House Divided

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Recently I have been posting these blog posts as a way to sort out my thoughts, and although I cannot share them because I’m the social media coordinator, and it might shed a bad light on the team, and my team will probably never read them, I feel I have to continue to do this.

Recently I made a post going back and forth about whether we cared too much about ourselves, or each other, or the good of the club, and that’s why we were arguing.

But in the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that I have proven myself wrong about it all.

Maybe the special Nationals juice wore off right after Mock Awards last year, when we realized we wouldn’t get the gym for the summer. Or maybe it was the aftermath of Nationals and the season that left our team to slowly break away from each other and divide.

Don’t know what I’m talking about?

It used to not matter who you were friends with, what sorority you were in or who you were dating. We were all friends, and when one friend failed and let us down, sure we would vent, but we would sort it out. By Nationals… Everything was fine. Like it always is.

So what happened?

Because we have people getting left out of group chats, and it’s not because we are throwing them surprise party. Some people are being asked to pick up certain party favors, but not being invited to the party. The one that threw me was when someone told me, “oh, I don’t like anyone in that friend group.” Excuse me… you talked one of those people through a break up last year, you dated one of them, and I was pretty sure you were good friends with my boyfriend. Then the one I’ve heard multiple times is, that some people are saying, “well this is just a club house event, so that’s why I didn’t invite the freshman…”

ARE YOU SERIOUS!?

Come on guys.

It’s one thing to have a small gathering of the people you’re closest to. Or a Necto night with your roommates, or a dinner date with your roommates and extended roommates, or even a birthday dinner with only people you want there, but actively leaving people out of activities with a large group of the club? Really?

We have friends upset that they aren’t getting invited to parties, I was upset when I realized I was asked to buy party favors, to a party that my friends and future roommates were invited to, but I wasn’t, and it is getting EXTREMELY annoying that whenever I bring up Nationals there are certain members of the club that are saying, “well I’m only going to walk around with you six. I don’t want to hang out with the rest of the team.”

Come on now. IT’S FREAKING NATIONALS! IT’S A TEAM EVENT.

We go as a team, we compete as a team, we have at least ONE team dinner… Sure we don’t have to be together the whole time, but seriously. If you oppose team events that much, then don’t go.

I’ve been trying to warn Evan of this thing that is going on, and its consequences. That if I start hanging out with “my group” of friends that I’m never going to be hanging out with him at meets. I’ve been trying to warn Evan that I’m getting annoyed with this whole “house divided” attitude. That I’m getting sick of the cliques, that if I make the friends he wants me to make, then I’m breaking into both groups, and with one group actively saying, “I don’t want to hang out with other members of the club…” It puts me in an awkward situation where I don’t want to hang out with them because they have that attitude, but I want to hang out with Evan because he’s my boyfriend, and I also don’t want to hang out at my house because nobody is ever there…

So where are we supposed to go. What are we supposed to do when everyone is dividing against us?

We break. That’s what we do.

Friendships are cracking, peoples stubbornness is cracking, there are going to be people who put their foot down. There are going to be friendships ruined because of the amount of rudeness and stubbornness coming out of these people.

Quite frankly this “house divided” mindset is annoying.

And I don’t want to be a part of it.

I’m sorry.

But a house divided against itself cannot stand, and I’m not going to sit here and let certain people just tear it to the ground. If you want to rip apart friendships, go for it, but I will not be a part of it.

To the Girl Who Finds Herself Without a Female Best Friend Actively In Her Life

To the girl who finds herself without a Girl - Best Friend actively in her life.

Recently I was there, and let me tell you, this situation is NOT YOUR FAULT.

Whether it was a falling out with your childhood best friend because you both realized that you not only grew apart, but became too different of people. Or if it was just the fact that your best friend moved away and you're only "best friend" is your significant other...

 This still isn't your fault.

This was a hard lesson to learn, that this pain and loneliness the you are feeling isn't because you did anything wrong, it's simply because sometimes life likes to take things that you love away.  Often times just saying their names would leave me in tears, or I would look around my whole friend group (because in the end we are all friends, but we each have our "best friends") and I would just start crying. It hurt when my boyfriend would say things like "well I don't want to feel like I'm leaving you out when I go to hang out with my friends," seconds after he says, "my friends are your friends..."

Of course he didn't mean it like that, he meant that we need to have friend times separate from just being together all the time, but when you're left at your apartment alone because none of your roommates are ever home, and he is out enjoying himself. It's not exactly easy.

It's a confusing state because his friends say that he likes having you around, but you know there is still something off. You like them, they are your friends, but there's a difference between being close friends with them because they enjoy your company and because you're the girlfriend. You laugh with them, you enjoy their company, you talk with them, and even have snap streaks with them, but it just feels off sometimes. Maybe because in the end they aren't your best friends. Your boyfriend is, but that doesn't really count. He's not a girl.

It's a confusing state because although you have different friends in your friend group, there isn't someone you can call up and ask to come over, ask if your outfit looks weird. There really isn't a person to catch you in awkward situations, like when you can't get your nose ring out of your nose, and there really isn't anyone to go grocery shopping with, or just shopping in general.

You often wonder what happened, how you ended up here. How did your squad fall so far apart that you're all friends, but the moment(s) that brought you all together seem so far away?

So to the girl who does not have any active female best friend in her life...

I was there with you, and sometimes you just have to wait. Because those friends will come along, and one day you will find yourself in the middle of your whole group of friends, but it will just be the three of you pow-wowing and telling stories about past years, and what has happened already this year...

It's scary, but put forth some effort, comment on the tweet about rooming together, and it may take a little bit, it may be awkward at first because you haven't had to do this in years...

But it will be worth it!

In the meantime, find a hobby, something you enjoy. Immerse yourself in work, or in your school work... Find what you love, and stick to it.

Your next girl-best friend(s) will come. You just have to be patient. It may mean a couple of rough months... but she will come.

She always did in the past... and when she does, all that anger from the falling out will lesson and eventually go away. The sadness of the best friend who moved away for a big girl job will dissipate as well. Eventually you'll wake up and find yourself eager for the day, looking forward to practices, and parties, and social gatherings.

It will get better!

Best of Luck! :)

Let Go & Move On

To the team who doesn’t feel like a team anymore.

This has happened before, but somehow right before Nationals we all tend to come together and be there for each other. However, the high only lasts so long. So what happened?

We care.

But most of the time, not about what is important.

We care too much about ourselves, and the club as an image, as a group.

BUT NOBODY IS CARING ABOUT WHAT IT IS DOING TO OUR FRIENDSHIPS.

You see college is a time to be selfish, if you feel that something is dragging you down or holding you back, you let it go. Everyone can agree on that. However, that isn’t what is happening it’s actually quite the opposite.

You see we all care about this team, and most of us would say that when we aren’t arguing about new jackets, fundraising, or meet dates we are typically building each other up, as we are supposed to. But when we are fighting over something as silly as jackets, and we are only looking out for ourselves because “my jacket is just fine” or “I need a new jacket so everyone else should get a new jacket because I don’t want two of the same jacket…” Then we are letting this drag us down… AND WE AREN’T LETTING GO!

Team! We need to let go. We need to make decisions that are best for the MOST people possible. If that means buying a new designed jacket so we all match then that’s what it means. If it means everyone who has the old jacket (seniors and above) has to buy the one that all the sophomores, juniors and now freshman will have then that is what we do!

We need to stop focusing about ourselves, and start focusing on each other. Many times my opinion about what I WANT is because I am looking out for myself, but if you ask me what the club NEEDS, then I would say that what I WANT doesn’t always line up with what the club NEEDS. And we need to see that and be aware of it.

Obviously we care too much. We care so much about what is best for our image, and ourselves but we aren’t caring about what this is doing to our friendships. It’s getting to the point where some members don’t even want to be on the board anymore. Myself included. A lot of us are feeling divided, left out, unheard… and this isn’t cool.

We need to take the steps to fix this, move on, and drop it. For some that means that maybe don’t attend board meetings because you get mad when you aren’t heard or don’t get your way. For others, it means doing the job, even if it means asking for help. We need to swallow our pride, deal with the decisions of our peers, whether we like the decisions or not.

Remember, we aren’t in the NCAA, we aren’t being scouted, and our videos max get 80 views, and half of them are probably me…

So this stuff is petty.

This stuff can be dropped, and moved on from. We will eventually get the 60 dollars that we spend on these jackets back, by working for it the following week, we will eventually forget that we went to one meet over another, we will forget that it took two hours to move the parallel bars to Bowen the night before our home meet… (praying that doesn’t happen).

My hope is that someday we will look back and we won’t remember those things, because we did discussed what is BEST for the WHOLE team, voted, moved on and dropped the situation. Dropped the anger, and the frustrations.

My hope is that one-day we will look back on these videos and smile, because these videos were never intended to be for you. They were a way to express how much I loved this team at one point. A lot has changed since then though, and it is hard to comprehend…

And I hope, before I move on to some new city with Evan, trying to get books published and doing videos for other companies… I will love this team again the same way I loved it my sophomore year. Something changed the day I went off to camp, I came back and it was never the same again.

Maybe I just see that year as an emotional high for me… But I want every year to feel like that… Not just wishing that what I see on my computer screen in front of me is what I see every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Because it’s not.

So to the team that doesn’t feel like a team anymore:

We have new faces, new friends, and it is the beginning of the year, the bonding has only just begun… but just a word of advice, consider the choices that we make, and not just how they effect our image, but our friendships with the team. We are holding onto our opinions too tightly, and if we don’t agree with something…

We drop it and move on, because in the end, those petty things won’t even matter.

He Knows What We Need

There is a lyric in a Christian song where Chris Tomlin say’s, “you know just what we need before we say a word….” This lyric has always hit me growing up in a troubling home, everything always going wrong, and somehow I’m still here, I’m fine, I am normal. Despite everything trying to change that.

But today I was driving home from work; I was thinking about what a blessing my relationship with my boyfriend is. Typically with my annoyance while at work, I actually don’t listen to music with words on the drives home after work. However, I got out early in the day this time so simple, calming music from my ipod (and not the random radio station that has all the jazz music on it). That is when Good Good Father came on. I was tempted to change it because by now it is overplayed in every church that sings contemporary music. I’m sure it’s even overplayed on K-Love and any other Christian radio station.

But for some reason it caught my attention once again, as most overplayed worship songs do every now and then.

As the song progressed, I thought about my boyfriend being a blessing, and everything that led up to him being in my life, and all the events afterwards.

Evan showed up in my life about two weeks after I told my best friend, “I’m happy, and I think I’m just going to stay single this year and enjoy the friendships I had…”

In the meantime, I was preparing to lose my best friend, as she would graduate in a couple of months. However, I looked her right in the eye and said, “I’m actually happy, and I’m going to stay single…”

She laughed and said, “watch this is the year you get a boyfriend…”

Shortly after that, the team went on a hayride and some blonde freshman caught my eye, and I started asking those who had already formed friendships with him about him.

Although it seemed to take a while during the time that it was happening, it actually progressed rather quickly. One day we added each other on snapchat, a couple of days later I asked him if he needed to pick up things at the store and offered to take him to the grocery store. I then bought him Taco Bell since we both seemed to enjoy Taco Bell.

Then there were a couple of movie nights, spaghetti nights, video nights, nights of leaning and flirting, but never knowing where either of us stood in our relationship. Then one night I invited him over for dinner, and cards, while we waited for Sam and Deshawn to get back to our apartment so we could go to a haunted house. But they got home too late, and by the time they got home, Evan and I were holding hands on the couch watching The Fault In Our Stars.

That night, most people know the story, we were “asleep” I rolled over, and so we were face to face but still “asleep.” I inched my way up to him and kissed him at four in the morning.

We didn’t get much sleep that night… but by the next morning, I was ready to cut to the chase about what we were. Of course he was taken aback by it, but it worked.

(My whole cutting to the chase thing, is a whole other story stemming from the way that Tyler treated me years ago and the way that our relationship had started).

The relationship started out great, and through a kind of accidentally cruel prank, we realized how much we actually cared about each other, and very soon in the relationship. Like two weeks.

Then a month went by, and we started a cute little hobby that we do when one of us is stressed or we are tired of watching New Girl together. By month two, I had already had a meltdown from stress of school, and he talked me through it. I had been in an unspoken disagreement with a couple of friends on my team for a quite a while, and actually a lot of frustrating things from the first semester had built up into one ball of anger, expressed in a piece of writing.

The beginning of our third month (so right after our two month anniversary…) we were celebrating our first Christmas together, and because my room at my apartment was freezing, and home was not a place I wanted to be. I just chilled at Evan’s house… When I had just met his family the week before. I guess they learned to like me quickly in that situation. 

By the end of the third month I was crying… all the time. In the middle of watching Harry Potter, I just started sobbing at missing my best friend. After getting over that, I started venting to him about feuds going on amongst friends, and he told me, “until you can have a conversation with them, just act like things are normal…” But through my normal joking around and a feud still going on, I ended up receiving terrible text messages (which were kind of needed and deserved, but it still could have gone better) that left me sobbing in my bed. Evan kept asking me what was wrong, but it hurt so badly that I couldn’t speak. All I could get out was, “I’m trying…” and when I had calmed down, Deshawn took Evan home.

Month four, things were better, but I was starting to hate my sport, and I was suddenly the one supporting him in problems he was having with class.

By month five things were better, but I was still drowning in homework.

The end of month six, we had gone to Nationals and the first couple of days were great. But it was apparent that my only best friend there was Evan, and I didn’t want to ruin his bromances, so it left a feeling of loneliness and kind of like I was third wheeling a lot. 

By month seven, I was torn about figuring out jobs… and Evan was already hating Starbucks, and it was getting obvious that not being in each other’s lives every day was going to be hard.

By the end of month eight, I was distressed about quitting a job I hated; my Dad was going to jail. My Mom and Dad had screwed me over on a vacation. Everyone who knew that something was wrong was asking me questions, when I was trying to stay out of it. So Evan and I took a vacation to fix the mess that my Mom had started.

By month nine, I was once again in tears because a job I thought I liked, had screwed me over and told me I had to work on days that I had requested off. I ended up missing an event that I had regretted not being able to go to last year. Then I was getting texts that I wouldn’t get to see Evan.

It was lonely…

So as I was listening to the song in the car, the lyric where it says, “You know just what we need before we say a word…” It hit me.

A lot of times we don’t ask for what we need because we don’t know we need it.

That day when I was sitting in the gym, telling Katie that “I’m happy and I’m going to stay single this year…” if you had told me then that I would date the guy on the rings, and he would be one of the only reasons that I emotionally made it through this last school year… I would have laughed. I would have said, “no that’s what the junior squad is for…” or, “no, I’m sure Katie will still be around…”

If you had told me that I would have had extreme feelings of loneliness, and feeling like I just couldn’t get it together, and that I would be crying into the arms of my boyfriend every night. I wouldn’t have believed you.

I didn’t ask for a boyfriend who became my best friend because I didn’t know I needed one. That’s why we don’t even say a word, yet the Lord supplies his blessings without us knowing. Because he knows what we need before we do, and he sets us up for success and support before hand so we have it when we need it.

Junior Year

Going into college as a freshman, you have expectations; you have thoughts on how it’s going to go. You have all these dreams of making friends, starting this life for yourself. You’re in a new area, you don’t have old teachers staring you down at the gym, or wherever your last teenage job was. You are free to make a new life. You join a couple clubs, drop a few and keep a few, and in the end what you have is a life that you don’t really want to leave.

Going into sophomore year of college, you have even bigger expectations. You already have a job to come back to, you have a new place to live, maybe on campus, maybe not. You have your connections, your friends, your club, sorority, team, coworkers, you kind of know the professors you want, and you feel like you have already gone through your midlife crisis when you decided to switch your major the year before, so this year will be fine, and all in all it was.

Then junior year comes, after a tiring year of studying abroad, fighting for a friendship, being a camp counselor, going on a missions trip, you come back and hope to settle down. You got calls from your best friends on your days off when you were at camp, and the sound of their voices left you in tears when they hung up. You missed them, and you knew that the one place that you were supposed to be was back at school, and it could not come fast enough. But the thing that sucks about junior year is you know everyone. You know all the little things that they do to tick you off, all they have to say is one comment and you are off the wall. You are comfortable enough with each other that you can easily get into fights without worrying about your friendship, and at this point you know who you are…

See the thing is when I came into this school year I knew a couple of things. One, I knew that Katie was going to end up leaving me, so I prepared for over a year to say goodbye to my best friend. The second, I knew I had three best friends standing by my side for when she did leave, and I was ready for it. I could handle it.

But things took a turn, and I noticed it, but I didn’t do anything about it until it was really really late in the game…

Somehow things started to deteriorate, I was getting tired all the time, I was seeing Katie less and less. I stopped going out to parties, and somewhere in that, all the friendships that I had made at the beginning of the school year were dissipating, and so were my previous friendships. It seemed like the only one that was going strong was my relationship with my boyfriend.

Between getting slammed for money left and right, constantly owing teammates and roommates money that I didn’t have, and couldn’t get, my car going out, buying a new car, keeping up with the ridiculous amounts of reading that I had to (but didn’t) do. Even the things that I enjoyed doing, such as making videos was getting slammed by the varsity coach, I couldn’t even post videos of teammates learning double backs on floor without him having something negative to say about it. It was frustrating, and the whole thing was frustrating, teammates telling me that I am going to fast when they hadn’t been on a date in over a year… and neither had I. And the last time I had checked, I thought we were friends and could talk about it, joking and not joking… but apparently it got really protective really fast. I understood what was happening, but at the same time, people in the same room were telling me that I wasn’t putting enough effort into my school work, which is what ultimately pushed me over the edge that day, not the comment about mine and my boyfriends relationship.

By the time Christmas came, I didn’t know how to talk to one of the persons I was closest to at the beginning of the school year, because we had had an argument and when I apologized, he didn’t respond. From there, the little comments seemed to add up. I was getting very paranoid, every time this group of close friends hung out without me, it just seemed like they were talking about me when they were together, complaining about the next thing that I did wrong. Every little thing I did with them seemed not genuine anymore, it seemed fake, rehearsed, “how do I keep this friendship going without showing that I don’t want to be in the same room as them” type thing. By the time the Christmas party came, I left my boyfriend with a couple of questions for him to answer, not me. Just observe and tell me, “am I still a part of the junior squad? Am I even a part of this team? Or am I just the girl that makes videos and tells people they are pretty on Instagram?”

Of course, that sparked something in me. When doing a portfolio on identity, those were the questions I turned to. Who am I compared to the team? Who am I without Katie? What are others saying behind my back? What got us in this position of constant frustration? So I wrote, I pulled my hair out at the kitchen counter for hours, but every time I got another sentence down on the screen and right, it felt good. I wrote because I had to for class, but I also wrote to answer my own freaking questions. Let me get this straight, not once was I venting, but let me tell you, it felt good to have a say in what others were saying about me. Things went wrong there, with accidental sharing of links, but that’s over with so I’m moving on.

We went on Christmas break, I said goodbye to Katie as she graduated, and I ended up staying with my boyfriends parents most of the break. It was good, relaxing, we went on dates, we met each others family, we painted, watched movies, relaxed, watched Forest Gump, did I mention that we relaxed? We went on walks, went shopping, went into town, talked about future plans, and deep theological stuff, we asked questions and gave answers. It was good, and for the first time since summer, I felt like I had things together, I felt like I was genuinely happy, and I felt well rested.

My birthday came around, and the people I cared about and wanted to spend time with were there, I may have an embarrassing story from that night, Happy Twenty-First! But that’s for another post.

The longer that Katie was gone, and the more distance there was between a couple of teammates and I, the more and more agitated I was getting. It’s not that I was angry or ready to start yelling at someone, it wasn’t that kind of agitated, it was that sick to your stomach agitation, where you know something is incredibly wrong but you don’t want to think about it, you can’t put your finger on it… Something is just making you sick, making you upset, making you not like your sport or your friends anymore. You hate where you live, you walk into the house and go straight to your room, you do other people’s dishes so you don’t get yelled at… that kind of wrong. The kind of wrong where you’re second guessing your every thought your every interaction. Something was wrong, very wrong, something was missing.

And Evan started to catch on.

He probably noticed me missing for ten to fifteen minutes each practice. He probably noticed how I was quiet on the walks home, or how Sam would say that she missed hanging out with me. I would smile and shrug and it’s not that I didn’t miss hanging out with her, it’s that I didn’t know what I liked anymore, where I belonged. Suddenly something about my character was completely unfamiliar. So one night he asked me what was wrong. I said that I was fine and we continued to walk to my house in silence.

That is when I removed myself from The Junior Squad group chat.

The next night, in tears, I texted him and told him we needed to talk. Apparently that wasn’t the right thing to say because he immediately called me, worried I was going to break up with him. I told him that I wasn’t okay, he asked me if I could make it through another day, and I told him I could. Of course I cried that night, but since I had admitted that I was in pain, it was like a virus, it just got worse and worse the more you didn’t take care of it. The next day, Evan came over, and we continued with our Harry Potter marathon, and somehow in the middle of the movie, the tears started, and they didn’t stop for another hour and a half. I sobbed, I sobbed over Katie, I sobbed over Mason, I sobbed over knowing I couldn’t go back to camp, I sobbed over Michaela, and Deshawn, our ride to Philly, Promnastics, how I was standing there, looking around and everyone had their best friend and I was just standing there, and I just knew “this is what it’s going to be like when she leaves.”

I have never cried so hard in my entire life, and I’ve been hurt, by boys, by friends, my parents, my teachers, people at church, loved ones passing away, family members lying, and losing their jobs. I’ve been hurt by my very best friends, I’ve been scared out of my mind that I would loose everything… but still I had never cried so much in my entire life. It felt like my heart was just aching, it was throbbing, and the only thing that was softening the blow was Evan being there.

That wasn’t the last time either, I had talked to one of my roommates about what I was feeling, and because he hates it when girls cry, I tried to hold back the tears, but I felt like he would be the one to understand the most. After that, I took Evan’s advice to try to act like things are normal until I had a chance to sit down with other teammates and talk to them. But apparently acting normal wasn’t the right choice; I made joking comments one night, and that set one person off. Shortly after that I got a text that put me in bed sobbing again for another hour. Every time Evan asked what was wrong, I just sobbed more, snot and all. The only thing I could get out was, “I’m trying,” I’m trying with my family, with my friends, with school and nothing is working. There were a million things going on in my head but I couldn’t say anything to him, nothing would come out.

I woke up the next morning with my eyes sore and my nose crusted. In class I stared very intently at my professor, thinking about the text message that I had received, and right in the middle of class I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing out exactly what I was going to respond with. I’m sure I freaked my professor out a little bit.

But right after class, that teammate was at the apartment, so we sat down and talked it out, explained everything that has happened this whole year.

From there, I tried to get back into the swing of things, joke around with roommates, reconnect with the people I had cut off, but something still didn’t feel right. I was no longer excited about Nationals, any gymnastics meets, parties, going to church, class, I wasn’t excited to go home, or go to my apartment, I was only excited for Dates with Evan, that was about it. And painting nights.

I decided I didn’t like gymnastics anymore. From there I skipped optional meets, I stopped going to most practices, I haven’t made any videos, and although it has gotten better. The friendships have rekindled themselves… it all still sits in the back of my mind. Like that bone that never really heals all the way, it still hurts when it rains. Well sometimes it rains.

I’ve forgiven those friends who have hurt me, left me, protected me (even when I didn’t really welcome the protection) the ones that thought I half assed apologies, the ones that blamed me for things that happened in the house. I have forgiven them, and I will continue to forgive them, but sometimes it does come to mind. Like I said, it’s like that break that never really heals. I hope that they can forgive any of the mistakes or any misunderstandings that have taken place this year.

Last year my mom told me that when I have something this special, I should never let go of it. She was talking about the team, and it was after I asked her about how she felt about me living with a couple of teammates. I think a lot of our team has forgotten how special it is, how great our friendships are, I think a lot of misunderstandings, rude comments, and fights have taken place. I think our team forgot what we really are, and what we really mean to each other.

And I want it back.

Junior Squad and all.