“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning” – T.S. Eliot

For me New Years has always been about the champagne, the friends, the sparkly everything. But what is the real meaning of New Years, masked beneath the empty resolutions and forgotten kisses?

It’s December 31st. I pull on a black slip in my best friends room to cover my body beneathe the sequins tunic I spent way too much money on. I’m fifteen and I thought it was appropriate to drop $97 on my very first NYE dress. I look at the clock that reads 8:45, tonight is going to be perfect. After a dramatic weekend away, I’d made a mends with my boyfriend, who was bound to show up any minute. Everything was so new to me, getting ready, going out, drinking, dancing. It was so unbelievably exciting and inticing to my young mind. I pull on my black sandals and catch myself in the tall mirror before the doorway: I’m thin, rather pale, my hair is perfectly straightened, I’m so naive and in love and in this moment. I smile, because everything appears so promising.

It’s December 31st. I pull down a plain black tank dress I found for $22 at Nordstrom. I’m at a new friend of mine’s house which is breathtaking. I pickup my black leather bag which clinks loudly as two large champagne bottles collide inside. She whisper-yells for me to “Shh!” her parents don’t like her going out that much. I pull on a knit motorcycle jacket as we leave for our older friends NYE party. My boyfriend is back from college, I’m so excited to see him again and to share this night together with our friends. Before we leave I run to the bathroom, using the massive silver mirror to apply the perfect lip color. I look straight at myself for a split second: I’m sixteen and tonight means everything to me, I get to see the love of my life, my best friends from school, and I get to get all dressed up and drink champagne with the girls I consider my sisters. It’s all so new to me still, this moment is surreal. I turn the light off and hurry to the car, pulling down my black dress just before the champagne clinks again, as we disappear into the night.

It’s December 31st. I’m seventeen, it’s my senior year. I don’t feel myself tonight. I pull on the silver back-up prom dress from junior year. It’s shiny and hugs my body tight. I curl my hair aggressively in front of the mirror of my friends North Redondo single-family home. I’m usually so excited for New Years, but there is something lackluster in the air. I pop open a bottle of champagne, the cork popping more dimly that usual. The excitement dwindles as I poor the sparkly light beige liquid into a glass. I wish she had champagne flutes here. I put on a pair of sparkly black heels, staring at the glass, wondering who I’ll kiss at midnight this year. I shrug it off and down my first glass, hastily pouring a fresh one. I throw all my makeup bag and curling iron into my purse and we’re off to the party.

It’s December 31st. I’m nineteen and excited for the night. I pull on a tiny black dress with an open back, which only fits me because I recently had serious leg surgery. I pull on heels stubbornly, even though I’ve barely learned how to walk again. Staring at my scar, it reminds me of how much can change in just a few years. I can’t wait to be reunited with my friends from high school, I’ve missed them so much. I’m in my best friends room where I pulled on my first NYE dress, the sparkly over-priced slip lingers for a moment in my memory. I can feel the energy of the night as I pull my hair to one side, carefully establishing a braid. The night is going perfectly as planned, at 11:58 I’m in the bathroom freshening up, when I catch myself in the mirror. I’ve grown up, my face is strong and hopeful, but mature and weathered by life’s experiences. I smile and grab the door handle, unafraid of whom I may or may not kiss at midnight.

It’s December 31st. I’m twenty and my love of New Years is not lost on all of the midnight countdowns, sparkly shoes and dresses, distant faces of the people who once mattered so much, or the kisses I’ve had at midnight. My mind is muddled by champagne and I’m staring at my scar, which is beginning to look much less apparent. This time opening the bottle, I get the same spark of excitement I did the first time, but not as much as when I snuck the bottles inside my little black purse years ago. I laugh amongst my friends both old and new, and realize that New Years isn’t about the champagne or the sparkly dress, New Years is about celebrating life and all of it’s adaption to change.

“Before I met him, I would dance in the shower. When he was in my life, I would think about showering with him. After he left, I would sit on the ground in the shower and cry. When I got over him, I showered so quickly there was no time for dancing, fantasies or tears. Someone can invade the smallest parts of your life, you won’t even realize it until you dance in the shower again, and wonder why you ever stopped.” -Anonymous 

I catch myself in the heat of a joke, smiling at the ones around me. In particular, my best friend and former roommate catches my eye. She’s looking at me, and not in a bad way. She’s staring at my blank expression because she knows I have just realized something big.

At a given moment, I’ve caught myself truly living in the present. I pull away from my conversation and think to myself, “wow, this moment in itself is about to pass me by, but I am so fortunate to be able to share it”. That night I had found myself about three drinks deep and about three years back in memories. I put my glass to my lips only to come to the conclusion that I needed to talk about something which has been clawing at the back of my mind for years. The topic had been hot that night between my girlfriend and I. Over the past three years, we had struggled through some of the hardest parts of our lives together. When you go through something so astoundingly life altering with another human being, your bond is sealed forever. And that night, the topic was the elephant in the room, making us both feel extremely vulnerable. That topic was love.

I remember standing along the shore some years ago. Impaired and vulnerable just like this evening. I uttered one sentence which would haunt me for a lifetime. “What if this is as good as it gets?”. And maybe that was as good as it was going to get. Witnessing so many different love stories through my peers, friends, even my parents gives me the idea of what love is: sacrifice. Many times I have found myself leaving relationships behind because it was easy. Many a time I have found myself alone because it was too much work to keep me. So riddle me this: What does it actually take to be successful in love?

The most beautiful love stories are those which have endured sacrifice, pain, and suffering, which fought in order to keep the ones they love within their grasp. Love is worth it, and I think a lot of times we don’t understand that until it’s too late. So what if this is as good as it gets? Keep your life in a way which brings you happiness and excitement, because this might be the only moment we have to share with the one we love.

On my fourth drink I push back my hair, heated from my buzz but also because of my incompetence to accept love into my life, due to one situation. Subconsciously, there are walls so high built up on hurt, fear, insecurity that maybe they don’t feel the same, that maybe I don’t deserve something so good twice. Maybe this won’t be as amazing as that moment on the shore with familiar hands around my waist…

With doubt tugging at my throat, I turn to my friend, who demands my eyes and says, “you need to give it a chance”. And in this moment I realize it’s going to pass me by, I’m going to make the decision to give myself another chance. Opening yourself up to something which can potentially ruin you again is the scariest thing in the world, but so is thinking a moment at sixteen is as good as it’s going to get.

“A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. It’s as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.” –Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

Something that is the hardest for me, returning home, are the vivid memories. We leave a place, for weeks, months, even years at a time. We leave something behind in which we’ve attached stories of victory, triumph, adversity, love, and heartbreak. When we leave this microcosm of life lived behind, it’s scary to relive it and to become a part of something we once knew so well which is now so changed by time.

I walk the streets of my hometown at least four or five times before I leave again, I promised myself I always would. It’s the perfect way to jog my memory of everything that has happened to me here in this small beach town. I think one of the most important things is making sure we do keep all of the good and bad that is left in our hometowns. It’s nice to think back to all of the things that amount to who we have become today. A lot of people laugh at the past, they think it’s ridiculous to relive those old times. It’s necessary to let go sometimes, but not of everything, because some things really mattered in the grand scheme of things.

There is all of this time we can’t get back: all of those wasted moments sitting at home on the couch waiting to find something to do, working on homework at a desk in your small single family apartment, putting up the first Christmas tree you actually remember decorating. These moments in time aren’t a waste, they are necessary, they are the building blocks. With the necessities come the luxuries as well: skateboarding to the beach sweaty from the hot July sun, walking home tipsy from your very first high school party; praying your parents were already asleep, driving your first car for the very first time down your street. All of these things are so important to think back to, and while I complain on my couch that I don’t have anyone to hangout with when I return home, I am so eternally grateful for this city and for the friends and relationships I’ve been able to have here. Because at the end of everything, they are each with me every single day. They are a part of me no matter how far away from home I become.

“Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away” – F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

I pick up the half filled mug and raise it to my ever so slightly chapped lips. He doesn’t believe in drinking coffee. I curl my feet underneath my body, his couch feels like corduroy. Its hot against my skin, it’s a Wednesday in Southern California. I watch him put on his dress shirt, one button at a time, and pull on his pants. He looks great in a suit, tall, lean, full of determination, full of long-awaited promise.

It’s strange, I’ve spent so much time looking for this, it’s everything I wanted; everything I thought I needed. But we love each other only because we are both so lonely, broken from people who came long before one another. He puts on his shoes, they’re trendy, i love them. He relaxes into the giant couch beside me, drinking a protein shake… scolding my cup of coffee. I grab his fingers and intertwine them with mine, forcefully. I stare at our hands and think about how forced so much of this has been. Several things come to mind, “I want you, but not now, not permanently”, “I want you, now that you’re gone” “I want you because they want you”. I’d say our relationship was something established on empty desire, desire to be something we were doomed to never become for one another.

He releases his grip a little too easily, and goes to put on his suit jacket. It’s all extremely uniform, this situation: comfortable, easy. He pulls the jacket on and goes to the bathroom to style his hair. I stretch my legs out on the extra large brown sofa and stare blankly at the shake he’s made me. I want eggs… maybe some bacon. He doesn’t have that, or anything really, in the fridge. This couch is so weird. I reach, begrudgingly, for the shake. He reappears posing in front of me, suited up. “You look great, babe”, I giggle. He runs over and wrestles me into the brown corduroy couch. I practically get lost in it before he grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. I kiss him a little too hard, one more time as I watch him walk out the door and get in his little car, driving off to some god-awful sales job that doesn’t deserve him.

That night I get dressed at my parents house. We’re finally going out, I haven’t seen anyone all summer. I blast Bastille from my iPhone and dance a little, putting on some bronzer, drinking from a champagne glass filled with pink bubbly. I feel like myself. Tonight is an occasion. I love being together in public, to be wanted in public, to belong in front of a sea of old friends. I’ve almost finished the bottle when I goofily walk up the stairs to my darkened living room. Everyones asleep, but the night is just beginning.

I hear the door creak open and attempt to strike a pose on the couch in my dress and ankle boots. He walks up the stairs wearing his second jobs’ polo. I smile and say, “you ready for tonight, baby?” He walks over slowly, and kisses me deeply. He retreats into a deep slump on the couch, I can tell he’s exhausted. I awkwardly blurt out, “or we can just stay home..”. He nods and leans in closer, curling his hands around my waist and turning on Sports Center. I stare at the empty champagne glass, my lipstick still fresh on the rim, and I wonder somewhere behind the charade, where I’d lost my fun loving self along the way…

“A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.” -Jim Morrison

The day I stopped eagerly looking at my cell phone for texts from him was the day I was able to truly establish my friendships.

I wouldn’t say growing up I was always the girl with a boyfriend, or always the girl who needed a guy. Looking back now, I wouldn’t agree with myself as easily. As chicks we require attention, we want to be wanted and appreciated. Growing up I would take that attention from whomever I could get it from. Once I was able to feel wanted enough, I’d devote all of my time and energy trying to further the relationship.

I wasn’t always like that, I used to put all of my energy into my girlfriends. I’d get the most excited when a friend would call or I had Friday night plans with my best friend. A lot of that faded when I started to go for guys. I put friendships on the back burner. I made plans with no intention of ever following up, of ever showing up. Before I realized it, I stopped getting those calls. I stopped getting the Thursday night texts about what our plans were for that Friday. I stopped getting an invite, period. Close relationships I had began to feel strained. A normal encounter ended up feeling awkward with forced conversation. And when the guy left, I found myself staring at my contacts list, with no one to call my own best friend.

I think that’s one of my favorite parts about growing up. Looking back and being able to fix the present because you’ve endured the lonely times. You’ve made the mistakes. Now more than ever I’m looking forward to seeing my best friend in class and being able to walk to breakfast or coffee immediately afterwards to catch up. I’m spending time invested in school and doing things that make a difference on my campus. I’m not saying no energy goes into my relationships, but I am saying that most of it does go towards myself and my friends. There’s a time and place to be physically and emotionally invested in someone, but right now it’s about doing things for myself. I still get excited, nervous and emotional over guys. I don’t think that’ll ever change, but I know I’ll never be the Carrie waiting on the Russian on the Upper East side. I’ll never be that girl leaving my three best friends with cold cups of coffee on a Sunday morning, waiting on an arrival that will never transpire. In the end your girlfriends, or your guy friends, are the only thing that is eternal. At the end of the day, they are the only ones who will alwaysbe there.

“I’ve learned one thing and that’s to quit worrying about stupid things. You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You’ll never remember class time, but you’ll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on Wednesday. Spend money you don’t have. Drink ‘til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does.” -Tom Petty

Do we ever really leave college?

Spending time with most of my friends who are college grads, I’ve learned a lot on this topic. College is supposed to the “best four years of our lives!” If you’re lucky enough to get it done in four. But are they?

I attend one of the smallest schools in the upper north of the US. Every single day I hear a new complaint either about the cold, lack of parties, or the area… the list goes on and on. But what people don’t realize is this is it. You are here for a reason. Now I’m not talking about you stumbling to Montana because your soul “guided” you to a 1,200 person student body. I’m saying that you put yourself here consciously.

Each and every day we are making decisions, of what our lives will amount to be. At some point, you decided to attend your University (or to not attend college at all) and whether you are happy about it or not, that’s where you are, so you might as well make it a fun freakin time. Throughout my first two years, I’ve realized that you are in complete control of how your experience turns out.

I spent a lot of months, days and hours contemplating what I wanted to do while I was here in college. I wondered if I even wanted to stay in college a few times. But while I was in my first two years, I realized I was taking so much for granted. You’re not going to get to stay up until 3 a.m with your friends in any another place, you’re not going to get to go on the spur of the moment trips to the neighboring town because you just feel like it. You’re not going to get to see your best friends every single day after this because you will go your separate ways, life will change.

While you’re at University, you are subject to a lot of freedom. What you do with that freedom will most likely dictate a lot of how your overall experience turns out. There are several types of people in college: the one who abuses his freedom, the one who is balanced in both their education and their ability to shotgun a beer, then there are those who don’t take advantage of their four years at all.

I was a girl who didn’t do college justice. Not at first. I tried to do the over the top party girl persona my first year but ended up back in my sheltered nature. By year two I took everything way too seriously: school, my sport, and my long-distance boyfriend were the only thing which existed. Why? Because that’s what I had decided was going to be my priority. I won’t argue that spending your time here should be done in a certain way, but I will say that you should spend it in a way that makes you happy and proud. People are subject to any experience they open themselves to. Constantly standing in the background wishing for a better tomorrow, a better environment, the best scenario is a waste of the little time you have here, whether it be in college or anywhere you are in this lifetime.

“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”

I sit at a table with several of my “friends” from school. At least, I thought they were my friends. A “friend”, in definition, to me, is someone who shares similar interests with you, has your back, and respects the person you are.

I’m sitting at a table, in a basement with, “my friends” at 2 in the morning. The basement is dirty, and we’re with these guys who I can’t remember their names, but they are rivaling the filth of the room. They are sifting a gram of coke. Carefully using a credit card, the grungier looking guy of the two sets up three narrow lines along a mirror he’s so carefully set up on the old wooden table. “Okay, go for it” he urges. I look to my “friend” as she takes a bump from the mirror.

How many times has someone you thought had your best interests at hand, put you in an uncomfortable situation? How many times have you been, “cool with it” in order to fit in, or to please them? A friend of mine recently told me the horrible truth behind some of her “friendships”.

It feels good to be accepted. It feels good to be “cool”. But how far have situations brought us to where we were no longer, “cool” with ourselves and with our own decisions. I can think of a time when all that mattered to me was being popular. I quickly found myself skipping school to get high with my friends. That’s all that mattered was staying high. I’d walk home from places that were foreign to me late at night, shoving my math homework to the bottom of my back pack in order to make room for the drugs I was saving for tomorrow. My parents would constantly confront me until they realized that what they were saying to me would never change the way I was acting. That year was the first year I had found a group to call my own. It was a place I belonged, and so I did everything I possibly could to please them. I’d wake up on my friends’ boyfriend’s couch, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling with several kids passed out around me. I became numb to it, the feeling of absurdity I should have felt from my actions became justifiable.

There comes a point when you see something, or here something that makes you realize that you are throwing your life away. I watched my group deteriorate, some going away to rehab, others moving away for unspeakable reasons. The day my, “best friend” did a line before our lunch plans, was the way I realized I needed to get out. What I had gotten myself into had gone too far. I looked at her as she snorted the last of the blow. I ate my lunch while she claimed to, “not be hungry” and that was the moment I decided to remove myself from a life which wasn’t being lived.

We are so susceptible to becoming everything around us. The people we choose to surround ourselves with can sometimes lead to our success or to our ultimate demise.

So now, I sit at a table with my friends, who I know inside and out, and finally, I feel safe.

“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart…” -Pema Chödrön

It’s never good enough, and it won’t be at this point in your lives. You walk into his bedroom and he has those jeans on you really like, so you stare at them and let it slide one more time. He doesn’t know what he wants and that’s not his fault, he’s never had to be this for anyone before, in his life, neither of you has ever had to be this for anyone.

Last week at about 2 pm you received a text and it’s really descriptive and lengthy, at least on your tiny Verizon EN-V touch screen. It becomes clear real quick that this message was definitely not meant to be sent to you, in fact, you probably should have never known anything about this, “confession” because it’s all about you and two of your best friends oh, and your boyfriend.

Awkward, tragic, horrific, hilarious. That’s how I’d explain an idiot of an ex-boyfriend who confesses that he got with two of your best friends, to you on accident. Whoops, big-fucking-whoops. The worst part is that you’re in class and you are trying to hold back this insane cackle because you literally can’t even. You sit there and wonder how your life hasn’t been filmed because your relationship might as well be a cliche-reality TV series. So you text back something that is short, clever, and concise which demonstrates just how fucked he really is.

Have you ever dated someone that felt like a drug? Some one whom absolutely built you up, then tore you apart so much, leaving you with nothing but a terrible comedown, that you just keep going back for more? I pushed aside my phone and walked home that day, knowing that although I was crazed and pissed, our relationship wouldn’t falter, not too far at least. After all, we loved each other. Drug addiction is an internal battle. It’s you and only you who can pull yourself from the fire. When you can’t go one more day without the high, you crawl back to the thing that in the end, is killing you. No one can help you with the addiction because at the end of the day it’s you, standing alone and facing your own voluntary destruction. By the time you realize it’s time to walk away, you’re reeled back in because you want to feel that high of being desired just one more time.

So you stand there and stare at a boy or a girl, who is tearing you apart. You are both tearing each other apart. It’s mutual destruction because it isn’t right, not now. But you convince yourselves it will be different, you can make this work, you can change each other. So I stare at those jeans of his I love and look into his brown eyes, which do have so much love for me, I know that. But he can’t show it, not now. I need him though and know I will eventually figure this out. So I let it slide, just one more time.

“When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.” –Dean Jackson

No one life is spent perfectly. Each day we are changing, evolving into something bigger than ourselves.

Certain changes come slower than others. Someone may be living a life that appears effortless on the outside, but you have no idea the trials they have overcome to get there. Imagine yourself. You are 5’7 in the 5th grade. Trying to fit in with all of the other girls in school. No one really understands your jokes because you’ve matured so much more quickly than they have. Now imagine being the only girl to not get invited to the big birthday party on a Saturday of your first year of middle school. Shitty, isn’t it?

I spent a majority of my earlier years on the outside. It’s so funny telling this story to the people in my life now because they can’t envision me as a dorky, insecure, awkward 12 year-old girl. But that was my reality. I always struggled to find a good group of friends. I tried to fit in with the girls in school, but they just never wanted to include me. I grew up quickly realizing that I wasn’t important. I would float from group to group, seeing if I fit in with any of the girls’ groups at lunch, but I just couldn’t get in with any of them. I had crushes on guys, who when they found out, quickly turned away from me. I always had one close friend but they were only so close. I was confused, I thought I had a good sense of humor, I liked being around other kids, I just couldn’t find the answer to why I wasn’t being accepted.

Flash forward to fall 2008. My first day of high school. I found out that I was relatively athletic, got my braces off, and opened up to those around me. I fit in. Soon I had everything I had ever wanted, a great group of friends, a boyfriend, and I was on the volleyball team. The girls who had been rude to me evaporated into the 4,000 person student body, and were quickly forgotten. I branched out and showed people the person I really was, and it paid off.

Throughout those four years, my eyes were opened to the trials those around me were facing through the trials I had faced myself. School wasn’t as great for some people, I saw the dorky girl with dirty blonde hair and braces everyday, and I promised myself that I would never treat someone the way I had been treated in the majority of my earlier years.

You never know who someone is capable of becoming, or who they already are, if you are constantly judging the person for what they are on the outside. Some of the coolest people I have met and befriended are people that aren’t necessarily the most popular, athletic or smart individuals, but they are all so special to me because they are unique. I had friends of mine ask me why I would say “hi” to this quiet, freckly boy everyday at school, and I just shook my head and laughed because I had had the most amazing conversation about Zelda with him in history class. They would give me weird looks and keep talking about some guy on the water polo team, and I’d smile because they had no idea what it was like to go through life invisible