So long, fare well.

From a small age I have been a lover of the water. I should have been born a fish! I always loved The Little Mermaid. I used to pretend to be a mermaid at the pool...I need some gills man...

As I grew older I joined the swim team at my nieghborhood pool and I loved all of it! I've always enjoyed watching meets and seeing what times people get. Soooo excting! :) My favorite events in the Olympics are the swimming. It's so cool to see the other people that love the water and to be totally jealous at their amazing skills. It's something I could never do but totally wish I could!

A hero of mine was one of these swimmers. Everyone knows him. His name, is Michael Phelps. He is an amazing swimmer, but I seriously think it's gone to his head.

Dear Michael Phelps,

I kind of think you have become a douche. I don't know what happened to you... You are such a talented athlete and you have the world at your fingertips. I feel like you have thrown away a lot of opportunities because of your crass actions.

For example, it was very unsportsman-like for you and your fellow swimmates to walk into a foreign country with gas masks over your faces. It isn't funny. It's disrespectful. Have some class.

Also, you are a public figure. Yound kid lok up t you. Why would you do drugs?! You may not care, but little kis are impressionable, and if they think you think it's cool, so will they. Be smart. Use that brain of yours. I know the chlorine hasn't gone to your head.

Love, Ellen

Buuzzz....

Dear Blogging World that doesn't actually read my blog,

Sorry I've been awol for the past ten days. I have had nothing to say. At all. All I've been doing is working and studying and studying and working. Iiiii don't even know what to say because there has been nothing cool EXCEPT that my :)

School has been stressful- two midterms yesterday which kept me at the library Wednesday from 2 p.m.-12:30 a.m. Long. Ass. Day. I am kind of crushing on this guy from two of my classes. But I don't want to talk about it. It'll jinx it.

My car decided to start making a new noise. I had Mick the car guy (that's the nickname Denise and I have for him...) look at it today. It's leaking power steering fluid. Location of leak: unknown. I love you and your quirkiness too, Carlise.

So the baby. His name is Odin Kevin Potter. The name was picked out long ago, so no it was not drug induced...I met him yesterday and he is a little nugget of cuteness. I just fell in love with his little wrinkly nose! He has that most amazing new baby smell- it's better than new car smell. I love that smell. (I am NOT creepy!...ok, maybe a little) I can't wait to just smooch his little face again. AHhhhh! Baby. :)

Here is me and the little guy...



And him and his cuteness...



Don't you love him?! I do!!!

A Blah Blah Blah...

I feel like I have basically had nothing, and I mean nothing, to blog about in the past couple of weeks. Life has just been going on. Nothing exciting has really been happening at all and I feel like blogging about my nothing-ness is rather pointless. I guess I shall continue with my 30 Days of Truth, even though the next few are kind of MEH topics. The next one is a letter to a band that has gotten you through a really rough day. I don't know if I really have a favorite band. I just love music. It lifts my soul. I love to sing, though usually when alone in my car. If I had to choose I think I would pick Rise Against. They are just inspiring. So...letter time.

Dear Rise Against,

You are an awesome band. I love listening to your music no matter what mood I am in. When I am happy, your music is fun to rock out to. When I am sad or angry, your lyrics lift me up and make me feel better. Your songs and your sound are just great and I thank you!

Geneva!

So in less than three months I will be writing from my new locale of Geneva, Switzerland. I'll be sharing my bloggy thoughts about getting an espresso and running to my classes with the Alps in the background. (Ok, I seriously have a hard enough concentrating here with stuff outside the window. What the HELL am I going to do there?!) I'll be writing about how exciting it is to be able to hop on a train on a whim and go to Amsterdam for the weekend and walking around town in my wooden clogs (yes, I will be buying those!).

The process of getting there is a bit daunting though...by the end of this week I have to have my cover letter and resume ready to turn in to apply for various interning opportunities as well as have a bunch of scholarship stuff turned it. It's all too much and my head is a-buzz.

I've been looking forward to this trip for SSSOOOOooooooo long! I can't wait for all of those awesome experiences. And I truly believe it's going to help get me over the last of my depression. (It's my own Eat, Pray, Love!--but more than likely without the love part. Just lots of eating and praying--so much for losing 30 pounds this year! haha!) I cannot wait for that freeing feeling.

I'm scared though. I'm scared of leaving and going somewhere by myself. There will be other students there from Kent but I won't know most of them. My friend, Liz, was supposed to go with me but she has decided to push her trip back a semester...that bums me out a lot too. I was really looking forward to this trip with her. We were gonna have a lot of fun. She's still knitting me a scarf and some gloves to keep me warm, so that's cool. HA!

I'm really afraid of how much I'm going to miss people. I have such a great support system here. Without my mom and my friends I would not be doing as decent as I am. I would be totally lost without them and being about 4,000 miles away scares the BEGEEZUS out of me. I'm such a home-body. I sobbed every day when I went to sleep away camp. My mom told me the camp called and asked if she wanted to come and get me. (She said no...thanks for letting me suffer, ma!) I know I can do this, it's just hard to think about and makes my stomach turn from nerves.

I can do this. I can do this. AHHHHH!!!!!

Happy Monday!

Every fifteen seconds...

Did you know that October is Domestic Violence awareness month? Well, now you do.

Domestic violence is a huge problem around the world and in the past 20 years in America, it has been growing at a rapid pace. It can have devastating physical and emotional effects on women, children and families. (And yes, man can be domestically abused as well, it's just less common and less focused on. Sad, but true. It is the same sad way for rapes. Men just don't get acknowledged for these hateful crimes, but they experience them as well.)It has been reported that 2 out of 3 women in America have been attacked by a family member or some other acquaintance.

What exactly is domestic violence? Well, it's an abuse committed by a close family relation (i.e.- husband/wife, fiancee, boy/girlfriend, etc.) It is estimated that an act of domestic violence occurs every fifteen seconds in the U.S., which means about 2.5 million people a year on average.

In 1994 the U.S. Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (WAVA). This directed jurisdiction to five full faith and credit to valid orders of protection issued by other jurisdictions. Simply, valid orders of protection must be enforced to protect domestic violence victims regardless of where the original irder was issued. This means that the victim is able to call upon law enforcement for protection from their abusers and the abuser will be prosecuted for their violations.

Domestic violence isn't just physical. It's emotional and can take many different varieties in this form.

Signs of a domestically abused person:

-fear of your partner
-does your partner humiliate, criticize, or yell at you?
-blame you for their behavior?
-hurt or threaten you?
-force you to have sex?
-threaten suicide if you leave?
-destroy your belongings?
-do they act controlling and possessive?
-constantly check up on you?

There are more warning signs here. Don't be afriad to stick up for yourself or for someone you love.

Do you or anyone you know suffer from domestic violence?? Know that you aren't alone and that there IS help out there for you and your loved ones. The National Hotline can be found here. There are also other ways that you can help and those resources can be found here.

Also, there are many shelters available for abused people and their families. You are not alone.

Stop the Violence.

Something you never get complimented on:

My eyes. I love my eyes and only my mom ever tells me they are pretty. And that's only every once in a while, but I am her "Brown Eyed Girl." Not that I'm fishing for compliments! It's the blogger thingy I swears it!

Nothing new to report...just life as we have known it. I started applying for study abroad scholarships today. They are due next Friday. Why the hell did I wait so long and why can't people just GIVE me money?! Grr....I hate being poor.

This week...

This has been an interesting week full of ups and downs. Really just downs with the regular old meh...I found out the old boyfriend has a new girlfriend and that has been hard to handle. I think because he said we could maybe get back together. I guess the emphasis was on the maybe and leaning toward the not...but this has pretty much pushed me to just let go of everything.

I sat on my couch the other night sobbing to my mother about how upset I was about everything he has done to me. He abandoned me on the day I needed him most and he stopped communicating with me. I was willing to talk about it and forgive him for it because that is how much I love him. I know that loving someone is letting things go, especially when you love them so much you would kill for them and die for them. I couldn't imagine my life without him while we were dating. And now that he isn't here it's not a life I like very much. He's now in the life of some other girl and that kills. The thought of them together kills more than anything though. I trusted him so much and knew I could rely on this guy for anything. Now I have such major trust issues again I don't know where to go from here. I feel really lonely and really empty.

There are certain people that, when I spend time with them, make me feel alive. But then I always feel like they are looking at me, waiting for me to break. I just can't take that anymore. I'm tired of people asking me what I've eaten today and that I need to gain some weight. It's not that I want to keep losing weight or that I don't want to eat. I love food. It's that my stomach no longer does. I eat and then about forty-five to sixty minutes later I'm in the bathroom...This hasn't been fun, why would I want it to continue?

I've been going to therapy and stuff and it helps. I love going and just talking because he has to listen to me because I'm paying for him to sit there and listen to me cry. I've been trying so hard not to talk about how I'm feeling anymore to my friends because I'm afraid of scaring them off. I know I get sick of hearing the same crap over and over again, even though I just keep listening, but I don't want people to get sick of me. I can't expect people to be like me and just sit and listen, no matter how redundant that person has become. That's just how I show people I love them. I'm a helper and a fixer. Anyway, my therapist told me to go see my family physician because I've been getting large, unexplained bruises on my legs for weeks. It started at the beginning of the summer, stopped, but they're back now. He thought maybe I was anemic, but I got the results of my blood work back and it came back normal. So now I have no idea...

So this whole depression thing really sucks. I just need to figure out where is came from because I know it started before my break up. I just wish I knew from where. So the digging is still going, I just hope I find it soon because I'm really sick of feeling this way. I sick of being so sad and not letting myself enjoy my life. That's really what I'm doing. I'm not enjoying anything. I don't know why. I used to have so much fun and now it's like going from one good thing and then waiting for time to slowly drag by until something else good comes by. I started taking some low dose medicine to help. I'm not really thrilled about it but hopefully it helps slow down my brain and helps me relax so I can figure everything out and start feeling better sooner.

I hope that soon I'll stop missing the guy who made me feel so amazing and happy. And I hope that soon I'll be able to make myself feel more amazing and happy than he ever did.

This will get better.