Be Relentless, Stay Regretless

This piece will be all over the place, similar to the way I've been for the longest time. Warning you in advance in case you'd like an out, signaling you to settle in if you're someone who would like to stay.
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I talk a lot about how I have no regrets. How I've grown to appreciate the value of experience for everything that it is. How I've ended up as someone who can look back on my absolute worst memories and can still say, "at least that taught me something," or "at least I was able to grow from that" while genuinely believing it with all that I am. But it hasn't always been like that.

I'm only able to value any of that now because there was a time in my life when I was the furthest thing from teachable. If I had to regret one thing, it'd have to be the time I spent thinking I knew all there was to know and that I always had to be right. I wasted a lot of time being angry at the people I should've been listening to. I wasted a lot of time selfishly shoving people away when I should've been studying how to swallow my pride. There were people I hurt while I was learning to love myself and trying to become who I am today, and I'm not at all proud of that but it's important that I don't try to deny it.

I've learned a lot of hard lessons and wished on an awful lot of stars I couldn't even see, but I've lived a very good life and I'm grateful for its (and my own) continuous evolution. I'm very lucky to have met the people I've met, regardless of whether or not they stayed. Everything led me here, to now. Everything helped me grow.

I'm very lucky to have gotten all the opportunities I've gotten, even though I was tired and stressed while they were happening and forgot to appreciate them in the moment. But most of all, I'm very lucky to have ended up right where I've always wanted to be and to get to do this life thing with the person I've always wanted to do it all with. 

Photo credit to his parents. <3

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When you're a quiet kid, people get into the habit of ignoring you or giving you the impression that your feelings don't mean anything. Because if you're not voicing how you feel, you must not be feeling anything. Right? And they're bold about it. They laugh in your face, call you weird and even tell you outright that you should change. They aren't afraid to alienate you. They don't see you as someone with just as many if not more feelings than themselves, so they don't make any effort or put any energy into caring.

At a very young age, I started writing pretty much everything that went on in my head because of how out of place I felt in the world. I was 5 years old when I first started giving my parents and teachers no choice but to realize that I was an old soul locked in young bones. I stormed out of the living room yelling to my mom one day that my little brother was "interfering with my work." 

For the following decade of my life, I got used to being told to lighten up and being scoffed at when small things would upset me. I started valuing myself less. I started thinking that maybe, since everyone seemed to think the ways I chose to participate in the world were ridiculous, maybe it was true. I started thinking I was crazy, and hating myself for something I couldn't help. Until college happened.

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From the minute I stepped onto the Wichita State University campus for the first time, I decided that it was going to be the primary setting of my self-discovery. It was going to be where I really took control of my own life. It was going to be where I came to the realization that it was time to take my story, my experiences, my pain, my successes, my lessons... and turn them all into power. 

Power I would use to help other people. Power that would fuel the passion I would need to pour everything I have into what I do, who I love and how I go on living. 

I made myself that promise back in 2016, before my freshman year started. Now I graduate in 8 months. Sure I'll be paying off student loans from the day I get that diploma, but I'm not angry about it the way most people will be. I don't feel like I'm paying for nothing. I've gotten a lot out of college because I chose to.
Academically, I'll be honest, I haven't really learned much. There hasn't been much of college that has been intellectually challenging for me. I feel like I knew most of it before I got there. But if all I'm getting for the countless hours of homework, drives to and from campus, long nights, group projects, deadline after deadline and tens of thousands of dollars is a piece of paper with my name in a fancy font that says I stayed committed enough to something for four years... I figure I may as well enjoy all the little things that happen outside the lecture halls. Learn from 'em, too, but live them mostly. Really soak them in and let them shape me.

Less than a month into my freshman year, I went through sorority recruitment just because I figured it'd be my best chance to make friends- but the process made my wildly uncomfortable and scared me out of my mind. I didn't see myself as a sorority girl at all, and the concept of paying dues every month just to have "sisters" seemed insane to me. I went for it anyway because it was something new. Something I hadn't done before or ever even thought about. Something that I figured if nothing else, would end with a valuable lesson. I was right. Long story short, I got into and out of sorority life within 6 months. Long enough to experience a bid day, a big/little reveal, a work week, a winter formal, a Christmas at the house, initiation, and waffle bar sisterhood event. Long enough to learn that it wasn't for me. And most importantly, long enough to learn that that was okay. That there was nothing wrong with not fitting into something.   

I had told myself going in that it wasn't about getting into a particular house or becoming someone who no longer owned any shirts without Greek letters on them. All I had promised myself was that I'd try. That I'd be open to it. That I wouldn't shut my mental door by saying, "that's just not how I am" only to regret it later. I promised I'd take a chance on myself, no matter how out of my comfort zone it required me to get. That I'd leave if I really wasn't happy- and that's exactly what I did. 

I also got tattoos. 8 of them. Unapolgetically. Metaphorically, they taught me a lot. A lot about how pain is temporary. They also taught me a lot about humanity. 

I grew up swearing that tattoos were never going to be my thing. That I'd never get them. That they would be a waste of money. That surely, the sting of a tattoo gun wouldn't be worth it. 

$800 dollars later, I'll admit, I've eaten my words. 

It hit me, shortly after I got the first one, that it's important to know who is in your life because they genuinely respect you versus who's there because you fit into their mold of expectations and approval.

Nothing drove that idea home for me like the moment a member of my own family told me that the ink on my skin made me a disappointment. 

I remember my first thought being, "Maybe I shouldn't have done it, now I've let them down," and then I remember my next thought because that's the one that stuck. 

I absolutely should have done it, because this is my life and I'm who I'm living it for.

My skin, my money, my spirit, my standards, my rules. 

No room or tolerance for unsolicited disapproval. 

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And I get to babysit a couple of the coolest, cutest, KINDEST kids I've ever met- and that's important to me. It's important to me because when I first started babysitting, I was 13 years old and it was an easy way to make money without having to get a REAL job. I could walk to and from gigs, spend a few hours playing board games and crafts, and walk back home with another $20 to put towards whatever I had my heart set on at the time. 

A lot of that is still true, but a lot of that is very different in the best way possible.

Back then, it was something I more or less had to do- or at least that's how I looked at it. It was something I saw as an obligation. 

Now it's something I GET to do. Something I look forward to. Something I love. Something that helps me remember how important it is to be imaginative, excitable, enthusiastic, affectionate, confident, light-hearted, sincere and spirited.

These kids never run out of ideas when I ask them what they want to do, what they want to be and how they want to make it all happen. They live for small things like scoops of ice cream, games of freeze tag and passing GO in Monopoly. Every time, they get more excited. And every time, it's so fun for me. They greet me at the door when they hear my car door close and try to beat each other in the "who-can-hug-me-tighter" game. 

They're always so ready to try new things and eager to tell me about everything that's gone on in their lives since I saw them last.

They're so sure of themselves. They carry themselves like they own the world and one day, if they take it over, I won't be surprised. 

They're kind to everyone. They show love to everyone. They say what they're thinking and how they're feeling. I've never seen anyone so willing to share their last waffle cone, or so determined to wipe tears off their own cheeks just to get back up and running - literally. 

I love it, and I love them. I love that my job is to help them continue to be exactly who and how they are. I love getting to laugh with them and learn from them. 

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I've learned a lot of hard lessons, spiritually. I know heartbreak a little better than I'd like to. Whenever I say that though, people jump to the conclusion that I'm talking about my romantic relationships. It's important to me that I set the record straight. When I talk about heartbreak, I'm not usually talking about getting my heart broken by a boy- or by anyone. When I say, "heartbreak" I'm talking more about the decisions I made for myself that just didn't end the way I wanted them to at the time. I'm talking about the friends who left my life and the friends whose lives I walked out of. I'm talking about the times I let myself down, and the times I let things destroy me because they seemed like my whole world as they happened. I'm talking about the times I got caught up in things that didn't matter, and the energy I poured into things that died out before I was done being a part of them.
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"I am either too sensitive or too powerful for this Earth and for the life of me I can't decide which one is worse."

Drunk me wrote that, but sober me felt it in my soul once I threw up the whiskey I'd had a bit too much of. The whiskey I only drank because at 2 a.m. I needed to drown out the sound of slamming doors and choice words that weren't my own. The first and only time I drank to forget. The first time I didn't kill a hangover until 4 p.m. the next day. The first night liquor bottles stood on my nightstand where my water bottles usually rested. The first time I got drunk in my bedroom, alone, while nobody noticed. The first and only time that'll ever happen, because it hurt in ways I will never be able to explain but also taught me the most important things I've ever learned.

Again, I'm not proud of what went on that night or of the way I handled it. But I'm damn proud of myself for waking up with a pounding headache and a sore heart still ready to take whatever was gonna come like it belonged to me.

The clouds in my head cleared. Slowly, but they cleared- and I'm proud of that because that took work. That took crying on my mom's shoulder, writing for weeks on end, pushing myself to be vulnerable, doing things that terrified me, admitting I needed help, saying "no" to a lot of people who called me cold for it, refusing to tolerate a lot of what I had tolerated for too long, and making the conscious decision that I was going to grow no matter what. Deciding that I was not going to be a victim of negative circumstances and instead, I was going to be a breathing example of how strong a person can become if they are willing to practice a positive mindset.

My rules are simple.
Work hard.
Laugh harder.
Love hardest.
Be relentless.
Stay regretless. 
xox