears fade away.

I love photography. I’m a landscape photographer because I cannot pose people to save my life. But I love the way the earth looks. The mountains and hills covered in snow, the flowers that bloom in the spring, the green trees by the rivers, etc. I love it all. When I go out to shoot pictures with my old SLR Sears film camera or my fiancés waterproof Nikon, I only shoot what I see beautiful in natures, so naturally I have a ton of pictures. Besides music, pictures take up the most room on my laptop. Of course, I delete the ones that don’t meet my standards.

My favorite hobby is cake decorating. My most resent cake was one of a purple and blue bear. I was so proud of it we didn't cut it for days. My cake container keeps is fresh so don’t worry. Here’s a few of my cakes! I’m getting better and better the more I do.

Purple Bear Cake!

Halloween Cupcakes

Frog cake for my girl Mariah

Cupcake cake!

I love my friends and hanging with them. I’m a very social girl so I love getting together with my friends and laughing until it hurts. But my favorite thing in the whole world is my fiancé. I can’t imagine someone more perfect or a couple more in love. We are each other’s whole world! I never wanted to get married so young (I’m 19 now and we’ll both be 20 when we get married). Many people do not like me getting married so young, to them I say shut the fuck up and get on with your own life. It’s our perfect time to get married. We live together in an apartment and have since we started dating due to circumstance. Oh well. Living together does speed things up quite a bit but I wouldn't have it any other way. We make each other happy!  We’re not having kids for a long time (I say not until I’m 30 but my fiancé thinks at least a little sooner). I want to be done with my Masters and have a nice job and a place to raise them. Just because I’m getting married young doesn't mean I’m stupid. The people who don’t understand why we are getting married don’t know us. Easy as that. I’m marrying my best friend!

So we went up to my home town for a couple of days to do wedding stuff and oh my am I excited now. We have the food and the basic plan for the wedding all set up. We went and ordered our flowers and the price was so WONDERFUL! I got: my bouquet, all my brides maids plus one extra, the boutonnieres for all the grooms men fathers and grandpa’s, my fiancés boutonnieres, the flower girls flowers and a few for centerpieces all for less than $250. I was so happy I found this place. If you’re in Salt Lake and you’re in need of ANY kind of beautiful flowers for a wonderful price look up Skyline Florist on Highland Dr. As the little old lady says, “our building looks like garbage” but they are so wonderful! My wedding is small for a Utah wedding. Only close family and friends at the ceremony and then the people I’ve known since I was little will come later for the reception. I’m using all my little nieces and nephews in the ceremony and my sister is a brides maid. I Love my family and that’s what is important to me for this wedding.

Well I hope you weren’t too bored with this. Hope you all have a most wonderful weekend and Valentine’s Day. I know I will!  ;D

STRESS!

So I haven’t posted in a year. I haven’t had time or anything to really put in a whole post. So here’s an update…

I’M GETTING MARRIED!

Ah! I’m so excited!

I’m marrying my best friend and I couldn't be happier. He’s everything I ever wanted and never knew I wanted. He makes me whole. I never thought I could ever love anyone as much as I love him!

Ok, I won’t bore you with sappy details.

This wedding thing, we’re coming to find, is actually really easy. I got my dress in the first trip, we found our venue in one trip, I found my brides maids dresses, we know what our cake is going to look like etc! We seem to be having great luck with this wedding planning but I've come to realize the hardest thing about a wedding is… the new family!

Whooo. My soon to be in-laws are SO intimidating. For the people who know me, I don’t take crap from anyone. I am outspoken and fun. I’m confident and can be very scary if needed.

I don’t care what people think of me. I have no fear of public speaking and I’m so easy to talk to. Friends come to me for advice.

So why is this difficult for me? Because usually I don’t care what people think of me, but in this situation I do care.

My future brother in-law is a big worry. I have tried to talk to him and get to know him and he just dismisses me. When that happens to me in certain situations I go in to fight or flight mode… but I can’t open my mouth to fight without worrying about my appearance. So I shut up and sit back. It’s so unlike me but I know where it comes from.

If you haven’t yet read Little Girls and Stereotypes and Pushing On, please do before you read on.

So you've read it? Good.

So those experiences made me confident and feisty. But I do fear people like I did in the past. I have this fear of being looked down on. This is a real struggle for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I've tried to get to know him but he isn't taking.

Oh well.

So…. I hate to admit it but I've come to realize recently I’m a perfectionist. Not full on EVERY SINGLE THING has to be perfect, but everything in myself has to be perfect. Everything I do, say, look has to be perfect. Again I fear this being looked down upon or this unacceptance. To me if I’m not accepted there’s room for being bullied. Silly I know, but it’s what I fear.

With this perfectionist personality comes much anxiety.

It’s the end of January now, at the end of November I started getting really sick. I got worse and started having a lot of problems. I ended having mono, hypoglycemia and panic attacks. I’ve always had anxiety but I never realized how bad it was. I gain 40 pounds from the mono and anxiety (I’m fat now) and now I have a lot of work ahead of me. Going to the gym and yoga is in my future.

I had to go LOA from my job and had to drop out for spring semester. It’s been a really hard time for me. I've been home with my parents for a month going to multiple doctors. I couldn't have gotten through it if it wasn't for my two best friends up here, Marco and Chloe, and my two best friends down at school, Mariah and Erin. But best of all my Fiancé was there for me every single day. Phone call and texting and even coming up to see me.

I know this was short but I thought I might as well post since I haven’t posted in a year. And sorry it's not the best post, I know I could've said much more and said it better but oh well. 

Have a great 2013! 

Pushing On

Hello readers. I hope you all are going through life well. Sorry I haven’t posted in so long. This post has just taken me a while. So a few posts ago I shared my story with you and I've had people ask me to go into more depth of what happened and how I’m handing it. Don’t worry, it’s not horrible depth. If you haven't read my Little Girls and Stereotypes post i suggest you read it Here before you read on so you are not confused. I decided to do this because hopefully one day a girl or a guy will read this and have the courage and strength to push through just like I have. So here we go.

I already told you about how I was bullied and all that so I’ll start this October 2010. Beginning of October I found out that my bully had a wired kind of crush on me. I was scared but I always give everyone chances with friendship so why shouldn’t I give him a chance at taking me to homecoming (which he asked me to). He asked me two weeks before homecoming and I was all ready. I was going to wear a dress I wore to sweethearts. In that week we started hanging out a lot. We even stayed up super late a few nights just talking on the phone… or me listening to him talk mostly. I knew he was sort of narcissistic but like I said, everyone gets chances. He was sweetish to me and it was going great. Just a couple of days before the homecoming dance he called it off and said we should just go to a movie instead. He didn’t want to go to the dance because he didn’t know anyone else that was going and so it wouldn’t be fun just the two of us. I was upset but we just went to a movie.

You: “Didn’t you figure out then there was something up or even think because he was a narcissist there was a problem?”

Me: “I was naïve and didn’t think it was really a big deal. He seemed nice to me and well, I was just excited that a guy actually liked me for once… I just didn’t know it was fake.”

We went on a few dates after homecoming, I had to pay for all but I had a job and was used to paying for friends when we went out and did fun things. I didn’t see the harm in this, but I was really being used.

He would take me to this parking lot and we’d mostly talk but after a couple of times he would ask for sex. I said “No” many times but he’d always push. One night after we went to a haunted house he was pressing the sex issue again and again I said “No.” he then told me “That’s all you say. We’ve done things you wanted to do, so why can’t we do something I want.” This took me back. I was trying to find the words to say no again but to make it seem like I wasn’t a bad person. That thinking is what gave him his chance.

He manipulated me like that and even worse times after that from buying his tickets for movies and stuff to having his way with me. I tried escaping once or twice and I learned quickly that I couldn’t. He would choke me and pin me down.

I blamed myself for it all. He made me feel like it was my entire fault and it was me who wanted it all. I was naïve and gullible and he was a master at manipulation.

A week after I moved away to college I was sexually harassed. I was lucky to get out before things got too bad but it was bad enough. A few months after I found out my friend was sexually harassed by the same guy and our mutual friend knew another girl who was as well. The tree of us got together and told someone. It was hard who to find who to tell but after much digging we told the right person and they took care of everything. I did blame myself even after I knew he did it to others.

Truthfully, I still blame myself sometimes. But I lived and I’m living life. I hear stories of people who go through this horrible situation and don’t survive physically or mentally. It takes a huge toll on one’s psyche and I’m grateful that even though I’ve been going through a small case of PTSD and other things, I’m able to sit here at my computer and share my story so I can, hopefully, help others out there.

I’m the type of person who I try not to let anyone see me cry even those two guys. Some say that’s strong. I don’t think so. I know that’s just my way of staying safe. I still have nightmares, some worse than others. When I see that kid on campus I can’t breathe and always have the urge to run away. I have horrible self esteem and barely any confidence. But I’m living.

I live for me. I made a decision that I wouldn’t let two Guys who did me wrong rule my life forever. I am going to follow all my dreams whatever they may be. This is my way of showing them they don’t control me and never did. This is my way of moving on. I live and learn.

My advice to anyone who has had this happen to them is this:

• ·         Don’t let the person(s) who wronged you rule you’re life. Find something to hold on to and something to strive for and go for it. It can be anything. Focus on one goal at a time.
• ·         Get some help. Yes, I said that. I go to a counselor. They do actually help even if you don’t talk about that situation specifically. They help you by listening and giving their advice if you would like it.
• ·         Talk to a trusted friend or family member and know they are there for you. If you don’t think you have anyone I just want you to know you have me. I’m not a professional or anything, but I've experienced hell and I’m here for anyone who needs a friend.
• ·         Don’t give up. You have the strength to push on whether you believe me or not.

This is my message. I wish you all a great life and I shall see you the next time I have time to post. Until then I bid you all Adieu. 

Little Girls and Stereotypes

There are a lot of stereotypes people have about people that have different experiences than them. I’ve noticed that a lot of people look down on people who were Bullied as kids, who have a low income, who are a different race, who are a single parent and people who are raped. I’m going to share a story with you that may make you think differently about two of these types of people if not all.

Ever since Elementary School a little girl was bullied. She would go home crying every day. She thought that going to a new school could help her make new friends. She went to Jr. High, a brand new school. The bullying got worse. She would be in the office every day because she couldn’t stand being in class being laughed at because she would answer the teachers questions. She would even be suspended multiple times for being a “nuisance to others.” She would be jumped after school and threatened every day. After two years she begged her mom to switch schools. She was accepted into a Charter School, her blessing for her problem. She moved onto that new school for the next four years. Sadly she was still bullied for the next 3 ½ years in a different way, but bullied all the same. She was called stupid and her “Friends” used her until they were done and threw her away like a piece of trash. Through all of this she still stayed happy and confident in her future and focused on everything to make it where she wanted to be. She thought things couldn’t get worse, until the beginning of her Senior Year. At the beginning of her senior year, a boy who bullied her in Jr. High and who went to her High School raped her. She told no one. Her High School had a total of about 400 students for all four grades and she figured if she told anyone it would create more trouble than it would solve. She kept her mouth shut and didn’t say anything. Two months later it happened again by the same boy. After the second one she told her two best friends. The girl best friend got jealous of her and even created more drama for their friendship. By the end of the next month they were no longer friends. The boy best friend comforted the girl and helped her through it. The girl blamed herself for it all and even tried to convince herself that it wasn’t rape because she could’ve stopped it. 8 months later the girl left to college. In 10 months, that boy raped her 7 times. Every time she could not avoid it or get out. That girl never let anyone know she was hurting inside and dying from the inside out. She showed the world the confident girl she wished she would be. No one knew but her one guy best friend and a few other friends she came to trust. The first week of college she was excited to be on her own doing something with her life and away from the pain of her past. That escape of pain didn’t last long. In her first week of college she was sexually harassed. She started going through PTSD from her rapes and her sexual harassment. She’s been going to counseling and getting over it. The best thing about this story isn’t her pain or the sad life she had. No, it’s about how she lives her life. No one would know she would be carrying around this pain unless she told them because she lived life happily. She has a smile on every day and goes to class to learn and make something of her life. Of course there isn’t a day in her life that she isn’t reminded of her pain but she pushes it away because she’s better then what someone did to her. People will say she’s so strong or so brave, but she doesn’t think so. She is the only one who feel her pain so strongly that she could burst into tears any second, but she doesn’t. She lives life as normally as she can. And she is happy.

I am that girl.

Yes. This is my story. If I didn’t tell you would you have known? I don’t think so. I don’t let my pain take me over. Of course I am the person I am today because of my experiences. I have test anxiety because I was made fun of for knowing the right answer in Jr. High. If someone asks me a question straight up, I can’t answer it. I freeze. I have a class where we need to talk about what we learned by reading our textbook. Every time I try to talk or want to I freeze. When teachers ask me questions, I freeze and it’s so embarrassing, but it’s just something I deal with.
I've gone though heart break and used to people treating me wonderfully then turned out to be not worth it. I've experienced hurt from a guy like every other teenage girl and I've done stupid crazy stuff like any college student. I'm normal just like you, just with different experiences. Right now I'm dealing with guy troubles and last week I dealt with drama like everyone else has. I'm no different and I hate how people will treat me differently after they find out. They do it even if they don't notice it or mean to. I'm used to it, but know I hate it almost as much as I hate being called only cute and nothing else. 

I know that a lot of people that have had the same experiences I’ve had act differently, but that’s because they are different people than I am. People deal with things differently and no one really knows a person’s story unless that person shares their story and the listener listens and accepts it. The thing that bugs me is when these stereotypes shape how a person thinks of another person. I’m not going to preach on how you shouldn’t judge people but I want you to think of my story and how I am as a person or what you know from my blog. I want you to ponder how you associate a word to an image you get in your mind. Here, let us try:

Rape

Bully

Adultery

Slut

Fat

Stupid

Nerd

Gamer

Jock

Now think of the people you associated with those words. What are their stories? Find out. It might just change your mind about stereotypes.

Have a fabulous day and I’ll blog again when I have time. :)
P.S.
A special thanks to all my friends that have helped me and stuck by me though it all. I wouldn't be the person I am today without you. I will try the rest of my life trying to show you how much you mean to me.