Last Semester...

my life got really out of my control. I was kind of just floating around in a lot of shitty situations, feeling pretty helpless. And I shut down. I am still a little shut down.

Here is where I am:
1. Sick. I can't eat without intense pain. I'm going under a lot of anesthesia and getting a lot of tests. and the only thing the doctors can tell me is that it is probably all due to stress and will calm down if I keep taking medicine and I'm patient. I hate this. I tried to believe what the world taught me: that emotions don't mean anything, I'm a girl and I'm overreacting. And now I'm getting proof that this isn't true. It's taking me a while to digest, maybe because my stomach is a wreck.

2. Not finished with my semester. I still have two classes to finish. I am sicker than I have ever been before so this isn't as easy as it sounds. Between crying, trying to find the laying down position that hurts the least, and sleeping it all off it is hard to find time to write papers about things like Mussolini. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. Except keep writing when I feel good. So far I have 2.5/6 papers done. Yikes.

3. Scholarship-less. Although I have submitted a pretty convincing appeal, and a couple of teachers have written on my behalf, I have no way of knowing if my scholarship is returning. I just know that I'm scared. By the way I totally cried when I read the teachers e-mails fighting for me. Those Trinity professors really have my back.

4. Lost. I am lost and missing almost everyone who reminds me that life has meaning. I miss my best friends at school. I miss my boyfriend. Not to say that I don't have Colorado people, because I do. It is just. Missing is hard.


Here is where I want to be:
I want to figure some things out. Like what I need to value most in life. If I'm going to change myself, or just get back on my feet and make the same mistakes. I need to figure out what I learned from this last semester. Because I'm still not sure. I just know maybe I let myself take too much crap. Maybe I shutdown too much. Maybe I didn't stand up for myself enough. But these are all things I have yet to figure out and this blog is already getting long so...

I'll leave you with this: I am seeking encouragement. I am seeking empowerment. I am seeking God. If you feel you can help with any of that, do not hesitate. Because right now I'm confused about how I'm going to survive life if I couldn't even get through sophomore year, but I know that is a little melodramatic.

Thanks if you made it this far.

Ready...

Spring is here!

Well friends. I am ready. I'm not quite sure for what but I feel like jumping out of my skin in anticipation. You know what that means... spring is here!

And I have a lot going on. Between catching up on classes (oops), finishing classes, getting sick, and OPUS... I don't have time for much else. 

But I am happy. Do you know why I am happy? I get to wear shorts. The sun is out. And things are turning green. If the world can wake itself up from its winter gloom, so my friends can I. 

Our room ever underwent some spring cleaning. If you know anything at all about Kaity and I you know our room will never look pristine.

Africa!

In other news I am going to apply for spring 2014 semester in KENYA. I am picking the application up after English class today. I am seriously excited about this opportunity. There are a couple of pros and cons. 

PRO: Living in Kenya for a semester would be boss. 

PRO: I would be able to get a new tattoo. I've always wanted an excuse to be attached to tasteful tribal patterns.  

PRO: I already bought a tribal top, no going back now.  

CON: I am really going to like my living situation next year and leaving them would suck. 

CON: I would have to get way better at blogging.

BUT SERIOUSLY GUYS, AFRICA!

I think that is all my updates. I'm going to go tend to some (MORE) OPUS labeling now. 

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Content.

My nerves have been of edge recently. I am highly paranoid and in a hyper intensive emotional state.
No, I'm not smoking the herbal, but I am happy.

 I am happy where I am. Not everything is good right now, but the important things are. So naturally I'm a nervous wreck. I can see myself gripping on to my reality so tightly that I am crushing it. I do not want this to happen! So I need to get a grip, and by a grip I mean a looser grip. Hmm. Just wanted to tell you I'm happy.

I think I am getting the hang of this whole relationship thing. I like having a boyfriend, and that is unusual. But he is kind of fantastic. So I'm lucky.


Short blog post. Here have some triangles!

This snow.

This snow has got my craving a break; its only Tuesday! I have two tests tomorrow, both are going to be hard in there own way. It is going to be weird to have a history test. I haven't studied for a test like that in ages. Last semester I had ALL projects and papers. My other test is a type test.

I have to be able to tell the difference between these types by only using a couple of random letters.

So wish me luck with that.

Mostly though I am just blogging to talk about my friend. He name is Brittany and I miss her.
I spent the afternoon with her, surviving the ghetto. I wish she could just move back in our room and we could hang out all the time. I mean I just miss her! She has my sense of humor, she is so nice to talk to and we just laugh a lot.

She made me start thinking about friends. It have friends in a lot of different places. Colorado, Nebraska, Estonia, Illinois, Indiana. I don't see some of them very much but when I do the time is golden, I wouldn't trade it for anything, and that is how I know I've found a good egg. And yesterday with my friend Brittany time was golden. We need to hang out more because we live in the same place at the same time and well, what are the chances of that!? I don't know we'll have to ask someone in statistics.

Thats all.

Oh my Blogger!

I am blogging two days in a row. I think I need to calm it down a little. I just cant. I wanted to tell ya'll a little bit about my break. Since school got out (well kind of I secretly am not done with my semester yet) I have done a whole lot... of nothing. But here are the big things I can report.

I cleaned my room. But Cassandra that sounds so boring. Well, it was but it took a good 10 hours of my break so I have to brag about it with before and after pictures of course.













I bound a book, then told every form of social media I belong to about it. Because I am proud of that craziness. The thing about my book is that is is the perfect size and weight. I just love to carry it around. I am a nerd. So be it. I even made it with water color paper so I can paint in it. Silly art majors




I Skyped with this kid a lot, because lets face it, I suck at not being with him.

I went to a poetry slam. Seriously how pretty are these lights?
Lets do this in our dorm room. Screw lights only at Christmas rules. Why do those rules even exist!?

I also did some laundry.


















So there you go folks! Add a lot of Netflix, a trip to the dentist, the Sims 3, and a bunch of zzzzzzzzzzz's and you have my winter break.

Its been nice doing nothing but I'm ready to get back to school. I miss people, my roomies especially.

I also overhauled my blog. Just take a moment to admire it, because I had to fight with HTML, Indesign and Photoshop all day yesterday.

BYE!

Feeling Stronger

If you are one of those people how have endlessly been telling me that they haven't seen me in a while: I'm sorry if I reacted rudely. Truth was I hadn't seen myself in a while either, hence my blog not seeing me in a while.

I guess that is weird phrasing"I haven't seen myself in a while either". It was true on 2 levels:
 1) I hadn't looked in the mirror in a while so on that level it was true. This was due to busyness. I'm sure I walked around looking like a dead zombie for a while.
 2) I hadn't felt myself in a while. Something in early November knocked me down in the dumps, I'm still not sure what it was. It had a strange effect on me. I became so unbearably sad, and life got out of my hands. Homework got harder, getting out of bed got harder, hell everything got harder. During this time I kept to myself and a couple other people. It was like my mind went absent took a really long inconvenient vacation. But it's coming back, I'm feeling better. 

So if I responded rudely to you It was probably out of frustration. I still don't know why this came and went, I still don't know if it will return. I'm hoping and praying like crazy that it doesn't come back.



During this time I developed a mantra that I repeated to myself when I needed to fight my slump. It went like this:

Do not run, Pray pray pray, Be here now

This mantra addressed in order all the things I would need to make myself do when I came across something it felt like I couldn't handle. Because the first thing I would do was run, this came via skipping classes, walking away (physically) from my homework or someone that was stressing me out. Then I needed to focus myself on letting God help me, because I was staying (which was hella' hard), and God has got so much more strength than me. And finally I would need to convince myself not to check out mentally, (i.e. pay attention in class, do the homework I was making myself sit in front of) and only because of the previous step was this possible.


I'm sorry for not being around, but life just got really hard for a while and taking care of myself was something I needed to concentrate on. I anticipate next semester to be much different.

I love you, I hope you'll take me back.

Miss Cassandra

Do I look as different as I feel?

Lately a lot of people have taken to calling me Miss Cassandra. I noticed it first with my friend Adam. I sent him an e-mail explaining somethings pertaining to dating. An e-mail which said caused him to gain respect for me. Ever since I have been Miss Cassandra. It just happened again with my friend Hart. I was talking to Hart about his life and how I know that there wasn't much I could tell him to make things better but I would do what I could to be there for him. And I became her again, Ms. Cassandra.

The thing is I am becoming a Ms. Cassandra. I've heard lots of people talk about how they didn't even notice they were growing up, but I feel it, and frankly its kind of painful. At the same time, I feel amazing; I am becoming someone strong. I am speaking my mind and spending time with God. I am become the Miss Cassandra that I've always known I wanted to be, but was to lazy or rebellious to become. I can pin point the day this started and the events along the way.

I know I don't look as strong as I feel. I need to life some weights.

Here is a slice of what I have been thinking about growing up lately.

I realize it is trivial to assign steps to growing up, this is a common theme I've been observing:
Realizing where you have been. Realizing where you are. Realizing where you want to be. Doing something about it. I think to realize where you want to be you have to realize where you are. I think to realize where you are you have to realize where you have been.

For a long time I have been stuck in the realizing where you are stage. I've known for so long where I was. I was well aware of the fact that I was doing a lot of things that were not glorifying God. I definitely knew where I had been because that was causing me to act like I was. I thought I had some sort of excuse for hanging around in those juvenile times for a while. I didn't want to move on, I wanted to rebel, I wanted to kick and scream.

Maybe I had good reason, maybe I just wasn't ready to move on. But I started to want to want to move on, which is in fact different than wanting to move on. Then that want to want turned into pure wanting. So I examined what I wanted my future to look like. Not too closely, because lets face it I like to ride life like roller coaster. So I didn't picture my job or my husband or anything like that, I more pictured the character I wanted to have. Devout Christian, caring, strong, encouraging, someone who lives life the right way, I could go on but I'll spare my blog readers from a terribly long post.

Anyway after reveling in where I was, I started taking steps. I turned back to God, found him waiting with open arms. I am running from my vices. I am thinking critically about the relationships I enter (an encouraging others to do the same). Today I told my my mom what I thought. I stood up for myself in a way I never have before and I thought, "Where the hell is this coming from!?"

Now I remember.
That was Miss Cassandra speaking.
And damn do I like her.