Hoping To Be Back

Hello again, Everyone!

I'm not sure what happened to me but I disappeared for a while. I must have been stuck in a rut, because I wasn't even reading that much! *gasp* Finally, I started missing my blog, my books, and my online friends, so now I'm trying to incorporate myself back in the game! You should be seeing more posts from me and more reviews as well.

In the past couple weeks I've been busy looking at grad schools and studying for the dreaded GRE. I take the GRE this Friday though so I won't be doing much studying that much longer. I've decided to apply to grad school for Fictional Writing!! I'm so excited :D I have to admit I'm a little nervous because I don't think I write as much as I should for the programs, but I'm not going to let my nerves get in the way of something I want to do. That would just be silly!

Just wanted to update everyone quickly. Hope everyone has/had a wonderful day :)

Miss Weber's Goodbye

Natalie Weber, a girl I went to high school with, passed away Friday. I didn't know her very well but her family and mine knew each other pretty well. Her mother was once of my high school teachers and her brother accompanied me to Homecoming my sophomore year of high school. 

Natalie was a victim of Depression, which eventually lead her to committing suicide. It hurts me so much just to think about the reason for someone completing that act. To think that no one loves you that much. Or that not enough people care. The calling hours where supposed to be from 3-7 but my sister left at 10:15 and there was another half hour behind her. There was so much love and support there for her that she never knew. I was talking with her Father and it broke my heart when he said, 'I wish she could see this. All this support that was here for her.' Then he started to tear up and it broke my heart into a million pieces. I NEVER wanted another parent to feel like that EVER again and I never wanted anyone to feel like Natalie did. That there wasn't anything else they could do, that no one cared enough to listen to her. It makes me want to go into psychology and help people like Natalie so much that it's overwhelming. 

Could I help people like Natalie? Could I have enough patience and control to be able to help someone without making them worse? Would I be able to handle it if I couldn't help one or two of them? Am I willing to take that risk?

I just saw a quote that says, 'Everyone dies but not everyone lives.' At first, it makes sense when people say that, but if you think about it, honestly, can you say that's true? That's implying that people sit around and want to make their lives miserable - they do absolutely nothing for themselves and don't care to improve their life. Just because people aren't partying it up and living the way others think they should doesn't mean they aren't living their life the best they know how. It's self preservation to make oneself happy - is it not? Even people who are depressed and sitting in their houses all day. They are living to the extent that they know how. They haven't given up and doing only what they know how. They are living just as much as someone partying it up because that's all they can handle. Having a mental illness, like Depression, to me, is something that people have to learn to live with. They live their life the best they know how and can. It may not look like fun to you, and it probably isn't much to them either, but if that's all they can handle, then is it nice to say they aren't living? At that point in time it's the best they can give. I'm not saying they shouldn't get help, because they should, but saying they aren't living life to it's fullest, in their situation, it's not true. 

My sister commented on drinking a beer for Natalie because she thought Natalie would want her life celebrated and not have her death be dwelled on. If that was true though, would she have killed herself? If she wanted her life to be celebrated, would she have ended it? 

These have just been things running through my mind lately. Depression is a deep and complicated thing that isn't fully understood. I know I'll never understand it in it's entirty but it leads a lot of questions to the way people live their lives and why they do the things they do, which always fascinates me. 

RIP Natalie Weber - you are missed by many.

A Walk in the Woods

So today's weather in Ohio (in the middle of winter!) was in the 50s. Weird, I know. My mom told me though that because of something with the hurricanes the winds are changing so we won't be getting that cold of a winter this year. Fine by me!

Anyways, since it was such a nice day, I decided to take a walk. I couldn't not take a walk - I didn't have to wear a jacket outside! ME! And I'm always cold. I also love being outside. In the summer, I'm outside every day. It also just felt like the woods were calling to me. So I started walking towards the woods were I felt I should enter.

I've never taken a walk in the woods during winter before, and I realized I'm missing out. There wasn't snow on the ground, but there had been recently, so there wasn't any spider webs! Usually I'll encounter a couple, but all the precipitation must have gotten rid of them. After walking around for a good 15-20 minutes I stopped to listen and just think. I do the best thinking in the middle of the woods. All the silence and slight movements of the outdoors - bliss.

Luckily, one of our dogs followed me. He's a little thing and thinks he's much bigger than he is. One of our neighbors dogs started wailing, at least that's what it sounded like. So lets recap: I'm in the middle of the woods, almost completely alone, and there is a dog that sounded like it's being tortured. Maybe because I read too much or because at work we were having a conversation about Sasquatch today but I started to imagine some huge thing coming at me. Not a completely irrational thought but now that I think about it, I shouldn't have been so scared.

I started walking back to my house and I swear the howls were getting louder. Not only that but my little dog kept stopping and looking back. He only does that if he's interested, so I knew something was moving. I didn't know if maybe the dog was following us or not. Finally, after almost getting back to my house, I spotted a dog jogging through the woods behind me. He didn't even see me at first and I called to him. Then I noticed he had blood on his mouth. At first I panicked. I mean seriously, BLOOD! 'Did this dog do something to the other dog' I thought. But then I remembered that our dogs eat dead deer sometimes (I know, it's really gross) so maybe this dog just got hungry. It didn't seem threatening so I called to it again.

I finally got back on our property and took a look at the dog. It had blood on it's face, green stuff on it's back, beaches stuck in it's fur, and it smelled like feces. I thought I found a lost dog in the middle of the woods. After my quick assessment I noticed another dog coming through the woods. This one had two leaches trailing it. I knew it either got away from it's owner or it broke free from some kind of made-up dog staying contraption.

After calling my Mom and describing the dogs to her, she told me she didn't know who one of them belonged to - the bigger one with the blood on it's face. So I was thinking I found a lost dog! But then we finally contacted some neighbors and we found their owners.

This was kind of a pointless story but it's strange because I wonder if the dogs would have made it home if I hadn't found the one in the woods. They would have had to of crossed a frequently used roadway to get to our house. I like to think that maybe I saved one of them from being injured today. This is why I always follow my instincts. Not doubt I really wanted to go for a walk in the woods today, but I almost felt like I had to. Coincidence or not, I'm glad I ventured out today :)