Happy Birthday To Me!!

So I am now 20 years old. Its not really all that different than being 19 but I am not a teenager anymore so that is weird. It is a little weird not being a teenager considering that I have been one for 6 years.

I got to go to dinner at Carabba's for dinner tonight and tomorrow I get to go to Outback...yay me!! I got a external hard drive so that I can back up my computer so that if (prays to God not) my computer's hard drive fails again or something else happens to it I can have all of my stuff on a seperate hard drive. And I can have a crazy amount of pictures on it and music! I got a pair of Toms shoes and a new Haiti bag and a Haiti shirt. So good times. And my grandma is making me a chocolate cake with cool whip frosting and strawberries...my favorite!

So I had a good and am having/had a good birthday!

Happy Birthday To Me, Happy Birthday To Me!!

Mothers

Why is a person such as a mother so important on the life of a child? That is an excellent question considering that 9 times out of 10 they seem to be a problem. They get in the way of what you want to do and what you think you should do. They tell you things like clean your room and get your crap out of the living room or get your crap out of the middle of the floor. You do it but you are thinking "One of these days...I'm not sure but one of these days!" and that is as far as you ever get because no matter how old you get your mother can still beat you in a fight. No matter how big you may get and how small she may stay...you will lose.

I realize that we take mothers for granted. I think that traveling around Haiti has made me see that. You may say that I am wrong and that fathers are taken for granted and they are but that is not what I am talking about. Your mother is the one that cares for you and makes sure that you are up in the morning and throws a fit when your hair bow won't stay in your hair at the age of 3 and they blog about the fact that you now have a boyfriend (what do you mean your mother's never done that last one? That's not a normal thing??). She is also the one that makes sure you are fed at the right times and the one that makes sure you are continuing to eat once you leave for college. She is the one that has mini meltdowns when she can't talk to you for two months because your computer is broken. In Haiti I am not sure that mothers do any of that. They birth you and then form there I think that you might be on your own. There are a few that keep up with you for the rest of your life and try to do there best to raise you with what they have but the reality is that most of the mothers are single and there is no one else to take care of the kids so they are left at home alone or with a brother or sister while mom goes out to make money. Family is not a big deal in Haiti. You have relatives but not family like we think of it. We have sit down dinners and we talk and we all live together as a family. Not so much in Haiti. You mom and your sister may live here while you dad and your two brothers live there and then you live up over there. We all live together. Mom, Dad, brothers and sisters.

I don't think that I realized how much I took my mother for granted until she wasn't here last year for my birthday. That was the first time she hadn't been around for my birthday in 18 years. She had been there for every single one. I didn't get to talk to her for maybe more than five minutes, maybe. Its not that I didn't appreciate all that she did for me all the time it was just that I never realized how much I really loved my mother and how much I missed her and how much she really meant to me.

With my birthday being in 2 days I am without my mother again. And I swear if Skype messes up on Tuesday there are going to be some serious problems and I might have to punch something.

Happy Early Birthday to ME!!!

Making My Mother Cry

So normally this has bad connotations. When you make your mother cry, you normally have done something really bad. Well that is not so with my mother. She doesn't cry when you do something really bad, she gets angry. But that is not what I am talking about...no need to go there. My mother seems to cry about the dumbest things. She cries when you graduate form high school, she cries when she you get her a sappy card, she cries when she misses you play softball...I know. Needless to say she cries a lot. But the good part about that is that you know when you got her a good gift. 

It is really funny when I make my mother cry (not that its funny to watch her cry...falling is another story...another inherited trait, form my mother...). I should expect it when I get her presents or do something that is sappy or sentimental but I don't. So everytime I make her cry its more like oh brother. 

I am not sure why she randomly cries some days but I think that I have inherited this...thing. I seem to cry a lot lately. I cry when I think about Haiti...normal. I have started to cry about random things like sappy cards...I never cry about sappy cards. Yeah...never say never. I learned that a long time ago but I didn't think that rule applied to turning into my mother. It apparently does. Don't get me wrong, I would love to be everything that my mother is...but the fact that I am turning into my mother is really funny to me. 

Anyway...Happy Belated Mothers Day my wonderful crying mother...haha!

What its like to have your iPod mock you

So if you know me at all you would know that I really don't miss people. But when I do miss people say like my mom I really miss them. I don't normally miss my mom all the time but I have my days. I get a tad pitiful and sad. Its like I am 5 again and my mom is at work and not with me but I am going to be 20 soon and she is in Haiti...anyway today was one of those days but I realized that I am going to miss Scott a lot. I hate this. When I miss someone I want nothing more than to be with them and just see their face. But I can't and that makes me sad and pitiful. My iPod likes to point out this fact or atleast while I was driving down to ATL it did. It played song after song that made me think about Scott and how much I am going to miss him this summer and I kept looking at it and saying REALLY! It was bad, I think that it is going to be banned from playing music for awhile. Then to top it all off after it was done mocking the fact that I am going to miss Scott it began to mock the fact that I am going to miss all of my other friends too...needless to say my iPod and I are not on speaking terms right now.

Lamou vire tet

Love turns your head around

Only love could provoke such a statement like this one. What else could turn your head around? Noise? You look to see where the noise came form or what made the noise but I think that this goes deeper than that. It says turn your head around not just turn your head. Love can pull you out of all sorts of things. Love can conquer fear and hate. Inconvience and anger. Love changes the way that you see and the way that you think.

Love can show an orphan the world before them. That there is more to life than rejection and abandonment. Love can teach a mother how to care for her children in a way that she never understood. It can also show her that those that took the time to teach her this new way of caring, love her more than she could imagine. In turn that woman can turn the teachers head around and give her or show her what her purpose in life really, truly is. Giving her the tools in life to change another woman's or orphan's life.

Love is not always what we think that it is. It could be a random act of kindness performed on the street by a passing stranger. Especially when they don't think that anyone, let alone you, will stop to help them. It could also be a photographer taking a picture of a boy in the street and then, being so moved by the sight of him that, she goes back home and tells the story, his story, to everyone she knows or sees. She may not even know the boys name or see him again but she has his picture and she can show them because that boy in the street turned her head around.

I think that turning your head around has more to do with the way you think and changing the way that you think. It's a Haitian saying so that could be completely wrong. Anyway thats what I think. Saying that love is the thing that turns your head around makes sense, considering that love is a very powerful emotion. It's [love] one of those things that you have to choose to do. The choice is what gives it its power becasue you have the other choice to walk away from it. When you choose love, you have to change the way that you have been thinking. Being in love or loving something and being negative and negative thinking normally don't go together. I say that but again I could be totally wrong. But I don't think that I am. Love is a positive emotion. When you are in love you feel better about yourself and the things around you. The day is better and nothing could gop wrong. Compared to when you and love really aren't on speaking terms and you hate the way that you look and it seems to rain all the time. Do you see what I mean about the positve thing?

Love however is not an easy emotion to deal or to get along with. It tends to break your heart and if that wasn't bad enough it feels the need to rip it [your heart] out of your chest and run a dagger through it and twist. But your heart doesn't just break when you fall out of or lose love. It breaks [your heart] when you see a mother that is not able to feed her children. When you see a boy on the street that is sent out into a busy street to beg for money just to have someone meaner and bigger than he is take it away from him and then send him back out. It breaks when you have to teach a fifteen year old girl basic kindergarten principles becasue people thought that her time would be better spent cleaning up after them. Indeed lamou vire tet. Turns it around so far that you can't think straight and all you want is for those things to be fixed so they won't cry anymore. But you can't and your heart shatters again and again and again and again and each time it shatters it hurts more and more and more and it doesn't help that love is doing the shattering either. How do you stop that? I can't tell you. I can't stop it. Indeed love turns your head around and I can't stop it.

Reflections?

As the semester draws to a close I have some time to reflect. On what...that is an excellent question. So much has happened. I have done well in my classes which is always good. Normally I come up with a sarcastic list of what I have figured out or learned but there are not many things that I have learned or that I remember learning...

New developments in my life include such things as I am about halfway finished with college, I am going to be turning 20 and I have a boyfriend. I would like to reflect on that last for a second (hahahaha). I haven't had a boyfriend in awhile. It has been at least three years, which is not surprising with my history with guys. I tend to pick the jerks, which is putting it nicely. But Scott is different. He is wonderful actually. He is definitely not the normal everyday guy that I pick. He is really great. He really is great and I like him a lot. There is a lot more said in those statements than you may think. I don't want to say much more about it on here but I just thought that those of you that read and keep up with me would like to know. I am not really sure why I don't want to say more about it on here but I am very happy and maybe there are some other feelings that I am not fully aware of yet...anyway I am going to be 20! No longer a teenager! My mother would like to ignore this fact. I told her that if she chooses to do so it will come as a great shock to her when I turn 21. She said no. She will just ignore that one as well...ok. College is just another word for school. So not much to say there. School is school.

Life in general has been good. I am happy, truly happy, where I am at . which has not been true for a long time. But as they say "Lamou vire tet" (for those of you that read creole...for the rest of you have fun translating...) But it really does. (the translation may need some help because it is not literal...)

Range

I never realized before how dynamic emotions can be. I used to hide them deep down somewhere and then when they were called upon, they were faked. Never the real ones. Showing those you can get hurt. I somehow decided, one day, that I was not going to have emotions or at least not real ones. Getting out of that habit is hard. When it is well practiced it is easy to fall back into. Especially with the people that have hurt you but that you are required to interact with. I was guilty of faking my emotions last month. Its a safety net, a comfort zone. Not one I am proud of but its there. Learning how to have real emotions again has been hard. It is only something that has come about in the last year or so. I have been practicing real emotion. I fear that I am faking it sometimes though. New situations, I fear I am faking it. I am sure that I am not though, but am I? I think that this is real and I pray that this is real. But old habits die hard. Harder than one might think. God has to remind me that my emotions are real because he is real in my life. I am not faking that. I have learned, through God, that my emotions are not fake. New situations, not meant to hurt you. Meant to help me grow. Meant to help me change in a good way. Not meant to hurt me, not meant to fake. I fear that I am though. I know I am not though. Statements that can't be true at the same time but somehow are. Right now.

God reminds me that this all is a learning experience, this life. He reminds me everyday. He has to. I am not good with learning, when change and the unknown is involved. I really don't like the unknown. The known is safe and well known. But the unknown becomes known so I have to be willing to learn. This learning experience called life should be a dynamic and emotional adventure not just one that I sit by and pretend that I is emotional. I don't want to pretend. I don't want to fake it anymore.

I have these emotions for a reason and they are wonderful. I have learned that much. God keep me in check with my emotions and help me not to fake it.

(I am getting a tad to introspective for myself and I find that annoying....so this is a good place to stop....)