60 Days

I read this book this book after my breakup and one of the "he-tox" steps (get it, a detox from your ex? Funny, no? No? Okay.) is to break ALL communication with your ex. No wondering, no second guessing yourself, no "but what if a killer shark bites his leg and I have to go visit him in the hospital because this life changing incident made him profess his love for me" visits. No calls, e-mails, text, IM, Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking you can think of. Hmm, I can do this. I had officially started a "hetox" before I read this book and I didn't know it. My ex and I had a painful conversation (over G-mail chat nonetheless) that really dug into my heart and soul. I mean it truly hurt because some things came out that I never knew before. "Really, so that's how you feel/felt?" type of crap that made me insane. Insane with a mix of emotions: anger, sadness, anxiousness, fear of the unknown. It was a truth so harsh, that it plummets you down to the bottom and there's no place left for you to go but the top. It was then that I decided, I couldn't be the crazy ex-girlfriend hanging on to the past. No we cant be friends. No I cant speak to you anymore. You hurt me like no ones ever hurt me before, so quite frankly being friends isn't good for me and my mental health and well being.

Night one: The conversation was close to eleven at night on Christmas Eve. I slept horribly, well what little sleep I did get. Before I lulled myself to sleep, my mind was running wild with "what-ifs". I kept repeating the most hurtful words I could pick out of the conversation over and over in my head, and even though we'd had the conversation online, I could hear them clearly. That didn't stop them from hurting any less; they hurt like a knife being stabbed. I cried, wondering how could I put myself out there, so vulnerable? Then I got angry at the exact same thought? Well, how COULD I put myself out there so vulnerable?

Days 2-7: I sulked. I was miserable. Staring out the window, laying on the couch, under covers for endless hours. I blamed myself for all that went wrong. Then I blamed him. I was a wreck. My days were filled with going through the motions. I fought the urge to call him.

Day 8: While laying in my self-induced heartbreak coma, I put my phone on vibrate/silent/under the couch/in another room, anywhere where I couldn't hear it or would want to use it. Heck, if I didn't need it, I honestly would have thrown it away. But hey, I need a number for those people I go on interviews with to call me. In the afternoon, around 1pm, I awoke from a nap and saw I had a text on my phone. Who could that possibly be? I had isolated myself from the world. I opened the text and recognized the number immediately. It was my ex. Although I had deleted him from my phone (and myFaves) it was gonna take a while for me to forget those digits. The message simply read : "How have you been doing?"
What?! You mean before OR after you took my heart and stomped all over it, then crumpled it up into a ball and threw it back at me? Yeah. I thought so. That text didn't get a response. I honestly stared at it for a good minute to see if it was real. Maybe I was having a dream, what with all that sleeping I was doing. But no, this was real and the pain that I felt combing back towards me like a hard slap in the face was real. This was the last time I've ever heard from him at the time of this post.

Days 9-13: I feel a little better. By now, 2010 has kicked off and while I've made no resolutions I still feel things are going to change for the better. I started off 2010, heartbroken and sad but I realize that I need to break out of this slump. I'm about to graduate from college in May (on my 22nd birthday!) and I have nothing but opportunity in front of me. Hey, it could be worse! There's a life to be made out there. Gradually, I started getting the energy and will to get up, out from under my covers.

Day 14: This day marks a turning point, I believe. I visited one of my prospective schools for my graduate studies. I also got the book I mentioned earlier in this post and later on that night I tried a new cardio workout. It was then I realized, "Hey! There are grad school admissions to be written! There is stuff you need to do that you needed to do before the breakup. Don't neglect it!" By the end of the day, I realized that I hadn't thought about him all day. For the first time, my day was not all about him and what went wrong. Hmm, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. My train is just slowly creeping towards it, but it will get there.

Day 15-Day 19 (Currently): So, this is where I'm at now. I've officially decided to do this hetox. I even printed out a nice little calender to mark each day off with a big black X. (Hey, no need to mess up my little pretty, new 2010 planner for him! He's messed up enough.) I'm in no way claiming to be completely over it and every day is not a big bowl of happy. BUT, I can say that I feel like I'm in a better place than when I started. I don't obsess all day about what went wrong or how we could have fixed it. My urges to call have significantly decreased and he has been deleted from every form of communication that I could possibly think of. I was holding on to Facebook, because I thought that I didn't have to check on him but he could still see what I was doing (because maybe he still cared/would get jealous) but that was just another excuse to keep my foot in the door. Nope, today he got X'd out of that aspect of my life as well.

With all that said, I cant wait to see how I feel at Day 60! Empowered? Happy? Free? Dating? 5 pounds lighter? I don't know, but God knows it has to be better than Day 1. Anything is better than that.

Apartment Hunting and Such

So yesterday I went with my boyfriend to search for an apt in another city. Apt searching in Texas is can be a long, hard, hot day's work and I hadn't even ate any breakfast! Needless to say when he found the one at about 2 in the afternoon I was very happy. And hungry. But I was also feeling something else, jealousy, sadness, I don't know. I attributed it to the hunger. We hopped on over to the Steak n Shake across the street and I ate my food, smiling and talking about what a great apt he had found, and at such a great price too. Then it hit me. I had said earlier to him "You're so lucky, you get to live alone." He's paying for an apartment what I pay to live with 3 other roommates! I hate my college town. It's small and boring. Every apartment price is jacked up so I cant truly afford to live alone. I have another year of college left and I hope it flies by so fast. I have other things to do with my life. I feel trapped in a box. For now, I will wistfully look around his apartment, longing to have a place of my own. To decorate, to come home to and it will be just like I left it.

I'm in school to be a social worker, but I would love to also be an interior designer, judge or nail technician. I'm all over the place. Maybe I'll get to do these things in my lifetime. For now, I'm just ready to graduate!

Making Carts

I have a hobby known as making carts. Making carts? What is that you say? Well when I'm bored at work, home or anyplace I can get wireless, I will make an online shopping cart at some of my favorite stores. I will fill it full of things I want. Then I will not buy it. Yes, I will not buy it. I consider it the less rude version of filling my cart full of things at Wal-Mart and walking out or messing up that perfectly folded stack of tank tops at Old Navy. Those salespeople with the headsets on can give you a fierce evil eye over that.

No but really, I love to shop. But this college senior doesn't have the budget to do so. So making carts makes me happy. For now. They say I don't have a problem. I believe them. It's simply practice. Practice for when I get more money.

An ironic thing though is, when I get extra money my mind goes completely blank. I'm like, "OMG, I calculated all this months expenses and I have extra money left over! What to do?! Wait...let me add that up again. Yes, I really do have extra money! What to do?!" See, I had to do that double calculation because one month I thought I was really rolling in the dough but really I had forgot to pay the T-Mobile bill. Luckily, I hadn't spent too much money before I caught the mistake. Anyway, like I said, my mind goes completely blank and I don't know what to buy. I need to make a dream journal or a notebook for all my wishes. That would help. I would love to read that 10 years from now...

Under Pressure...I Caved

4th of July weekend, I took a trip home. My parents came and picked me up (yes) because my car is not working right now (that's another story). I got home late Friday night and chit chatted with my parents for a little while and then fell into bed. I was tired. The next day I was getting ready for a barbecue (that I didn't plan for) and was trying to manage my 2 months post relaxed hair. The two textures were driving me crazy but I was enduring. My mom comes in the bathroom and exclaims, "Why didn't you tell me you hair was like that? I could have put a perm on your hair!"What? My hair is like that? What is that? I asked her, "Is there a problem with my natural hair, the hair I was born with? What God gave me?" She responds slowly, "Well uh, no. It's just that it doesn't have a style. It would look better if you had a natural look."

A look? Do you even know what you're saying mom? Yes I understand that my hair looks awkward. I'm in a transitioning phase. There are two textures of hair on my head! I have yet to find someone who can do braids or another style that I want to help blend the textures. But do you of all people have to say negative things about that?

Saturday night, out of sheer frustration, I let her relax my hair. So she would stop talking about it. So my family would shut up and stop looking at me strange. So they could stop saying that if I didn't put a perm on my hair, my hair would get nappy and fall out. (Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out...) I hated every minute of it and the next day in church I kept thinking to myself that I felt very fake. Not truly who I was with this relaxed hair. I caved under pressure from the relentless sources of aggravation. I'm not proud of that at all. Hopefully, that will be my last relaxer. And if its not, then that should be my decision. Not because of anyone else and what they think about my hair. Like MJB says, "Just take me as I am or have nothing at all." I'm striving towards making this my mantra more and more everyday.

My Weekend :(

Well, this weekend turned out not so great. Nothing like I expected. Here was my plan. On Friday night, I was so excited about trying out a new hairstyle. I was going to do a twist out since I'm trying to not to get a perm and hopefully transitioning. So to better blend the two textures of relaxed and natural hair, I wanted to do a twist out. So I washed and conditioned my hair with Garnier Length and Strength (not a huge fan of that apple smell but I bought kind of big bottles of the stuff on sale) and dried my hair. Then I wet my hair with my homemade leave in conditioner ( Neutrogena Triple Moisture Conditioner and water in a spray bottle) and started twisting sections of my hair. When I realized they kept coming unraveled, I used my Elasta QP Glaze to "set" them. Then I wrapped my hair up and went to sleep,hoping for great results in the morning.
Now I realize that my hair is thin and fairly short so I hoped this would boost the volume. Wrong. When I unwrapped my hair in the morning and started to untwist the sections it was even shorter and all over the place. Not even styleable. It looked crazy, and not that I mind crazy; it was just that I was going for a kind of free-spirit, loose curl, pretty kind of crazy. If that even makes sense. I tried putting a headband on it but still...no bueno. So I used the dreaded flat iron to try and make it look halfway decent. I could probably rant on and on about my hair, but eh, lets move on to more disasters this weekend.

On Saturday me and boyfriend were headed to our hometown so I could visit my parents for Fathers Day, he could give his dad a present as well and he also visited his sister. Everything went okay all day. My dad loved his gift! I caught the semi-annual sale at Victoria's Secret and the bf got to go to one of his all time favorite stores, Best Buy. Until on the way home, at about 10 at night, a coyote ran across the highway right in front of his car. It happened so fast, he didn't even have time to to stop, much less react. A coyote. Only in Texas, I swear. Anyway, long story short. Called the insurance company, a nice policeman showed up while we waited on a tow truck (more money out of the pocket), and we finally got home. The fan is hanging out of his car which caused it to get hot really fast when we tried to get back on the road, hence the tow truck. I'm praying that his car can get fixed fast because he doesn't need this plus all the other expenses in his life right about now.

I never want to stand on the side of the freeway at 11 pm in the middle of nowhere again.

Stupid, arrogant people

I was at work today, doing my job and I answered the phone (because you never expect for a buffoon to be on the other end).The conversation that ensued ticked me off. Went a little something like this:
me: College of Business Advising, This is Lachelle, How can I help you?
him: Yeah, can I be transferred to Mary's(not her real name) voicemail
me: And may I ask who's calling?
him: William (lets use a fake last name for him...say Bozo)
me: And this is in regards to?
him: Well I want to get into a full management class...rambles on, blah blah blah...
me: Well, um, Mary wont be able to get you into a full mgmt class...
him: (frantically shouted like the true idiot he is) LOOK! CAN YOU JUST TRANSFER ME TO MARY'S VOICEMAIL!!!

That's when I hit the transfer button with a quickness because God only knows what I would have said to that man. He wouldn't accept what I had to say because I was just a simple receptionist right? Well my boss said the same thing to him, that she wouldn't be able to put him into the class and he would have to check with their department. The thing that irritates me is that, that's what I said! Ugh. People seem not to believe or respect what I say until I bring out someone who has a title. Now its the truth because it didn't come out of my mouth.

So here's what I wish for you William:

• I hope you don't get into that full MGMT class
• I hope its the only class you need to finish your degree and you keep trying every semester to get into it and you never do.
• If you finish your degree, and some unfortunate employer happens to hire you, you pompous jerk , I hope you get fired. Off of some really tragic situation that blackballs you out of whatever industry you happen to disgrace.

math, the bane of my existence

I hate math. Always have, since elementary school. It always took the most effort and was the longest to work on. I could do everything else easily but I would run from math. Imagine my horror when I got to college and realized I would have to take some kind of college level math course to get out of the place with a degree. Fine, I would pick a major that requires little to no math at all. Social Work. I thought I was free at last. But apparently social work wants to become a more evidence-based, empirical profession with research and numbers. Fine, I can handle one math class. Besides its required in the university core anyway.

Fast forward to summer 09. I'm a year (2 semesters) away from getting my degree and there is nowhere to run from math. It's now or never. It was pure hell getting into this elementary statistics class at a local community college ( I tried 3 different ones!) and I had to deal with placement tests, rude, incompetent, forgetful staff and transcripts at the registrars office. BUT, I finally got in an online class with the help of GOD, because God only knows what I would have done/said to those people had I had to drive an hour to make them put me in that class.

So I'm doing my first, hopefully last college level math course of my life. Last night, I had a nightmare that I failed with a D, just shy of the C grade I need for it to count towards my degree. I woke up with a sense of dread but decided that was not going to happen to me. So tonight after almost 2 hours of studying for the midterm, I feel I have a much better grip on the material. I'm actually sitting at an A average so far with all the homework and assignments I've done. I plan on keeping it that way. My boyfriend gave me some good encouragement earlier, he said "If you can conquer math, you can conquer anything."
I believe him.