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Why I "Hate" (Dislike) (the Catholic) Church So Much

First of all, I'm "picking" on the Catholic Church because it's the only church I've experienced. Therefore, it's all I know to create my own opinions about. I think I dislike all organized religions. I don't know. I guess you can decide if that's the case once I post my critiques.

I don't like someone telling me what to do for the most part to begin with. I don't think most people do. I like having rules and instructions, but when it comes to something like faith, I really don't like someone telling me what to do, and that is how I see organized religions. Giving you rules to worship and telling you it's all or nothing with their rules to be accepted by them. I don't think that God (Yes, I do believe in God and Jesus Christ.) thinks that you have to follow all these rules that men created to be accepted by Him. Most religions think it's their way or no way to get into Heaven or whatever pleasant afterlife in which they believe. I don't agree with that at all. I think that as long as you're a good person, you get into Heaven/pleasant afterlife. What dictates a "good person"? I think we all know how to be a decent human being. My father once told me that the voice inside you that tells you whether you should or shouldn't do something--you know, your conscience--is the voice of God in you. That probably sounds cheesy and holy roller, but I agree with that. It makes sense. Use your best judgement to be a good person, and I think you'll get into Heaven.

Another point I feel like I have to make about rules of the Catholic Church is that they're (the rules are) created not by God but by men! These men claim that this one was told from this one who was told by God (more or less) that this is how you should live your life. I do not believe that literally. I took a Bible literature class in college (because even if I don't agree with it, I like it as a story and I like to learn about what I'm going to claim to disagree with), and one of the points that were made was that some biblical scholars believe that the Bible isn't even supposed to be taken literally. Instead, the stories are parables (I think is the word) that are supposed to teach lessons. THAT makes a lot more sense. Still, I don't agree with every rule. Although, I do think that many of the rules can help make you a better person, and I think we should all strive to be our very best and always work on improving. We'll never be perfect, and that's okay. No human is, but I don't think we should settle either. I like to start with the Ten Commandments as guidelines to being a good person. I do not remember all of them yet. Perhaps I will look them up soon, but I remember that you should not covet (want) your neighbors' house. I take that almost literally. I don't know if I should, but I think it basically goes back to "The grass isn't always greener on the other side," and some things might look great but there's more than meets the eye. This is especially pertinent with the popularity of social media now. We judge other people by their social media posts, and we compare ourselves to people using social media and think their lives are better than ours because their posts look beautiful. People tend to post their highlight reel on social media. They don't feel the urge to post when they're upset or going through hard times. There are more important things than social media at those times. Even when you're happy and things are working out, there are more important things than social media, but you know what I mean! I don't think that people purposefully hide their bad times from social media to make themselves look good. I think that it's just that--again--there are other things people are worried about besides social media when life feels like it sucks. I attempt to post the mundane, too, but I still haven't posted the crap yet. I fear looking like an attention seeker. I know that I shouldn't care what other people think, but I can't help it sometimes.

Going back to the religion topic, I feel like religion is a personal affair. I don't think it has to be. I think it's okay if you want to make it a social thing, but I feel like the Catholic Church especially turns it into if you make your worship personal, you're ashamed to admit your faith to the public. Hence all the click bait-y Facebook posts with Jesus saying something along the lines of, "Share if you're not afraid to accept me in front of your friends." Those posts shame you into not sharing as if you're not proud of your faith, but I really think those people just want a popular/viral posts.

Finally, I dislike and seem to disagree with Catholicism so much, but I feel the need to baptize my children as Catholics. It might be fear, but I feel like it's my conscience telling me it's the right thing to do. Also going back to a previous point, I don't think that there is only one way to get into Heaven. Therefore, contrary to what I was taught in one of my world history classes in college that some people and faiths believe, tying yourself down to one religion does not damn you if it ends up being the wrong religion in the end. Therefore, I really don't think baptizing my children as Catholics will be very consequential. It will put me (and admittedly much of my family) at ease to have my children baptized as Catholics. Then, I will let them decide how they want to worship if they want to.

Current Life and Career Goals

Hello, few and far between, distant readers! Why must I be so negative? But what are the odds of having a lot of views/readers? I’ll check my views, okay? Okay, I normally get 2 to 4 views per post. I’ve had a couple with 17 or 14, but it’s four or less posts out of 25 (edit: 26 now that this post is published (; ). It looks like ten to fifteen end up with two, three, or four views.

ANYWAY, I’m here today/-night because I’ve been craving blogging lately and have been in this really cool, refreshing creative mood. In my head, I’ve been describing it as a weird creative mood because I can’t ever remember feeling this creative for this long and it nagging at me. I also don’t know quite what to do to satisfy it either. Like, part of me thinks, “Blog obviously,” but I’ve been wanting to improve my writing by writing it all out and taking time to organize it and proofread it, which obviously will take more time, so that creative itch part of me is like, “ACK, TOO LONG, NOPE, I WANT INSTANT GRATIFICATION.” I’ve been having diarrhea of the mouth with instant gratification since I worked teaching first grade. The interventionist at our school (the person who does small group reading and mostly with the struggling kids) used that word to describe when kids choose the first answer on a test to quickly finish a question and move on or even the first one that looks even remotely correct instead of looking at all the answers to check for the best, etc. But yes, my creative itch wants instant gratification, so it doesn’t want me to take my time to make a better post because it wants the satisfaction of having the post done and out there and that itch satisfied.

I’ve been thinking lately about what I want most in life and what are my dreams, especially career-wise. Right now, I think I want to teach and write/blog most. I focus on blogging when I think about writing because I want the freedom in my writing. That’s what I enjoy about writing. That’s also why I have this anonymous blog—so that I can write almost anything I want to write and almost anytime and have very minimal if any negative consequences for it. Keeping it anonymous protects my reputation because my identity is hidden, so whatever I say shouldn’t (Remember, anything is possible.) make it’s way back to me and stick to my name and affect my reputation with possible future employers and on a smaller scale friends, family, and acquaintances, even. I’ve been thinking about writing on my personal/main account where my identity is known and my posts are visible to people who have access to that account with my identity attached to it, but I am scared of the possibility for negative consequences because I think some of the posts I have planned/brainstormed are controversial or at least have some controversial aspects in them, and I being the non-confrontational/anxious person that I am do not want to start shit or deal with people being pissed off at me. I just want people to hear me out and consider every single point that I make separately, not dismiss or discount my entire set of views and opinions laid out in that post because they might disagree with one point. I also don’t want my career opportunities in the future to be limited because of my opinions. I hate having to censor myself. Maybe that’s just part of being a mature and responsible adult, but it sucks. I wish we could be free to be ourselves as humans and have opinions and freely express them without having to fear whether we can have a job that we want later in life, but the fact of the matter is that you cannot do that, which sucks.

Then, I want to teach because I love learning and I want to inspire people to love learning, too, and I want to make a difference with children and show them that they can truly do anything they want. I truly believe that if you want something badly enough, you can achieve it. You can achieve anything! It’s how badly you want it that makes the difference. You will put in the work and time for even the hardest of tasks for you if you want the results badly enough. We have that potential, and I want to help students realize their potential relatively early in life—before college. I feel like college determines how much struggle you will have with setting up and creating your adult life. I know it’s very unlikely that you know what you want to do with the rest of your life by 18, but I would want students to at least know that they can do anything and that it’s okay to change your mind later but also find things they like and use those likes to find a job/career to support them in the mean time so that when they do change their mind (if they do), they have a savings to support them whether their change requires more schooling or some sort of training where they’ll need money help and be out of a job for a little while while switching. And as much as I loved spending six/seven/eight hours five days a week with ~twenty five-/six-/seven-year-olds, I feel like they are way too young at that age for me to instill all of that information in them. I feel like too much can happen from first grade to the end of high school for me to make a difference for those kids by college. Someone can undo all the work I’ve done in one year (more like nine months—hello, summer) in the eleven years that follow. I also had trouble effectively teaching first graders for more than one reason, and maybe I have more passion for teaching older kids so it stopped me from working as hard as I possibly could to work with first graders. I don’t know exactly what it is or why. I just know that now that I’ve taught first grade, even though I dearly loved my kids and coworkers and the environment there, I want to work with high school students more. And I can focus on teaching math and/or science instead of all subjects. Math and science are my favorite subjects. And I like that since the kids are older, I can censor myself a little less. I can help prepare them for adulthood, which includes sex, so I can teach them about that! Biology, health, I’m looking at you. I’m really passionate about sex education, which—side note—is part of why I stuck with becoming an OB/GYN for so long, because I feel like and have somewhat seen (and more so have heard with my mom having had worked as an OB/GYN nurse) that kids don’t get enough sex education but have sex and then get diseases or unplanned/unwanted pregnancies or just straight up don’t know what they’re doing and get in some sort of “trouble” with sex, even as seemingly trivial as not enjoying sex. I can go on and on about this. Basically, I think that sex should be enjoyable, too. I know some people think that sex should be for procreation only. I disagree. Also basically, it just seems like teaching older kids (middle or high school) is a better fit for me, so I’m going back to school in January for that. I think I may have posted about that already.

And I still want to have a life with my husband and kids. No, I have neither right now, but I want them one day, and I want to have time for work and them and the rest of my family and friends and myself. I want my current boyfriend to be my husband, by the way. I also think that you should feel that way about whoever you’re dating. If not, I don’t think you should date them, but that’s just me. Some people are into more casual relations/relationships. Some people don’t want to ever be married—have a lifelong partner, yes, but not necessarily marriage. That’s okay whatever you want! But I want what I want, too.(:

So in my head, I think the way that all of that would work out is teaching full-time, writing part-time, I guess. Or on/by commission—is that a thing? Basically, I’d write something and whore it out for someone to pay me to publish it or I’d reach out to a company/site, ask what they want me to write and what price, and write that for them. I don’t know anything about that. Maybe I’ll look more seriously into that later. I do like that idea of writing for Refinery 29. They seem really casual and do some opinion pieces it seems like. They seem cool to write for. One of my favorite blogger/online writers is Danielle Campoamour. I’m too lazy to look up her name. Sorry, girl. She even replied to me on Twitter once, which is super cool to me because she is a celebrity to me because she is well known or known better than me, which isn’t saying much, but I think you catch my drift. If I understand her writing correctly, writing is her career. She gets paid to write whatever she wants to. Maybe I’ll contact her for advice one day. I don’t know! I probably will since this is what I really want to do with my writing and don’t know who else/where else to go and she is doing exactly what I think I want to do in the writing world.

I think I’m ready to close this post out now!

Good night, and if you’ve stuck around to the end of this post, thank you.(: I appreciate it and love you for that!!!!

My First Job--Teaching!

I was here in May, telling you about my career switch. I decided to pursue teaching instead of medicine. I fell into what felt like the perfect job--teaching first grade at my old elementary school. I originally was aiming for high school, but none of the high schools contacted me back or had positions available. I thought about how much I would love to work with little kids for the rest of my life (in an effort to fill the void of not being able to have a baby once a year for the rest of my life and not having any right now--probably not the right reasons?) and decided to more seriously pursue teaching elementary students. Again, I fell into what felt like the perfect position. My coworkers were AMAZING--amazing, amazing, amazing. I can't speak highly enough of them. My kids were awesome, too. They were soooo cute! I loved them, and they seemed to have love me, too.(: Probably because kids are easy to impress but we'll go with I'm cool. My father said that kids are not easy to impress and that's just a knack of mine to get along so easily with kids. Maybe it is. I don't know, but I know I loved working with them. I wish school was more play learning, but it's not, which is where I think I started to not enjoy myself. Not enjoy myself? This post was starting off so positively. Why is it negative now? I resigned. That's why. Lesson plan writing was hard and time consuming and a pain in the butt. Granted, I did procrastinate a lot, but I ended up staying up past midnight most nights, and I came home crying almost every day. There were even a couple days where I cried once I got to school before students were let into the building. I was so stressed. Every time I got feedback (which was often because I had zero experience teaching), I took it so hard and so personally, beat myself up about it, and almost always cried. One good piece of advice that helped a little bit was from my father. He said that you can't take work personally--none of the feedback, nothing. But it still wasn't quite enough. Lesson plan writing was starting to come along somewhat. Then, they started adding more subjects for which to write lesson plans and how many I had to write at a time and pushing the deadlines forward, and I felt like I was drowning. I met with a mentor teacher almost every afternoon and while she did help a lot, the stress still wouldn't go away, and I had a lot of tunnel vision when it came to my work. I would focus in on one thing and overkill and get nothing else done. Then, the "best" part: Once I got better at writing lesson plans, I couldn't get the hang of effective instruction in a first grade classroom. When I was in school, the teacher did most of the talking and instructing. I noticed when I was graduating high school that something called Socratic Seminar was starting to make its way into the underclassmen classrooms. I had no idea what it was at the time besides a lot of group work and discussion, which in high school would have made me want to barf. Even in college, I think. Now, I think I'm more confident in myself to not be worried about what people will think about what I think and/or say. But there was something similar to Socratic Seminar in elementary instruction, also. It was where teachers directed classes to discuss the topic about which they were learning. I don't know if it was the control freak in me or panicking about time management and assuming first graders couldn't stick to a fast-paced schedule, but I could not let go of leading the discussions and not leaving much of a discussion available for my students. I would talk and talk and talk and talk. And I kept getting told not to do that and to let the students discuss, but something kept not clicking. I was too scared or something. So formal observations came around, and I failed mine. I expected but thought oh well and figured I'd just learn from it and move on. What I didn't know about were the remediation steps that are in place to help teachers help students. I would have been placed on an intensive assistance plan and re-observed in six weeks. If I failed the second observation, I'd be fired. Big deal, I thought. I would just get up and try again. THE CATCH: If I got fired from a teaching job in this school district, I could never teach in the district again. That was NOT what I wanted. In fact, it is my dream to teach in this school district. So I sat through the longest yet best meeting of my life with my principals--three hours. They found teachers to take my class for the afternoon, and we discussed my options and my concerns and questions. The first hour or hour and a half was a bunch of feedback and information concerning the observation and tips. The rest was talking about my options and how stressed I had been and how going back to school felt like an amazing option and the only thing stopping me from quitting that day was what my parents would say because my dad thought if I quit, then I was giving up. And I thought the same. Until I heard what happens if you get fired in this district, and he agreed. I knew my mom would have my back, but I was so worried about what my dad would think. And I miss my paycheck (even though all it was was one) and the little bit of financial freedom that was starting to come with it and my students, but I feel tons better. I will go back to school in January. I'm trying to decide between a Master's of Art in Teaching (MAT) or Bachelor's of Science in Secondary Education. I'm in contact with the dean of the college of education at my college write now, figuring that out. I was going to apply for a job at a local hospital (I am homesick of science and medicine.), but when I was on the phone with my grandma talking about how a nannying job seems like the dream (getting paid to play with kids and run errands), my mom offered for me to be her nanny and housekeeper since she and my father both work full-time and all of my siblings are in school and my stroke-ridden grandpa lives with us. So I accepted, of course, and I get to go to school and live at home cost-free and my parents will continue to provide for me financially if I keep up my end of the deal and keep our house clean and fed and take care of everyone's appointments. So that is my life update! My first job lasted less than two months, even though it was what I wanted. And I am bummed that having kids and getting married and moving in with my boyfriend (not in that order (-:) will be pushed back even further now, but I know I'll be happier and healthier this way instead of if I continued to push through with teaching first grade and possibly losing my job and having to move to teach public school or be limited to private schools here at home. Seven months ago, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing with my life. Now, not so much. I mean, kind of but also not really. I am super open to the possibility of anything changing and me not knowing what I'm doing. I know what I'm working toward now, but I do not know if this is what I'll want or be doing for the rest of my life. I also wish I could write on the side like opinion articles. Getting paid for that, too, would be nice but just to change the world with my writing is what I really want. I want to educate people and open their eyes to possibilities in the world around us.

Danielle Tullo of Cosmopolitan Thinks We Need To Stop Saying "Adulting," But I Disagree

I read this article on Cosmo's Snapchat story last night, and I have to say that I disagree with it. I think it was too harsh. I TOTALLY understand some of Ms. Tullo's points, but it's the way that she interprets the word with which I disagree. She has the right to interpret things the way she likes, but I have the right to interpret it differently and talk about that. I agree with the evidence she uses to support her points. It's the points themselves that I disagree with...if that makes sense.

I need to start this with a disclosure. I am very literal as in in arguments, it is not uncommon for me to send screenshots of a word from Merriam-Webster online. Maybe that's annoying to some people, but think before you speak. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. It's how we communicate with people. No one can read your mind.

This is very important to remember in my first point. "'Adulting' also known as 'existing.'" I will put the definitions of both side by side. I'll even use the definition of adulting from Ms. Tullo's article:
"Urban Dictionary defines 'adulting' as 'to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups."
Merriam-Webster defines existing (exist) as "to have actual being," or, "to be real."
Therefore, adulting is NOT also known as existing.

Next, "'Adulting' implies that being an adult is not a necessary part of growing up, but rather a life choice you're hesitant to fully buy into." Maybe I'm wrong, but I think what something implies is subjective and/or a matter of opinion because people understand, comprehend, and interpret things differently from one another. I do not think that adulting implies what Ms. Tullo thinks it implies. It doesn't imply anything to me besides what it means. To me, adulting implies you're performing tasks that children are not expected to perform. That's it! In my opinion.

Third, "Cara is smart and has a great career, but when she talks about making dinner like it's her biggest accomplishment to date, she downplays all of her impressive achievements." I'm somewhat torn on this point. On one hand, I agree that if Cara thinks making dinner is impressive, it downplays her great career. On the other hand, maybe she and others who use the term adulting feel accomplished that on top of handling a great career well and all the steps to get there, they also managed to soldier through cooking a nutritious dinner instead of opting for take-out or whatever junk food was already waiting to be eaten. Like Ms. Tullo quotes Cara in saying, "[But] it just feels good to be self-sufficient in small ways." Yes, Danielle, it does! That is what I think people's points are in using the term adulting. They're excited to not have given into the temptation to be lazy and get nothing done but instead be proactive in taking the steps necessary to create the life they want to live.

I think you read too much into adulting and took a cynical point of view. Maybe I'm reading too much into adulting and took an optimistic point of view. To each their own!

Please, discuss your own opinions below.(: And if Danielle Tullo does happen to come across this (ha!), please, feel free to leave a rebuttal below. I welcome it. I'm all for civil debates. Call it my anxiety or human nature, but arguments and attacks on differing opinions make me want to cry and vomit...vomit tears and cry vomit...

Relationship Advice (If You Want It)

Relationships, relationships, relationships--I love relationships. I love love. I never knew that was a logical thing to say. I think I thought of it before and felt kind of silly at the thought of saying it out loud or "publishing" on the web, but I saw Lisa Gaskarth (guitarist and lead singer of All Time Low, Alex Gaskarth's, wife) say such a thing in her Twitter biography (autobiography (; ) and thought, YEEESSSSS! And I also thought, But I said that first. I don't know if I really did.

Anyway, I love love. I love, love, love love. Sex scenes in movies make me want to cry because I only get my boyfriend once a week and sometimes we're not both in the mood, so when I am and he isn't, I miss out for two weeks. I love romcoms because they fill the void in me from not being able to spend more than once a week and a random trip to the grocery store he works at with him. That's my catharsis. My English II class in college was horror movie themed. I hate horror movies, but I desperately wanted to take English online. I learned about catharsis there. I don't get my catharsis from horror movies, though. I get mine from roms (you know, since the rom in romcom means romance) because they hurt me since I want to be with my lover and can't, but they make me so happy because even though it hurts that I miss him, it makes me think of him and how much I love him and want to do all the things couples do in roms with him. Well, almost all the things. I don't  need the drama that movies add to captivate people.

So I love love and love to write and love giving advice through narratives, so I'm here today to give relationship advice based on my experience. I've only ever experienced a romantic relationship with one guy, but we've been together for over seven years (May) and have been through very much together since we've been together since I've been 14 and am now 21. Aww, that's so cute to me.

Relationships have ups and downs. All of them. Even the seemingly good from the outside ones. For example, my parents have been together for nearly twenty-four years, but my dad cheated twelve years ago. Thankfully, my parents worked it out and remarried after about two years of being divorced. I've been with my boyfriend for seven years, but I cheated on him at the end of our second year. Then, I had anxiety so bad for two years four years later that he didn't buy me a birthday gift one of those years because my anxiety was so bad that he didn't think I loved him anymore and that we were going to break up soon. I'll talk about our downs and then some of our ups because I can't remember all of them super vividly because sometimes, some of us take the good for granted and let it blur together, or maybe time just has a way of doing that. I don't know. So we got together May 2009--basically. I say basically because the day we consider our anniversary is actually the first day we started talking. Neither of us can remember the day he asked me out, but we acted the same as we did before and weren't talking to anyone else at the time that we consider it all the same. I think he may have asked me out later that summer because we were still in school at that point in the school year. Our last day wasn't until later that month.

We have the slowest, most awkward to tell others about relationship! Both of us are okay with the way it worked out. Of course, we wish it were a little faster so that we had more time really together, but things happen for a reason, and I think it let us learn about each other more before things got serious and be more sure that we wanted each other for the long haul. What I mean is we didn't talk in spend time together in person until August or September, and it took us even longer than that, I think, before we even spoke in person! We are two crazy, shy kids.(-: Even when we spent time together in person, it was only sometimes! Like, when we were alone. For example, the first semester (our high school worked by semesters), we only walked together to our buses--in other words, not in the morning with his friends, which I totally would have the time and availability to do so!!! Like, when I hung out with my best friend in the morning, and I'd go with her to hang out with other friends of hers, and those friends hung out in the same general area as my boyfriend and his friends, but still, we were both too shy, so neither of us were mad at the other for not approaching us at least.(-:

I was a freshman, and he was a junior when we first started talking that May 2009. Then, he graduated at the end of the next school year. I assumed that we wouldn't last after he graduated, but I didn't want to be single again. So I started talking to another guy and then broke up with my boyfriend later for a whole hour. While we were broken up, I realized that I wanted him more than the other guy, so I told him I was sorry and asked him to take me back, and he did. So that was our first down. After that, our relationship was some of the best it ever was. It made us stronger having gone through that together, and for me, it made me realize how much I really did love him and wanted to make it work. I also found out that he wanted to make it work, too, so we could last past his graduation. We didn't see each other for nine months after he graduated because I knew I wouldn't be allowed to go anywhere with him until my parents met him, but I was so nervous about having that. Therefore, I never said anything about it, and neither did he. I saw him by chance the February after he graduated. He was working at another grocery store, and I happened to go while he was working. It was a grocery store we don't usually go to, so it really was by chance. I was so nervous to see him. Of course, I wanted to see him, but my anxiety was larger than my want to see him. But I saw him anyway.(: And he met my mom and my brother because they were with me. Then, some time after that, my parents told me they wanted to meet him, etc. So that May, he came over for the first time, and I was still so nervous to see him and talk to him again. We had been together for two years at this point, and we had never spoken on the phone. I was anxious about talking on the phone to anyone for so long. I still am. I feel this pressure to be entertaining the entire time, and it freaks me out. So he called me when he was trying to find my house, and I almost didn't answer him because I was so nervous. But I think I did. He passed up my house, and I think he hit someone on the way back toward my house after turning around. The guy he hit told him not to worry about it, though, and let him go.

But I recall the nine months we didn't see each other with such fondness. I think that was the peak of our honeymoon phase (if we ever got out of it here seven years later). Everything was through text, and he'd text me these long, sweet messages. It was so amazing. Now, we're way past that, and I know how he feels, so he gets to be lazy and not have to text that much to me anymore. Boo! I miss those long texts!

Then, our other down was two years and four months after the first time he came to my house and formally met my parents (and one of our family friends because I was the oldest and a girl so the friend wanted to observe my dad the first time I brought a boy home). I was in my sophomore year of college, and I made a new friend in my organic chemistry class. We were getting to know each other and talking about our lives, including our relationships with our boyfriends. I told her how I felt like my mom didn't like my boyfriend. She told me that maybe that was a sign that my relationship with him was a test from God. That is where my relationship anxiety started. That night, I took my shower and couldn't stop thinking about it, and how could I know for sure? So I started looking for signs and reasons to either leave him or stay with him. How could I be sure that he was my one? I couldn't. Honestly, there is no way to know anything like that for sure. We have no way of knowing what the future holds. Therefore, my anxious mind interpreted that as if I'm not sure, then he musn't be the one because like Katy Perry reminds us, "They say you know when you know. I don't know." Looking back now, I know so much better, but that relationship anxiety was severe and seriously made me doubt my relationship with my boyfriend for the next two full years. The summer following my junior year of college, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and prescribed medicine, and hallelujah, the medicine helped so much. My parents ultimately gave me the best relationship advice. Great, trusted sources of relationship wisdom as evidenced by them being together for nearly twenty-four years and having gotten back together after something that usually tears other couples apart. Everything boiled down to two questions according to them: 1. Do you want to be with him? 2. Is the relationship harmful to either one of you? If the answers are yes and no, respectively, you stay. I'm happy to report that those were my answers, and I (obviously) stayed. Being diagnosed with depression and anxiety and being prescribed Citalopram has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. There's nothing wrong with our relationship. There's something wrong with me. As twisted as that sounds, that makes me so happy because I can work on me. He can deal with me. The best part is that we can stay together.

Now, I am the happiest with him I think I've ever been. If not just as happy as our ups--the nine months of sweet love letters and--yes--sexy nudes back and forth and the time between then and when my relationship anxiety started. All these downs made our relationship stronger and me more confident in our relationship and also me more in love with him because he still loved me despite the wrenches I threw into our relationship. When I was going through my relationship anxiety, the stress made me lose my ooey-gooey feelings for him, so my parents told me that it was the end of the honeymoon phase and totally normal and healthy. Now, I got my ooey-gooey feelings back.(: Maybe our honeymoon phase isn't over. Maybe this is just how I will feel about him forever. I'm thinking our honeymoon phase might not be over because even after seven years together, we still aren't living together yet because it's not a smart decision for us yet. I think if anything will end our honeymoon phase if we are still in it, it will be that and if not that, having kids. Until both of those things happen, I will not be convinced that we ever left the honeymoon phase.

So we are self-proclaimed relationship goals according to me. I love us. I think we rock. I think we are one of the strongest and lovingest and best couples out there, and even we have some crappy downs that probably would have torn others apart. So it goes to show that even the "perfect" relationships aren't perfect. You can have the best relationship in the whole wide world and still go through shitty things, and it will be okay!

I hope this helps someone or inspires someone. I think I could have really used a post like this from someone whose relationship I admired--a reminder that their relationship isn't perfect either. And I think I actually did stumble upon that eventually here (Bliss Katherine Braoudakis's "Love Story"--one of my favorite posts ever since the day I found because it does remind me a lot of my relationship struggles and gave me hope when I needed it most). 

Bye, y'all.(:

Struggle

I'm struggling with a friendship right now. I know what everyone's advice would be, I think, and despite that, I'm still having trouble. I have a friend who is making the seemingly dumbest love life choices right now, and she gets frustrated and asks for advice and also complains about her decisions but then repeats her mistakes repeatedly. Besides that, I love being her friend. I love her. But she makes all our conversations about her love life, and after dealing with trying to give her advice for probably almost three years now and her flip flopping and not listening, even to the point of telling one of our other friends not to tell me stuff because I lecture her and SHE SAYS she knows I'm right. I have nothing to say anymore, so I don't even answer half of the time. Her love life came really close to getting the same friend of ours to get fired--definitely some discipline at work. It ended up not being for that, but it was a weird coincidence. It happened the day after the friend told her not to say anything and she did anyway. I keep being friends with this friends because I do still love her and want the best for her and don't want to leave her at a hard time in her life when she probably needs her friends most, but she exhausts me. I can't even stand to spend time with her right now, and I've been ignoring her texts. I know this probably makes me a terrible friend, but I'm so frustrated with her right now but not ready to let her go if that's what I end up doing. I didn't come here for advice because I THINK I know what anyone would say. However, feel free to say your piece if you'd like. I seriously just came here to vent. And y'all can vent here if y'all want, too!