Who are you today

I finally had a day off of work and school and it felt fantastic. I was able to sleep in and wake up to the sound of the rain dancing on the street as cars drove by. I went shopping with my mother, it is always nice to spend time with her because I do not get to see her often. I finished my grocery shopping and still managed to find time to be a little selfish today by indulging in a new pair of ballet flats and some clothing. However, having to run a million errands today made me think about the different roles that women often times play in the duration of the day. My mother took care of a household, a husband, three children, a dog allow with running her million errands and working part time. As I view the daily grind of my own life, I realize that I too take on so many different roles in my day. If anyone is ever unsure of who they are as a person, they should sit down and write down all of the things that they do in a day and add a creative ending. Read through the list once it is written and smile at the things that you can accomplish in a day.

Today I was...an alarm clock ignorer, a coffee drinker, a love for tall boots wearer, a daughter, a formal charge assigner, a car detailer, a Target and grocery shopper, a hat buyer, a driver, a dinner cooker, a fine art admirer and a blogger.

That is a lot of things to be in one day. Women everywhere...we rock!!! Take time to appreciate the little things about yourself that make you; you.

Cinderella Complex

I had an exceptionally long a dull day today. I had to wake up early to go to class, a subject I am not particularly interested in, and had to go straight to work afterwards. I worked 10 hours. I then came home to a dirty kitchen, one that has been this way for the past three days since I had cleaned it before. I simply could not find the time to clean it with putting in 14 hour days. Doing the dishes was the last thing that I wanted to do after I had to clean mildew off gymnastics mats and moved offices all day but it needed to be done and it was apparent that there was nobody around that was going to make my life any easier.

As I proceeded to do the dishes, while my boyfriend sat on the couch and ate Doritos and watched television, my thoughts could not help but be turned to a paper I had written over five years ago about the idea of the Cinderella Complex.

The Cinderella Complex was first described by a therapist. She believed that this was a women's unconscious fear of Independence, or more specifically a way to describe why women stay in dysfunctional relationships. I argued this theory in my paper. I believe that women want and do deserve to be taken care of. This is not shown as weakness, nor comes across as being dependent. I am a very independent person, I do a lot of things on my own, I am in school to have a career and I take pride in being financially dependent from a man. However, is it so much to ask to have a man in your life that understands when you have a hard day and will put down the Doritos and help at least dry the dishes?

If anything, the Cinderella fairytale has placed an ideal in our heads that one day prince charming will come and sweep us off our feet, carry us away to his castle on the back of his white horse, and we shall live "happily every after." It is the idea that there is a true match for everyone, that a soul mate exists and that one day we will find that one true mate and it will be a magical experience where butterflies will stretch their wings to the sky and birds will chirp sweet hymnals.

Now I do not believe that it will happen quite in this way, but why is having hope that there is one true love out there for everyone all of a sudden a complex? And why, as an independent women, wanting the most for her life and her relationships all of a sudden a psychological condition. What kind of medication will they start prescribing for someone like myself who wants to find my modern version of prince charming: anxiety medication due to hopelessness, antidepressants due to false perceptions, or possibly Ritalin for day dreaming?

In the air

My friend Ann called me today, she has left for her internship which was the realization, along with the start of classes, that summer has officially come to an end. I walked outside tonight and you could smell the change of seasons in the air. This is my favorite time of the year. The hot summer air now has a chill in it. Bond fires and pumpkin carvings are around the corner. The leaves begin to change and everyone has a calm about them as they put their last days of summer behind them as they prepare for winter.

My day was successfully uneventful. I had to work briefly and then I came home and did absolutely nothing. As guilty as I feel about this, it also felt amazing. Somedays I need time to just sit and relax, to not have to do anything and to regroup for the week ahead of me. I took a nap in which I know I will regret tonight when it is midnight and I am still trying to go to sleep. Tomorrow is a day full of classes and work.

Coffee grounds

I have a full day to myself. The only thing I have to do is drop a bill off in the mail and that is it. I have an entire day to do as I please and still I find myself sitting on the couch...drinking my third cup of coffee blogging. The day has yet to be very eventful. I am about to go cancel my tanning package and then drive out to my mom's house to pick up some of my mail and say hi to my dog whom I never get to see. Tonight Ann and I are going to lymen harbor for drinks and dinner and the last time that we did this, the night turned out to be very eventful. I will make sure to keep you updated.

Observations that are useless

Here are a few observations I have made today while waiting for class.

I like wearing sunglasses because they hide by disinterest in boring conversation

Wearing boots in eighty degree weather is slightly inappropriate and no longer a fashion statement

I don't mind being in school for so long because it actually has been the longest commitment I have been able to keep in my life

Scanties is a really fun word to try and use in conversation

e flowers are not only ridicules...but nothing says I like you, but am too cheap and consumed in my own life to actually send you real flowers.

Dating in the real world has become absurd. First there is the casual meeting with drinks so both of you can be semi-intoxicated in order to actually seem interested in the meaningless conversation that you are having. Then there is the following of two weeks of facebook stalking, followed by a banter of text messages in order to be able to really get to know each other. What a fairytale.

Inspiring

What a wonderful day I am having today. I awoke to a noisy alarm, hours earlier than I would like to get up but I had chemistry lab today. I was able to enjoy a warm cup of coffee in bed as I checked my emails watched television. I love waking up alone. If you had asked me if this was enjoyable a year ago I would have said no. But now I find a sense of relaxation and calming in waking up to nothing but silence and the morning sun peeking through the drapery. I finished class 2 and a half hours early and now am able to drink another coffee and sit and relax. What a great balance I am feeling today. I have two hours to sit here and be inspired.

I found a girl on a website who takes the most amazing photographs. She started a project, where she takes a photo of herself everyday for 365 days. She is an inspiration. I want to be able to do things like this with my life. Where would I find the time to fit in a daily photograph? I need to find a balance between the things that I love doing for myself and those things that I must do to better my future. It is sad, but I even have to write down mundane tasks suck as, do the dishes, or I would forget to do so in my chaotic life. I arrive home from work and sit down on the couch and become emerged in my lap top, writing, or becoming inspired by photographs of a girl who lives half was around the world.

Like I had said before, I had created a list over a year ago of things that I wanted to do before I was to marry. Large or small, they were all personal accomplishments that I wanted to make. I believe that it is time to update this list. For some I have done, and some have no intention of doing. This is going to be the year that I inspire myself. I am going to do one thing each day that is only for me. It will be my most selfish year, but I have an inclination that it will be the light that shines deeper into my soul, revealing in time exactly what I feel I am missing.

Ready to Jump

My birthday is coming up in a little over a month, and for some reason I am feeling really depressed about it this year. I will be twenty four, which is in no way old, I am aware of this. However, I am almost twenty five, which is almost thirty, which is an entirely new decade, so I think I am allowed to be slightly depressed.

To me this birthday just signifies another year that has gone by that I did not take advantage of. I did not have an opportunity to do all of the things that I wanted to do and I feel like I have not accomplished anything. I am not finished with school, not settling down and have no intentions of doing so in the next year. I have not finished my personal to do list that I started almost 2 years ago.

So this is what I have decided...new birthday...new list and most importantly, I am going to start the year off with a bang...or rather a free fall. I am going to go skydiving!

Toxic

I have been in the same relationship for the past year, and prior to that with same guy for three and a half years. I was the one who broke off the relationship the first time. After three years of his infidelities and constant going out without caring how it would affect me, I just couldn't take anymore and ended it. After two and a half years of searching, I just couldn't seem to find the love that I was looking for. There were plenty of guys in between and looking back a lot of messmorizing passion that kept me pre-occupied, but somehow "the relationship" continued to be a big part of my life as a friend. When we both found ourselves single last summer, after years apart, we thought that perhaps we were just meant to be together. Well I unfortunately got caught up in what I like to call, the cinderella complex, and thought he was prince charming, apparently to him I always was the one. Now here I am over a year later and I find myself becoming all too familiar with the couch on a nightly basis.

Mind you this is my fault and my decision. Somewhere and somehow I just lost it. I lost that loving feeling, I lost hope in the fairy tale and now I am slowly developing into an independent, relationship cynic who was once a hopeless romantic who thought every guy I dated was Mr. Right.

My only regret, I fear, is that this man, this relationship, is truly going to develop into something that I have always wanted to find and I am going to lose it. What if we are meant to be together? Is there really such a thing? Am I interfering with destiny simply because I am so selfish?

All I know for sure, is sometimes I think about our love and I truly do feel love. Other times, like tonight, I look at him and all I feel is my chest collapsing on my lungs as I slowly suffocate from his nonchalant controlling behavior, and that is when I find myself on the couch, blogging at one in the morning when I need to be sleeping.

Motherly Love

I called my mother this morning, simply to make conversation and to ask for her advice on something. My mother always sounds so cheery when you first begin your conversation, showing concern and empathy. Then came the dramatic climax, where she goes from being that caring friend to a controlling sociopath. Don't get me wrong, I love my mother and she has done a lot for me, except for allow me control over my own life. Of course I control my own life, in the sense that I make my own decisions for myself, but my mother mentally tries to manipulate everyone of those choices. "Well I wouldn't have done it that way," "Why don't you just move home to save money." "I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut....but." I wonder if she realizes that the only two of the three children she does this too is her daughters, whom both no longer lived at home by the ages of 19 and 20, while my brother is 22 and happy as a clam living for free buying power boats and going on mexican vacations. I could be doing those things too if I still lived at home, but I cannot put a price on my sanity.

My mothers spite for me comes from a variety of issues, but they can be wrapped up into one extremely long run on sentence. I went to school for biology instead of journalism, turning down the entrance into a decent journalism and mass communications school, I drink and socialize too much, I am not married nor have any desire to be so anytime in the near future, I have no desire to make her a grandmother until she'll probably already be dead, I lack all domestic and motherly instincts that typical women should have, and I'm selfish.

I want to finish my degree. Even though I have been with the same guy off and on for seven years, I still don't feel in my heart that he's Mr. Right, so I refuse to accept a ring until I am sure of it. I don't want to have a baby until I get some sort of a career off the ground. I love biology, and as much as I loved writing, it was a hobby. I live paycheck to paycheck in a beautiful apartment with a stressful job that I am great at. My girlfriends (some of whom I have been friends with since kindergarten) are my backbone, even though they're bitches, they're my bitches! We are twenty three, we do drink, we have a good time, we make memories, we go on road trips and life is fabulous. I wouldn't trade my life for anything and I don't think she understands that. Yes I am disorganized, I lose everything, my shoes are thrown all over the closet, I never pick up after myself and I hate, hate, hate cleaning with a passion, but that is who I am and who I will always be. It might be a mess, but it is MY messy life and as long as I stay confident in my life, everything will be fine.

The beginning of a new blog!!

Even though I am potentially two years late, I have jumped on the technological bandwagon and started a blog. I have decided that I have too many thoughts in my head on a daily basis and unless I get them out of my head, I am going to continue to talk to myself, which is annoying me. My life is too busy to monolog it as if I am in my own made for t.v movie. However, it does keep me ever so slightly entertained during my hour commute to work.

So this blog is going to be a virtual diary, since actually having a diary is a thing in the past. I truly want to track how much, or how little, my life changes in a years time. Also, I am a firm believer that you don't know where you're going until you know where you have been... So here is where I am at today:

I am still living in the town that I have grown up in since I was a child. However, I am luckily out of my parents house and living the loft life in a beautiful apartment downtown. I overlook the lake, the historic district, and am in the center of every activity. Parking is horrendous, when I'm allowed to park on the street that is, which reminds me that I need to go move my car now before the police mark my tires again for parking for more than three hours between 8 and 4pm.

I live in this small yet beautiful loft apartment with my boyfriend of over a year, whom was once my boyfriend for over 3 years, until I broke up with him in 2006 to try and "find myself." This was when I moved to Florida, dated a few good men and somehow my heart ended back in his hands, and back at my parents house. Unfortunately, I am again at a cross road, wondering if he truly is my prince charming (questioning everyday if that prince even exists), and now once again, it is slowly destroying our relationship, one night on the couch at a time.

I work in a suburb on the east side of Cleveland, exactly one hour away from that beautiful loft apartment. If I wasn't in so much debt, from that wonderful impromptu move to Florida two years ago, I might actually be able to afford an apartment closer to work. Instead I am still paying about an extra $400 a month in credit card payments while I rack up even more student loan debt. I work extremely hard, and I don't make a lot of money, but I love what I do. I teach gymnastics to little kids, and am a team coordinator for a gym. This is my niche, I'm good at it, I look forward to going to work, and it's a hobby I hope to do for the rest of my life!

While I enjoy my hobby and live paycheck to paycheck, I am also a full time student in school studying biology and chemistry in hopes of one day, real soon, finding out what it is I actually want to do with this degree. I want to attend physician's assistant school but am undoubtedly self conscious on my ability to even get accepted let alone my ability to handle the course load. All my life I have been able to do anything I have put my mind too, and school is the one area in my life that I keep seeming to be a failure. It has certainly put a damper on my self esteem. I was always a straight A student, I am very smart. However, when it comes to common sense smart, I lack some intelligence. I have always had to work full time through school, which has made it difficult to study, maintain an A average and get 8 hours of sleep a night. If it came down to getting an A on an exam or sleeping an extra hour, I slept. Also in moving to Florida, it wasted a year of my life because I had to drop out of school to move back home and wasted a semester and then had to put another two semesters off because I was so broke I needed to work at a bar slinging drinks like Tom Cruise in cocktail to pay off a portion of my debts (and I mean literally, I was a "flair" bartender!) So now I am back in school, back on track, and trying desperately to repair the futile damage I did to my G.P.A.

In an attempt to not sound so cynical, I will say that I lead a pretty amazing life. I have amazing girlfriends without whom I would not have so many great drunken stories or life experience. My parents are unbelievable and stand behind me know matter how stupid my decisions. And on that note, I hope to find followers of my blog, who will relate to how I feel and help guide my life. I also hope to look back on this in a year and be proud of things that I have done. I need to find some meaning in my life because for some reason my best just hasn't been good enough and my life experiences not enough, and with my upcoming birthday (24), I am becoming more concerned that I will never find my way.