Reminiscence.

There once was a girl who resided in an enchanted castle. The castle contained everything the girl had once held dear to her heart. Pets, stuffed animals, and memories of warm summer days and cool December nights filled each room and hall. By day she would find new things to love; by night she preserved everything by tucking it away in corners of the castle.

As the girl grew older her castle filled with books, song titles, and movie tickets. Every now and then, if you walked through the doors in her halls, you would find the remnants of a special person in the girl's life; she kept the memories and qualities that made a person special to her.

One night she stumbled upon the figure of the boy she used to know. He lived far away from the girl in the castle now, constantly changing in the outside world. But in the castle the girl had preserved him carefully, remembering him only as he used to be. Approaching said illusion, she uttered the words "I miss you," and then her castle fell.

The bricks caved in and each story was brought down to the ground. From the rubble, the girl rose and found that all of her memories had vanished. The illusions that used to fill her halls and rooms were now only present inside her head. The girl's physical world now held only the truth of reality.

Atop the broken remains of the castle was a single index card written in the boy's handwriting: "I love you."

Books that I hate.

As a sequel to yesterday, I now want to make a list of books that I hate.

1. Twilight. This is literally the stupidest crap that has been put down to paper. The first book wasn't that bad, she should have let Bella turn into a vampire then. And then delete the other three books from existence.

2. Pride and Prejudice. I never finished this book. Because it got to a point where I literally hated ALL of the characters. I couldn't stand anyone and I didn't want to read about their lives anymore. I know that Darcy is supposed to be all perfect and whatnot in the end, but I freakin hated him and I don't think anything could have turned that around.

3. A Farewell To Arms. What in the world, Ernest Hemingway? If you don't want me to spoil this book for you, don't read this. But there isn't much to spoil until the last chapter. War war war war war, found a woman, got her pregnant, baby dies. She dies. I'm pretty sure his best friend dies too. He ends up alone walking in the rain. The end. It's depressing, and I don't think there's a point to it.

4. TTYL. I was fifteen when I bought this book thinking that is was soooo coooool because it was written entirely in IM. OMG it waz sooooo stupid. I think I read like 10 pages. And then I threw it in the garbage. Like, srsly.

5. The Shack. I couldn't finish reading this because it was poorly written. It might have been a great, uplifting story, but the narrator got on my nerves. Nobody cares that he was such an awesome writer that his friend chose him to write down his story. If he really was a good writer, he would just write. the . story.

Oh, and also every teenfiction book ever written. All of them.

Books I love.

I just wanted to share a list of my favorite books. So here we go...

1. THE GREAT GATSBY. If you know me at all, you know this is my favorite book. If you didn't, well now you know. I'll probably end up writing a whole post just on this at some point.

2. HARRY POTTER. I read the first 4 books in fourth grade, and went to the book premieres for 5, 6, and 7. This series taught me to enjoy reading. J.K. Rowling is a brilliant genius ironman-woman and I really want to meet her. I could also write an entire post about Harry Potter.

(at this point, the books are in no particular order.)

3. THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER. Stephen Chbosky is just an awesome person. Not only did he write the book, but he wrote the screenplay and directed the movie. Perks is just so full of truth and great quotes.

4. THE BELL JAR. I love Sylvia Plath. She's just insane, and I love the fact that she wrote a book about insanity. Love.

5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Boo Radley. Atticus. Classic, just classic. Never gets old.

6. ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Alice is just great, it's so random and imaginative. Love the book and both of the films.

7. THE HUNGER GAMES. That's right I like The Hunger Games. But mostly Mockingjay and the first Hunger Games. Catching Fire was just okay until the last chapter.

8. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. This book was funny, serious, and about a mental hospital. What more could you want?

I like a lot of other books, but those are my favorites. That is all. Carry on.

Saying too much vs. Saying nothing.

I think it's a good thing to think before you speak, but sometimes people think too much and miss the opportunity to say anything. So what's better- saying too much or saying nothing at all?

I've become a fan of saying too much. In the past i've been super cautious before confronting someone; but then I turned out to be non-confrontational and avoided things that needed to be said. This all changed when I started college. I didn't want any more opportunities to slip through my fingertips; I was tired of letting things bottle up inside of me and then never having the chance to let it out. So if I noticed that I had been thinking about a situation too much, I started talking about it. I definitely noticed a difference in myself; even if things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to, I felt better. I felt relieved   knowing that I had tried to make things different.

I've also spilled my heart out to people and they've said nothing. Maybe they literally didn't have a response. Feelings were building up inside of me to the point that I had to verbalize them just to make myself feel better. I didn't care if I changed the situation or the other person's mind. I just knew it would have driven me crazy if I didn't say something. So I did. I don't regret it at all; i'm glad I spoke my mind.

What bothers me the most are the times that I didn't say enough; I often think about what would have happened if I had been honest and said what was on my mind. I don't want to spend my life analyzing the past. I would rather say everything I need to say, just for the sake of making myself feel better. To me, saying too much shows that I've made an effort instead of just letting the moment pass by. 

I love my giiiirls.

For the first time in a very long time, I got to catch up with my favorite group of girls. They are: Kelly, Sara, Aileen, Ashley, Courtney, Morgan, and Kelsey. This is the high school group of girls that got each other through everything; we've cried together, we've yelled together, and we've laughed together.

Now we all have separate lives, growing and learning from new people in different surroundings. But we all get together and it's just like it used to be. No matter where life takes us, we share a bond that will always be present. It feels good to have us all in the same room.
In Kelsey's words, "It's good to hear all our laughs together again."

In college, I've heard some people talk about how much they used to party in high school.  My friends and I sat around eating pizza and rainbow sherbet quoting the same movies all weekend. And it was fun. I wouldn't trade that for the world.

I'm thankful to have friendships like this.

Don't wish your life away.

Dear You,

I'm sorry that it's taken awhile for me to make another post. I made an introduction and then left on a cliffhanger. Well, not really a cliffhanger. My life isn't that exciting. Point is, i'll get better at this I promise.

I'll just share some of my thoughts over the past week. Cause it's pretty fitting with the title of this blog.

The best relationships (friendships or dating) take a while to establish. Fact is, it takes a lot of time to get to know a person. And that's why these relationships turn out to be the best ones, because you spend a lot of time with someone and share experiences together. If you have stories together, there's more to talk about and you have a greater connection with someone. It doesn't happen instantly. I don't know why we get that idea in our heads sometimes; if we meet somebody and think they're cool we want them to automatically be our best friend, or start dreaming of a wedding. Sometimes we go so fast and wish our life away. In reality we should savor the moments when we barely know someone and take the time to learn their story. Because if you take the time to get to know someone you'll have a stronger relationship.

But these relationships are also hard to destroy. If you get in a fight with someone you've been close friends with for years, it's going to hurt more than if it was someone you never spent a lot of time with. So just be careful and prepared to risk that. In every situation, it's all about the risk. If you're not willing to make yourself vulnerable then you'll miss out on all the people you could have had great relationships with. Just something to keep in mind.

It's 2am and I'm tired and I want this to end so byeee.

Love, me.

Blog 1: In the beginning

I've been thinking about starting a blog recently, so here's me actually doing it! I think I'll start off by telling you why I want to do this, and some things you may not have known about me.

I'm a sophomore at UT Chattanooga, my major is English: Rhetoric and Professional Writing with a minor in Communications. But when people ask me, I just say that I'm an English major. Which is 99.99% of the time followed by the question, "Do you want to teach?" Honestly: "No. I have absolutely no desire to teach. I will if I have to, but I don't want to." In reality I answer: "I'm not sure yet." Because I just don't have the patience to explain my life goals to the lady giving me a haircut, or some friend of a friend of my mom's brother.

You see, there are two things that I want to do; I want to be an editor and a writer. I'm going to school to be an editor. Ideally, I'll be able to find a job at a publishing company after I graduate and eventually work my way into editing. Not newspapers, not magazines, books. I want to be a book editor. I think I figured this out in high school; that's when teachers started making us peer-edit papers. English has always come easy to me, but I never realized how much I liked it until I came across awful papers written by 15 year olds. This passion was solidified my first semester in college. For an exam, my English professor gave us a sample essay full of grammatical errors. We were assigned to correct 10 of them; I corrected about 25. When I got back from class I told my roommate it was fun.
I know, I need help.

My other passion is writing. This is something I've wanted to do my whole life. In preschool I would get a hold of a pen and paper and make squiggle marks, I was trying to make words but I didn't know the alphabet yet. It was very frustrating. Also, I lied a lot when I was little. I feel bad admitting that, but it's so true. I told my friends I had a dog when I didn't, I always twisted events to make them more interesting, and in my head I made up names and stories for people that didn't exist. I wrote my first story when I was seven. When I was nine, I wrote a short chapter book. Throughout my life I've come up when story ideas and sketched outlines in notebooks. I became serious about becoming a writer my sophomore year in high school. I had this one idea for a book that wouldn't leave my head, and I felt compelled to try to write this book. But pursuing this scared me; I would have to put so much time and effort into it, only for it to be rejected by several publishers.
Then I bought the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. My edition had an introductory letter written by the author herself, I can't recall everything but basically she said it was worth it. For some reason, that letter is what did it for me. I decided that at some point in my life, I would write a novel; I would give it a try.

But what would I write about? Well, I came across another letter this past summer by F. Scott Fitzgerald (my favorite author, just saying). He's writing to another author and telling him "You've got to sell your heart" Basically, he's saying to write with emotion from your own personal experiences. Just google it, it's good letter.
I've also seen the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower twice and read the book. So i'm going to quote Charlie's friends when Charlie doesn't know what to write about: "Write about us."

So I figured I would write about my life for now. This is my story, I hope you'll be a part of it.