http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZmtSq1jzPy4 - skillet “last night”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wgiJkrAL9K4 - skillet “whispers in the dark”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EvGmJcRiRVc - skillet “collide”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LA8hXbeWJ1w - skillet “cycle down”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iw6YhwLpqaM - pillar “let it out”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-znBkqvAIsY&NR=1 - pillar “simply”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=J2LCvCBaqVg - sanctus real “i’m not alright”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DGrD3ECzqAg - evanescence “lithium”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yZIummTz9mM - linkin park “leave out all the rest”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tczk93mKNx8 - linkin park “somewhere i belong”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7ezSGqbuo0g - linkin park “breaking the habit”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bax8FqBECd0 - linkin park “in the end”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9xw0UrML-fg - yellowcard “way away”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d1xJR8RTZCU - good charlotte “hold on” (you can not click on every other song as long as you watch this video)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ma4OXkEriY&feature=related - good charlotte “all black”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fzYSfGXlSJ8 - good charlotte “we believe”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4HIdmegPTWo&feature=related - good charlotte “wounded”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mITOSPUd-7o&feature=related - the used “all that i’ve got”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gyVkJtmdhB0 - seventh day slumber “caroline”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yxvgsJJednw - casting crowns “east to west”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HUtCV2tvmeA&feature=related - casting crowns “voice of truth”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tLxC_tYhFxs&feature=related - david crowder band “wholly yours”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rcD8g1NJR8U - three days grace “pain”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VuWW9H68T0M - three days grace “animal i have become”
“The Wright Brothers could not invent the airplane without having the faith thah humans could fly. But the creative process requires imagination as well as faith. To stop war, we must first imagine peace. To eliminate poverty, we must imagine abundance. To paint a masterpiece, we must imagine beauty. To change, to make a fresh start and to live up to our highest, fullest potential, we must not only imagine a better future for ourselves, but imagine it over and over at each step of the way, knowing that the sun still exists even when it is night.” ~ Naomi Hoshino Horii (emphasis added by me)
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
“You cannot kill what’s not your creation, this is the art of breaking.” ~ Thousand Foot Krutch
“Break the bowl — instead of regret, fall back into the potter’s hands and be reborn.” ~ Saskia Madding
“Falling” (Spirits and Ghosts, 2000) {from Charles DeLint’s Spirits in the Wires}
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness—Jeremiah 31:2
I will lift my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.—-Psalm 121:1-3
…I will never leave you or forsake you—-Hebrews 13:5
Our hearts ache, but we always have joy—-2 Corinthians 6:10
Just a few more things, my favorite book of the Bible and probably the one I look to most often when I’m struggling is Job. My favorite bands and the ones whose CD’s I pop in when I’m in need of some comfort are Linkin Park, Pillar, Yellowcard, Good Charlotte and Skillet. And that’s about all I feel the need to add to this one, if anyone would like an explanation as to why a certain song helped me…just ask.
I just want to let you all know that this is the end of these posts, it is only the beginning of my story, my life and I will put up at least one more post with links to songs as well as some poems and scriptures that help me hang on. But for now this will be the last thing I post about my struggle.
The summer I spent in the SD was actually pretty good. I had a job I loved; it allowed me to meet people from every state and several countries too and I just had fun being there. However things, as usual in life, weren’t all good. I had moved back in with my parents and discovered that it wasn’t a good idea to move back home once you had left. My parentals agreed. Part of the issue was acerbated by the fact that my best friend (we’ll call her M) from high-school had also moved to the SD and had gotten a job in the same town as me and was now living with me and my parentals. I found myself trying to deal with not having my walls anymore, living under my parents’ roof again and attempting to have a fun summer with M. It was difficult, to say the least. Not to mention the fact that I felt like instead of being friends I was spending most of my time trying to help M solve her problems. I felt more like her counselor than her friend and I began to tire of being treated like a second-rate person. Well when August hit we moved to a different town in the SD to start school (this eased pretty much all the tension between the parentals and me) and found apartments right next to each other. I lived by myself and M lived with her fiancé whom I had not previously met. I knew about him and he made me uncomfortable. M had broken up with him previous to the summer because he had threatened her. Well apparently (even though she was dating some other guy all summer) over the summer they had patched things up and gotten engaged. And although this bothered me I decided that since she was my friend and was in love with him I would give him the benefit of the doubt and try to get to know him. And I did try. As much as either of them let me; you see even though I lived right next door to her we didn’t spend a whole lot of time together. I tried and tried and tried to get her and him to go and hang out with me and do things together but as much as I tried about half the time we’d wind up sitting in their apartment with me watching them play W.O.W. It wasn’t all bad, she…well she was a friend, sort of and I did have some fun times with the two of them. But they were few and far between. Most of the time I’d sit and watch them play a computer game I hated (and didn’t hide that hatred) or I’d be “counseling” M. The most hurtful part of all of this was that every time M came over to talk to me about how tight her finances were or how rough her classes were going she’d pretty much skate right past my problems. I couldn’t get a job. It seemed like no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried no one would hire me. I turned in applications, I interviewed, I went to things on campus to help me improve my resume and interviewing skills, I tried to present myself confidently and talked myself up every time saying that this would be the job, I’d get it this time. And still no one would hire me. Add to that the stress of just having moved and trying to do well in my classes plus adjusting to a new place and trying to keep in touch with friends from CO and I was a wreck. I was depressed, broke (literally no money), suffering from insomnia and failing my classes not to mention losing the only friend I’d managed to keep for more than four years. It was a very dark time. I remember sitting in front of the television at two in the morning just staring at the images on the screen and hoping that (to quote a song) “…tomorrow something magical happens…” Well no magic to report, just grace. Looking back on those months I honestly have no idea how I didn’t break but I didn’t. I held on, even when I doubted that I could I’d look to God and He’d give me strength. There were bright spots, I absolutely loved living closer to my parents and spending time with them especially since my bro was in HI or out to sea plus I wrote…a lot. In fact when I wasn’t crying or trying to figure out why this one didn’t hire me or throwing stuff at the walls because my best friend was non-existent or staring at the TV, I’d write and write and write and write and write. It was like a drug but without the threat of death. When I wrote or, incidentally popped in a favorite movie or opened a beloved book, I was free. I didn’t have to worry about tomorrow’s interview or whether M would talk to me today or whether I’d be able to sleep tonight…it was like music, only better because I could be anyone I wanted to be. It may sound like I used my writing to escape my problems, well I did but that doesn’t mean that I avoided them. After every interview and consequent rejection I’d call my madre and tell her what happened and ask her for tips. Now before purple dragon lady (aka madre) raises her voice, I didn’t always listen to her at the time and I’d argue with her but, despite what she may believe, I took her advice and applied it. And granted I probably, no make that definitely, could’ve tried harder to follow-up and I could’ve applied for more jobs but I tried. I really, really, really did. And then there was the insomnia. I had never suffered sleeplessness before and that nearly broke me. It took two months of erratic or non-existent sleep before I finally did something about it. The final straw was sometime in December it was around 4 in the morning, I’d been trying since probably October to get my sleep cycle back on track, and I broke down. I just started crying and I remember yelling out “I’ve had everything else taken away and now I can’t even escape to my dreams.” I went to the doctor the next day and got a prescription for sleeping pills. It helped, but I still didn’t have a job, didn’t have any money, didn’t have a friend and was struggling. But I held on. I kept telling myself that God had something really amazing planned for me and that it would happen, I just had to be patient and hang on. My madre kept telling me “Something will break,” the first time she told me I almost responded with “You mean besides me?” But I didn’t, and I listened and every time she said it I responded with a “Yeah.” It may not have always been wholehearted but the more I agreed with her the more I believed it. My parentals were rocks during all of this, they had no problem helping me out, they encouraged me and they were {mostlyJ} ok with me calling them all the time and chatting with me. So I hung on and I hung on, I cried, I got angry, I slept too much, I slept too little, I wrote a lot, I saw no sunshine but I hung on. I know it seems like I’m belaboring all of this but this was a turning point in my life, I changed. After seven months I finally got a job. I cried when I learned they had hired me. I moved to another (better) job about two months later, I stood up to M and told her everything I had held back, I got my sleep schedule back, I was still struggling with classes but that’ll change, my bro was safely back on land and had even managed to send me a b-day card while he was underway, I reached out again to my girls in CO whom I had lost touch with, my madre’s doc had discovered what was ailing madre (she had been experiencing numbness and loss of movement on her right side for several months), in short things were getting better. But, like anything else it’s a process. I know without a doubt that I’ll go through many more trying, troubling times, things will happen to me and the people I love, I’ll experience rejection from jobs (and publishers) many more times, the sun will fall behind the clouds, I’ll begin to doubt if I can make it to the next day, I will likely lose sleep, but I know that no matter what happens from now on I will be able to hang on through it all. To quote a favorite movie of mine (The Count of Monte Cristo) “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you…is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout….Do your worst, for I will do mine!” I will do mine. My parents, my bro, my CO friends, my best friend and my faith that God will never abandon me have made me. I am not the same girl I was in middle school, I am no longer afraid to showcase the intelligence I have, I will chase my dreams until one of two things happen, I achieve them or God gives me passion for something else and I WILL SHOUT INTO THE STORMS OF LIFE, BRING IT ON, I’M NOT AFRAID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
