Karly.Ann.Love

Here’s to the people who want to know what I’m doing with my life – just as much, or possibly more, than I even want to know.

Here’s to all the people asking me if I have SET what I am going to major in.

Here’s to all the people that want to know when the heck I will actually be graduating.

This is for all of those that stick their nose in my business, only to ignore me after I tell ya whats up.

Shout out to all the people who make assumptions, then spread rumors about whats going on in MY LIFE.

This ones for all the people who think THEY know whats best for MY life.

Shout out to all the people stressing about my future.

Here’s to all the people telling me “this is just a phase”,  “you’re lost”, and my all time favorite, “you’re going to regret this”.

WOOOOOOO

My life is my life. Where and when did I ask you your thoughts on my life? And if I actually did, that was like 3 months ago and the time limit on that question was there in that moment. Not now, not tomorrow, or whenever else you decide I am “wrong” when it comes to my own life.

Yeah maybe I am lost? Or maybe I am just finding my way. My life is not your life, and my life will never look like your life. If you think I am crazy for changing my major 6 times, or wanting to minor in something, or transferring schools after 2 years then we, my friend, are not cut from the same loaf of bread.

Many people in our society put pressure on getting in and out of college as fast as we can. Put pressure on choosing the major that best works with your strengths and is actually realistic. And by “realistic” they mean; are you actually going to make a good enough income to have the biggest house, or the coolest car? Will your job allow you to make enough money to “be happy”. Yeah, thats not me. Thats not how I see it.

How I see it is that college truly is our time to “find ourselves”, just like all those cheesy movies and blogs say. This is where I put my strengths and weaknesses to the test. College is the time I get to move around, and change my major over and over again. This is the place that will impact some portion of my future, I mean this is where I decide what I will get a degree in, what subject my career will possibly be related to. This is where I create a starting point for my future.

And I will not settle.

I will not settle for safe.

I will not settle for a major that is “realistic”.

I will not settle for a major that doesn’t set my heart and mind on fire.

I will not settle and just shrug my shoulders about being in debt just so I can stay at the original University I started at.

I will not settle for any guy that doesn’t see my true worth just because I am supposed to be settling down soon, or some crap like that.

I will not settle for anything that I don’t feel is right for my life.

I will not settle for anything that is not true to me.

I will not settle just to make everyone around me feel comfortable, and worry free about my future.

I will not settle

And this is me asking ya’ll to STOP.

Stop trying to place seeds of doubt into my mind just because you don’t see eye to eye with what I am envisioning. Stop discouraging me to follow my passions and what makes me TRULY happy just because you think I will regret it in the future. Stop telling me to settle so that I will have a safe, realistic future.

Just stop telling me how to live my life and accept that I am entirely happy with where I am and the journey of getting there. To be honest, I am exactly where I want to be and I am in no hurry for this journey to end. I will arrive at my destination when it is my time to get there. So for now, chillax and enjoy this crazy ride with me my lovelies.

I have been contemplating making this post for months now. Three months to be exact. I don’t know why now, why in this moment I am deciding to write this but I believe it is time for me to lay it all out on the line and let everyone do what they please with it.

I am not going to sugar coat this. I am not going to write this post in a specific way or word it such that it will not offend anyone or make anyone feel uncomfortable. This topic is an uncomfortable topic. It is not one people want to talk about let alone even acknowledge, and that is the problem.

This topic is sexual assault.

This is the topic because this last May I was sexually assaulted by one of my guy best friends.

I can honestly say that at that time I had trusted him with my life,  I would have even taken a bullet for him if it came down to it. During my freshman year of college this particular guy was one of the main people I hung out with, and the amount of photos I have with him from that year is insane.

I know when people hear about sexual assault they immediately want to know how, but I am not going to get into gory details of what had happened that night because those details should not be important for you all to know, nor should it worry you. I strongly believe that the details are for whomever was assaulted and whomever they decided to share those details with.

Honestly, what frustrates me about the topic of sexual assault is that so many people believe they deserve to know those details. That them even knowing I was sexually assaulted gives them the authority to know such information about my life, about this haunting memory. Then other time people take this information and treat it as though it is a burden for them to know that it happened. They act as if I suddenly just ruined a portion of their life by confiding in them about this. I do not know how you would react if someone did such a thing to you, but I know for me that I take this as quite an insult. I am sorry that I am your friend and such a horrible thing happened to me. I am sorry that I have listened to hours of you complaining or crying or confessing your deepest worries to me, but at my time of need my shit is too much for you to handle. I am sorry that someone decided that my body was just an item for them to steal from me. I am sorry that I could not control if or if not this happened to me. I am sorry that you decided that this information is a burden for you to know. But really, I am not sorry whatsoever. 

I have known people in the past to learn about someone getting sexually assaulted and their immediate reaction went somewhere along the lines of, “What happened!? Did they really get sexually assaulted? Were they asking for it? You know by the way they were dressed, or the type of drink they were drinking..” And that kills me inside. It is unacceptable that those are the questions worrying someone first. Why aren’t we worried if that person is alright, or if they have a support system behind them? Why aren’t we worried if that person feels comfortable enough to report what had happened? Why aren’t we worried if the assaulter knows what he/she did was wrong and doesn’t do it to another person?

Recently, I found this post by Alice Brine and I believe that she sums up my stance quite clearly when people try to make the argument that what they were wearing and or drinking truly matters.

No means no. And if they are too drunk to make a sound decision, is is a no. If they aren’t awake to make a decision, it is a no. Here’s a little video that lightens the mood about this very serious topic, but it is clear as well. Because; Consent really is everything.

Now to take a turn to something more serious; How does it feel to be sexually assaulted by someone you once considered your best friend? Which you will find in the following post.

Now to take a turn to something more serious; How does it feel to be sexually assaulted by someone you once considered your best friend?

First things first I cannot speak for everyone, but this is the account of how I felt.

(This is where the no sugar-coating thing really comes in)

Immediately after it occurred I could not stop crying. Bawling. Crying so hard that I thought my organs were getting crushed slowly with every large inhale I was taking. In fact, all I wanted to do was scrape out my insides. All I wanted to do was escape the body I was in. I immediately jumped in the shower scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing myself. Hoping to was this filth I felt off of me. Then I physically started scratching myself because somewhere deep inside, my brain was yelling at me that I needed to escape, that I could escape.

An hour after it happened I felt absolutely empty. I felt nothing to be specific. I felt no emotion, nor could I force myself to show any emotion. I honestly couldn’t stop doing things either. I was cleaning and packing and fidgeting, I could not stop moving. I needed to do things so my mind would not wander back to what had happened. So that my mind would not think about all the horrible thoughts it had been thinking earlier.

I did not want to face what had happened to me.

That next day was the day I was moving back home for the summer. It was tough, tough, tough. Half of the drive I just sat in pure silence. The other half of the time I tried to rock out so hard, to bang my head to the music so much that maybe just maybe the memories of what had happened would cease to exist. Maybe they would slip out of my ear, or my brain would rattle so much and hit my skull just right that I would lose that memory. Maybe I would get lucky and forget everything that happened because at the moment that seemed like the best scenario.

You would think that being home would help. That being away from where the assault had happened would help. Let me tell you, it didn’t. That last summer I had sat in my room countless times on the phone with him, or skyping him. I have an entire wall of cork-board that I use to hang photos, and of course he was on there… more than once. He was haunting me. He was everywhere. He was in half of the memories I had from my freshman year and some of my sophomore year memories as well. We have many mutual friends, so whenever I would think of them I would think of him as well.

My thoughts were the worst. They were a broken record of negativity. I mean how would you feel if someone who once was your best friend betrayed you like that? How much worth would you place on yourself if this person that had meant so much to you thought so little of you that they invaded you, violated you with such little thought about it or about you. At that moment in time you meant nothing to them. You were just a body, just an item, just a means to an end. And out of all people, someone you trusted your life with, someone who had been your best friend. If THEY out of ALL people could not see your worth in that moment who the fuck will.

When I was home everything reminded me of him, reminded me of what had happened. So much so that I could not focus. All I thought about is how I needed new new new. I could not escape my own body so maybe I could escape anything that reminded me of him at home. I impulsively decided to redo my whole room and go through my whole wardrobe. I painted my walls white. A clean slate. I got a new bed spread, took down all my photos, rearranged my room, and bought new decorations. I got rid of 1/2 my wardrobe. Especially anything that I knew I wore around him, or a lot during my freshman year of college. Then I bought a new wardrobe. Pathetically, how I was feeling after him sexually assaulting me cost me hundreds of dollars. Hundreds. Just because I was trying to escape everything I was feeling.

I can admit that while this helped a little bit, it didn’t help much. I did not feel like doing anything. I did not want to do anything. My bed is where I wanted to be, craved to be. My blankets were my safe zone, they were protecting me from anyone and everyone.

For the longest time I felt as though I did not own my own body. It was not my own. My body had this strange feeling that my skin was not attached to me. My skin merely was levitating around my body, not quite there, but there enough for me to know that I was a prisoner of this strange feeling. It was there 24/7 for over a month.

Honestly the only thing that made me stop feeling such a way, the only reason I am picked up out of the ditch I was in is because I started focusing on making my body my own again. My fitness was my main focus. Then there was camp. Camp helped me realize that there is so much more to life than the bad things that happens to us. I know that is crazy to say that camp, where we got yelled at and smoked all the time. Where lack of sleep was a norm happened to be the place I finally realized that I was stronger than that. I was stronger than the situation I was forced into by this wretched human. That I was stronger than letting myself just hate him. That God had made me stronger than the chains that were surrounding me. I finally realized the chains were gone before I even knew it because of God. I cannot say that through this whole journey of my healing I made all the right decisions. There are moments I would like to take back, or think over through this whole thing. Moments of weakness I had while trying to regain my sense of self-ownership over my body, but thankfully through Gods grace I am learning to forgive myself and learn from these mistakes.

Today, talking about the situation still gives me quite a bit of anxiety. I no longer feel as though my skin is levitating, with the exception of my hands though this only occurs when the topic is brought up. I am in the process of forgiving this human. I am not, and cannot do it alone. Which is why I have seeked out a few amazing friends, and Gods word of course. I am not afraid to answer any questions that one might have about what has happened to me. And I am finally happy that I have finally built up the courage to get this horrible incident off of my chest. God Bless.

Have you ever realized that if you were to ask someone, “What do you want to be when you’re older?” most of them would answer with the career choice they had in mind even though that wasn’t even the question. Yet we all answer similarly because we have been brainwashed to answer that way from a young age. This is where we have gone wrong. This is why everyone is so obsessed with their jobs and when their next pay raise will be, but that is not what the question is asking.

What do you want to be when you’re older?

If you were to ask me this a couple weeks ago I probably would have answered it the same way, with the career choice I had in mind. Yet for some reason it just recently hit me that what you are striving to be is not the career choice you go to college for. One of the reasons I believe people are so quick to answer with a career choice is because our society is self obsessed with titles. I have often heard these following phrases:

“I am Mrs. ——— not Miss.”

“Call me doctor not professor because thats what I’ve earned.”

“I am ——— the executive director and producer”

Your title is not who you are. It is just what you do, so why are we trying to connect that to who we want to be. Is that as far as our hopes, dreams, and goals take us these days.

Who do you want to be?

Who do you want to be?

I’ve been thinking about this for an insane amount of time, and it just kept coming up. I kept being surrounded with people obsessing over their titles, and all the awards they have won, how many different things they have accomplished, and how overall they were “better” then the person they were talking to. But at the end of the day is that what you want people to know you as? The dude who had a doctorate and a bunch of awards? Or the woman who was married and also managed to be someones boss? Because that is not at all what I want to be known as or who I want to be.

I want to be a woman who knows how to make sacrifices for the ones she loves, but also knows not to sacrifice who she is. I want to be a mother that compliments their children on their brains and way they hold themselves, rather than on their looks and “talents.” I want to be a wonderful wife who never forgets that my marriage will benefit if I put God first before everything. I want to be one of the hardest workers possible, because if they are going to pay me I want to make sure I actually earn it.

I want to be known as a compassionate friend full of heart, a selfless servant for the one who made each and everyone one of us, and someone who is filled with love most of all.

Who do you want to be?

1:

“Hmmm… How do I reword this so it is 140 characters”

*Spends 30 minutes thinking of a caption for the Instagram photo they’re posting*

“Oh no I cannot post another laughing photo for at least 5 more posts”

“Is my outfit too basic?”

What has our world come too that we are more concerned with how we look online, or on the outside, and less concerned with how kindly we spoke to the grocery bagger in the store we just left. Or that we didn’t even take one single minute out of our day to hold the door open for the girl behind us because instead we were snapchatting our friend who we will probably see later that day.

Am I the only one that is disturbed with what our society is becoming? Am I the only one that would give up my phone for the rest of my life in exchange for my friends putting away their phones and actually spend quality time with me whenever we are together? I don’t know if I am over reacting, or “too sensitive”, but I honestly feel insulted when people would rather read something online than hold a conversation with me. The person in the same room as them. Who is taking time to be with them. Is that too selfish to ask these days? For someones full attention minus cell phones? Because I actually have had people get mad at me when I asked them to put their phones away as I was attempting to talk to them. I don’t think that is too much to ask but I guess some people do sadly.

Currently I am in a Mass Communication class and each week we have to do a blog response. This week it was on a blog called Alone in out Togetherness, and it was about our society’s increase in expectations of technology, and decrease in our expectations of people. It is written by my professor Jim Willis and I think he put it perfectly when he said;

When we are in the presence of a friend or loved one yet choose to focus our attention on the machine in our hand, we are in fact treating the machine with more respect; treating it as if it is more real than the person sitting next to us.” 

PSA1: Our phones DO NOT deserve more respect and attention than the people we are with.

Those messages and other notifications WILL be there when you are done spending time with your friends. Putting your phone down when you are with other people will greatly increase the depth of your relationship, and will put importance back on the things that matter. (Like the people you spend your time with)

2:

Lately I have been seeing many posts about people who became “Social Media Famous”, or whatever it is called, then completely cut it out of their lives because it was consuming it. I also have noticed not only my friends doing this, but also myself, wasting time attempting to find the funniest tweet everyone would favorite or the cutest caption my followers would be jealous they didn’t think of first. I am embarrassed to admit that I got so drawn into the belief that I had to have everything wrapped in a nice a pretty package just like everyone else that I sometimes wouldn’t even post photos till days after they were taken because my cation wasn’t up to par. Guys! That is multiple days where I wasted my free time trying to think about what certain words I would use to put under my photo, even though I knew 85% of people don’t even read my captions. I went through this phase where I would spend all my free time looking through other peoples instagrams, twitters, and tumblers feeling pity for myself because I wasn’t them. I wasn’t taking the same cool vacation as them. I wasn’t dressing the same way they did, or wear the same size they did. I wasn’t them, and I didn’t have their “perfect life”. -OR- (what I am realizing now) The “perfect life” they show us.

PSA2: The lives people show you online is NOT the whole picture.

They have flaws. They have days where they look in the mirror and do not want to go outside. Some of the people get paid to post certain things. Do you really think all of those “candid” shots were truly candid?  They have days where they just sit at home eating pizza in their pjs. They look at other peoples sites and think the same things you do, how they want to have their lives. They get filled with jealousy too. But most importantly –> Their lives are not perfect.

All of this makes me wonder why they don’t show everyone their flaws too. Actually why don’t we show other people our flaws? Think about all the times people asked, “How are you?” this week.. Let me guess, you said good or amazing every single time. I challenge you to say something different next time. EVEN if it is bad. Be vulnerable. Be willing to show people that you don’t have your life all together with all the puzzle pieces in place. I crave a time where we don’t mask our struggles or our flaws. I crave a time where it is acceptable to admit that you are having a bad day because you know if you told someone who asked they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, rather they would be empathetic and actually care about the fact that things didn’t go well for you that day.  I crave a society based on honesty and support. The change starts with me and you. If you crave the same things I do, I challenge you to start being open about your struggles and bad days whenever they arise.

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they are never weakness.”  – Brene Brown

Long talks. Hammocks. Picnics. Sunrises. Road trips. Camping. The Shore. Red Dirt. Long hugs. The Giver. Camping. Work. Blog posts. Bows&Arrows. Concerts. Injuries. Family. Tears. Silence. DIYs. Laughter. Love. & Sunshine.

Aka: Some of the things my summer has consisted of.

(click on the photo to make it bigger)

Some might know and some might not but I go to pretty much the best school ever; Azusa Pacific University. It is where people hate to leave, and beg to come back to. Truth be told I am one of those people 100%. I was at first excited to come home to Rocklin, then after about 4 days I was begging to go back; so I think that tells you just how amazing my school truly is.

Well I leave for APU in 6 days and I could not be more excited! I started off writing this post as a huge recap of everything that went down this summer, but by the time I got half way done I realized my summer was way too eventful to write about it in detail. No body would actually read it all anyways haha who was I kidding. Instead I’m sticking with a recap of my recap.

My summer was definitely one I will never forget. I feel like everyone says that at the end of every summer but hey it’s summer and its when we typically have the most free time on our hands. I’ve learned a lot this summer, and I am excited with who I am becoming. I have started working on creating new healthy habits and getting rid of bad ones. All of this makes me amped for everything to come!

Throughout this summer I have had to endure some very difficult things, from realizations about how unsatisfied I happened to be with the person I was, to a death of someone who helped shape who I am today. I also had a lot of firsts, from having to wear a boot for the first time to my first road trip by myself. I’ve also had many moments where I smile whenever I think about them, from going watching the sunrise with my favorite girls to reconnecting with old friends I had lost touch with.

Every summer is different in some sort of way, but I cannot say that I would want to change one thing about the summer I have had. I have mixed emotions with the fact that it is coming to a close. Yet I can say that I am ready to be back in the place I truly call my home, APU.