So today was a good day I guess. Nothing really thrilling happened at all. Except that I have about  15 wall posts that for some reason will not erase. Oh well. So I was thinking today about futures and marriage and stuff like that, school, all the fun and stressful things of my life. And I was thinking about how this is such a questioning period in my life. This is when I am supposed to be finding out who God really is to me and what I am supposed to do on Earth and who I am going to marry and what will my job be...Who am I? And then I started to wonder who I really was. Because I dont think I really know who I am. I started to collect thoughts together in my head of my goals, my accomplishments, my mistakes, and my morals. And Ive made plenty of mistakes in my life, some of which have taken me down a dark path that I very rarely look down anymore. But there are also things that im made up of that are good things. Things that im proud of. I dunno. Im rambling a lot but my mind is scattered. I also learned today, thanks to Anna, 20 different ways to phrase male masturbation. You know, her being in a Human Sexuality class cracks me up, and her book is hilarious. And females do not take part in self pleasure. According to her book. Which is funny because the book was written by a man, so how would he know? And how can you stereotype a few women as women as a whole? Interesting. I'll have to share that with someone. They might get a laugh at that. Funny stuff. Oh and I got sprayed with rabbit semen the other day. That blew.

So this weekend was amazing, Kim was here and Dan was home, and it was just a great weekend. It was fun to be able to show Kim around St. Louis, and Im really happy she got to meet Dan, I like introducing him to my friends. It was really good to have someone to hang out with, it gets really lonely here when everyone is at school, and Im glad that we were able to see each other. I hadnt seen Kim since i left in December, which seems like forever ago. You know, sometimes its really weird to be at home and have everyone still over at Lipscomb. I guess in my mind when I left everyone else left too. Dont get me wrong, its not that I miss Lipscomb, its that I miss my friends. There are days where I want to walk down the hall and down the stairs to Kims room or Kays room to just hang out. Sometimes when im online talking to Kim I keep thinking that I can just go downstairs and make fun of what shes talking about, but thats a 330 mile trip. Oh well. Hah. Im sure Ill get down to Lipscomb in March to see everyone, and hopefully get some Matazlans...or however you spell it. Ive been craving it. Anyway. Life is good though, Dan and I are happy, and the long distance thing is actually working, and it wont be long distance for too much longer. Im sad that I cant see him on Valentines day, thats going to be the first time I havent seen him on V-day since we started dating two years ago. Weird. Anyway.

Im hungry and I think I might go have some St. Louis Bread Co. for dinner.

And then we realize that maybe life wasnt as easy as we thought it was going to be, and that maybe the freedom to make our own decisions isnt really what we want. Because for 18 years of our lives our parents woke us up, got us dressed, fed us, got us to school, and told us what we needed to do and when we needed to do it. But what about now? Well now we learn that the realities of life are far from how we used to see it, a band-aid no longer fixes pain and homework no longer involves crayons (which blows) and you cant just say "If you do that, you wont be my friend anymore," because that doesnt stop people. Growing up sucks.

BUT it doesnt always have to. I think that as time goes on we begin to take ourselves too seriously. Im scared im going to wake up one day and realize that I only find cartoons funny that are in the New York Times, and Van Wilder is "inappropriate." I think that sometimes its okay to dance on the table or run around for no given reason. Sometimes. "Nothing matters but KNOWING nothing matters, its just LIFE so keep dancing through." The point is, this is just life, its just the beginning of a greater future, so why stress out and take it so seriously? Enjoy life, and im not saying go out and get wasted to have fun, but laugh a little more at the things that happen. Sometimes things suck but we focus on that so much that the good things fly right over our heads.

So this has been brought up in conversation a few times in the past week by a couple of people. And it's something that I have always had a problem with and still struggle with it. I have this issue of never letting people get to close to me, because I lose them. It scares me to make another close friend or have a deep relationship because the pain of heartbreak can be matched by nothing. But I know I'm not the only person who does this, in fact many people do it. We all put up these walls, some thicker than others, that protect us from out past pain. I have done this for years but what I didnt realize I was doing was hurting myself by not letting myself get close to anyone at all. I mean no one. People can tell, I never hug people, rarely do I hug people. Most people have determined that if I offer THEM a hug, it means that I have at least brought down one of my shields, but like I said, I rarely do that. But why is it that we let out past pain become our current pain? I know that I have said mistakes are always going to be with you, and thats true, but they dont have to linger in your mind as a daily threat. I turn fears that I have into threats for some reason. I have no reason to believe that the people I love are going to hurt me, yet I expect them to, I just sit around and wait for the moment to come where I am hurt by them and my heart has to put the pieces of itself back together again. And what do we do with pain? We hid it behind the doors of our heart. Some people dont have doors, they have entire rooms just filled with pain and fear and sorrow, and they just pack more in as they go, never letting it be released. In order to let go of our pain we have to confront our pain. We have to trust the ones that say they love us and hope that they mean what they say.

This boy that I have a liking to, he always tells me that its okay to be scared of the future, thats normal, but dont worry about it today. See at first that didnt make any sense. But then I read the scripture in the Bible thatsays "Do not worry about tomorrow for you do not know what the future holds." And that is true. We have no idea and no control over it. Now if you are like me, that scares you. I hate not having control. But we have to trust God, knowing that he will be there, he will take care of us, and he will help us through. He isnt going to challenge us with more than we can handle, so never  give up on that. This boy has taught me so much about love, and its funny because we are learning together what love really is. And ive learned that is not about the flowers and the kissing (although that is amazing), its about the late night phone conversations and the truck rides with the windows down in the summer, and the park picnics and the "pizza roll/bagel bite dinners", and the fact that words dont have to be spoken, because you can look at each other and just know that everything is going to be okay. Putting down those walls, its hard and it hurts,