Ring in the New Year with all my Bliss......

For the sake of a title- Here is a generic HAPPY NEW YEAR.

I suppose this is where I reflect on 2011 and tell you how great it was. 

In the past, It's been typical of me to post pictures taken throughout the year that portray my favorite moments, memories, friends and family. I'll state under each where i went, who i saw, what i learned. 

And than I leave it all behind and start the new year. 

Maybe it's today, the fact that I'm sitting here at the Truck Stop, working on another Holiday. Maybe it's the fact that if I wasn't working, I wouldn't have any other plans... or anyone to make plans with. 

Maybe it's my heightened emotions or due to that 'time of the month'. 

But tonight I don't want to flaunt all the good moments of my year to anyone reading or not reading, this blog. 

I have no desire to share anything wondrous or beautiful with you.

I don't wish to say something inspiring that will move you towards the progression of yourself, or even wish you the grandest hopes and dreams for the upcoming 2012. 

 

Rather, 

I want to be honest for the first time.

Not the first as in 'ever', but the first as in telling a full story, the whole story. 

I want to retell the shadows of my year. The darkest shadows. 

The ones I wrote about but hid names.

I want to uncover all those shy truths and explain why they were hidden to begin with. 

So fellow bloggers, friends, family, and random blog visitors... I'm not sorry this isn't what you expected, but I extend an invitation to you despite that, to continue your read and do so knowing it won't be a happy tale. 

I invite you to dive into the deep Abyss of my 2011. 

 

And as a side note... Please know that I dont write this for anyone.. but myself. I must put it out there.. i must say the words.. I must tell myself what I've been telling myself never happened.
This is my journal. This is why i write.

We'll call this the Shadow of Bobby Ray. 

The darkest shadow. 

 

I love this boy Bobby Ray whom i met back in 2008 when I attended college in Oregon. 

I didn't know it than, but a year later after I had broken his heart I started to see in my own a deeper feeling; A feeling I'd had before, but never had so strong. A feeling I recognized as love. 

 

The fire was rekindled between us through a thousand email.

But what i didn't know even through all the flirting, the promises to see each other again, and to try dating again, that Bobby was questioning every feeling he wasn't sure if he was having or not; while i was sure as pie. 

 

During this time I wrote allot of blogs... I wrote allot of letters. 

I loved him and I wanted everyone to know. I shouted it from every rooftop. And i literally shouted it through an alfalfa field for all the cows to hear. 

 

I'd never been soo entirely happy. You know when you fall in love, that feeling that wings are stitched to your back and you can fly figure 8's through as many crystal blue skies you please. Well I had it. I had every silly sappy symptom. Only I was utterly unaware of the fact that he didn't share in that. 

 

About 8 months through our romanticized email 'relationship', he disappeared. And I mean, disappeared. 

He went home for Christmas, said he'd write me when the craziness at home settled down and 3 months later I'd still not gotten a letter.. or a reply to the handfuls I sent.

I went through every scenario.. had he died? had he fallen in love with someone else? Could he not bare Christmas without me and threw himself off a cliff  ;p ?

 

When no replies came back and My heart was bursting from love and breaking from loss of love at the same time, I decided to be brave...... and bold for the first time in my life. 

 

I would show up at the only place i knew he'd be... School; Lds business college. And I would stand infront of him, in all my vulnerability and say "Bobby... I love you."

 

I knew he'd love me to. 

.....Or at least... I wanted to believe i knew that. 

 

So i went. I took my tax return, and without anyone knowing at home, I made the decision that if he said he loved me too I would not return, and would instead; make Salt Lake City and Bobby, my home.

I was a shaky 22 year old, on my way to grab onto the life and the love I wanted. 

But when I arrived... he wasn't there. 

I made the mistake of writing him a week before and telling him when i'd be there. And he used that information to hide. 

I remember the third day....... I waited from sun up to nearly sun down and when I hadn't seen him.. and i couldn't reach him, I drove up the mountain with so many tears in  my eyes that i almost caused two wrecks. 

I cried loud and long, and i couldn't recognize myself afterward for days. 

 

My friend called and begged me to come back. 

I went to family home evening with her right after, and everyone there knew id been crying. My face was puffier than marshmallow man and i couldn't stop the flow of tears. 

When i got back home to Cedar, my sister in law told me i had one week to mourn and than she wasn't having it any longer. 

But I mourned for months in secrecy. Crying in the bathroom, the bedroom, the closet, the car, the garage, works bathroom, restaurant bathrooms. .....

I was morbid and rude. Unintentionally Cruel and I hurt peoples feelings without knowing.. without caring. 

I lost all sense of direction. Foolishly. 

I was broken. Soo broken. .

I allowed myself to be broken. 

Skipping forward... 

This year...2011. I heard news of Bobby from a mutual friend Brent. Brent told me that he thought If I were to make contact with Bobby again, he would reciprocate. So... i had a visit to Oregon planned out in November ( thanks to Brent) to visit my sister Meagan to celebrate our Birthdays together, and i decided that'd be the perfect time to reach out again.. 

 

I called and left a voice mail the weekend before leaving; letting him know that I would be in Portland for a week and I'd like to see him if he was ok with seeing me. 

 

Three days later I got his text. 

"Hi Shaina, I just found your message in my mailbox! How long will you be in town?"

After a few texts, a few questions and a bit of planning; we were going to meet again. ....... after 3 years.

 

I wasn't nervous, at all. Honestly.

Until the day of our meeting. Until a few moments before our meeting actually. 

And than I started sweatin bullets and shaking from every limb. :p

I got off the plane, rode the Max into Portland, and met him in Pioneer Square. The location that all my best memories and now, worst memories, circle through. 

The moment I saw him coming towards me, that giant whole in my heart he'd left so long before, filled. Instantly. 

 

And all my feelings I'd been shouldering in bewilderment since 2008 were also instantly confirmed. I did love Bobby Ray. And I still do love Bobby Ray. 

 

We talked for hours and I learned more of him. I saw who he'd become through the years.

I saw he'd become a man. 

I heard things that broke my heart in a new way, about his feelings towards the church and his lack of confidence in his own life.

I came to see that this man I loved, who was once a boy, was filled with sorrow and confusion. 

Im guilty in thinking once upon a time, that he was the nearest person to perfection. 

You see, What happens over email for a long duration of time, is that you don't see peoples flaws, their insecurities, their hurt or their lonliness.

 

but that night in Pioneer Square, I saw all of this written on Bobby's face. And in his words. 

I was seeing 'Him'. For the first time. 

 

And what I didn't expect to happen... happened. 

I fell in love, all over again. 

 

This time, with an imperfect person, with great flaws and a vulnerable heart, who is searching for happiness, and grasping onto whatever he can find to stay afloat in this tragic and beautiful life. 

I saw a human. 

I saw a man. 

I saw Bobby for what he was, and I found myself wanting him to see me and know me too. To want me in his life the way I wanted him in mine. 

 

 

I spent the rest of the week with my sister. 

And went on a date with Bobby 3 nights before i left. 

 

It was awkward. It was new. We hadn't seen each other or talked in person for 3 years and I knew nothing about the man across from me, or how to approach him. 

And he knew nothing about me. 

 

Through Dinner we played with silly formalities like "What have you been doing with life?" "What do you want to do?" "Hows your family?"

I'm sure he was every bit as uncomfortable as i was. 

Because I felt like I'd known bobby on a deeper level for so many years that to toy with folly questions was beyond us. We could be beyond that. 

 

But I knew that when i was getting to know him.. he may not have been paying too much attention to getting to know me. So i played along. 

 

After Dinner the real conversations took place.

We talked of what could happen between us.. what I wanted..what he wanted.. how unsure he was because he didnt know who i was anymore.. because he wasnt sure he felt the way i did.. 

And I boldy told him for the first time that I still loved him and if he could take the chance in me to find out if he could love me too, I would come to Oregon in January to stay. 

 

That night he kissed me for the first time, and for me, every star in the sky exploded over top of us and fell in an electrifying dance. Though it felt like it was happening in my stomach. 

 

He said "lets do it" He told me he wasn't leaving this time, and he held my hands close to him. 

He told me he'd like to call me girlfriend- and that night I got a boyfriend. 

 

id never happy danced like I happy danced that night in Meagan and I's hotel room. 

 

it took me minutes to gain my composure enough to tell the full story.. yet I giggled and sighed and jumped in the air between tellings. 

 

I was elated. And I was sure I'd never felt elation before than. 

 

But the moment was short lived. Two short days later, He met me again at Pioneer square to tell me he'd spoken too quickly and he didn't want what he had said he wanted. 

 

He was worried about me. My feelings. He said he'd thought on it and decided that what he told himself was love back in 2008 when i first broke his heart, wasnt love.. that it was closer to infatuation.. merely a crush. And that he did not ever love me.. and he did not love me now. 

 

I had come that night, prepared.  knowing full well what I was walking into that nigh. I had words to combat his own. I knew what i would say if he told me he didnt want me moving back just for him.. i knew what i would say if hed say the distance worried him.. i had a planned speech. 

 

But when I told me he didnt EVER love me.. when i had believed he had for soooo long.. every combated thought I had, drifted away. 

 

He didnt love me. and he made it clear he wasnt sure he ever would. 

I was deflated. 

 

All I could say was that I never asked him to love me.. I just asked him if he'd be willing to give it a shot long enough to see if he could. 

But it wasn't enough. 

 

I took my last hug... cried with a small amount of composure over his shoulder.. and walked away without looking at him.. not even uttering a word of goodbye. I couldnt have opened my mouth for the words. 

 

I walked myself straight across to the other side of the square and sat down for an hour to cry before I had the courage to face Meagan. 

What would I say to her?

She was waiting for me just down the road at starbucks, to say that I was going to miss my flight and stay in Oregon to be with Bobby. 

... 

that was not the news i had... 

I went home numb. 

I wasn't broken this time.. because I already had been.. to the point of nothing left.

He didn't shatter my world all over again.

But I was numb. 

After I cried for the remainder of the trip.. my tears dried up. 

I told myself.. "He didnt love you last friday.. just go back to that."

And I did. 

Only this time.. I took that numbness with me. 

And I still can't shake it. 

 

I sometimes wonder... If I'd of never called him that weekend before.. If he'd of never kissed me... If I'd of never seen that face or those eyes again...  could I be ok today?

But I went with no regrets, and I said everything I could of said. 

This was out of my hands. 

And I'll stick to no regrets. 

It was better to find unrequited love ... and lose... than it would of been to have never loved at all.

------

This is the Cowboy Shadow. 

The second darkest shadow of the year. 

August. 

One of my best friends Lincoln and I have played cat and mouse with each other since college in 2005

. 

I wrote him one summer confessing my crush on him and asking if maybe he were in a place in his life where he'd like to pursue a relationship with me. 

He wrote back astonished, yet with the same confession but he lived too far away and didnt want to start a relationship long distance. 

 

I was sad, but agreed. 

A summer later he wrote me the same type of letter.. yet we were older.. and more mature.. and he was ready for more than crush. 

But this time.. I was living in Hawai'i and was far to far away to start anything. 

 

A summer after that- this summer- we were barely talking but when we did, it was good. 

towards the end of the summer he called me and said he was stopping in Cedar on his way from Arizona back to Idaho and wanted to stop in to see me and my brother. 

 

Well, every time he 'stopped in' he wanted to see my brother and I;  and I just wanted to be something other than a friendly pit stop to him, so i told him to come see me and asked if he and I could spend some time alone. 

he was hoping that we would, and so we did. 

 

The night was fun. 

We were two best friends with 6 years of history behind us and i found something larger than a crush in him. 

 

We went to the fair that night and all night long I had this knot in my stomach. i wanted to badly to approach him again about the way i felt, but i worried so bad about saying anything. 

 

I'd never been so worried about messing something up before it even happens than i was with Lincoln. 

For years Id been like that. 

 

I carried our friendship around like it was fragile and if i ever mentioned how much I liked him to his face, i worried that it would blow up and be lost. 

 

On top of the Ferris Wheel, i got my courage and I blurted my guts. 

And I mean blurted. 

 

"Now that I have you where you can't run away, I have to say something."

 

He looked at me the entire time... with the sweetest kindness and his adorable cowboy grin. 

I was so flustered and nervous that my words came out fast... road runner fast... my hands kept finding my face and my face was red hot. I couldn't cool down.

but I said it. 

 

He mentioned that we still lived in to different places and how we would make it work and I answered with "How long are we going to say we cant be together because we live too far away until we just do it! We can make it work if we try. Im tired of saying no because your in Idaho and Im in Cedar."

 

or something along those lines... :/

 

I didnt expect him to answer. And I certainly did not expect the answer my heart wanted- because my head said he didnt feel the same. 

But you know what he did?

 

He flipped his hand over, palm up, setting it on the bar used as our seat belt, in front of me; and said

"The feeling has always been mutual Shaina. Lets do this."

 

It didn't register at first. I was surprised. Taken aback, almost as if.. are you sure thats what you wanted to say?

 

I looked at him in disbelief... "Really?"

Really, he said. 

"Your right, It's up to us to make it work. We can't keep saying no because of the distance. I don't how we'll do it.. but we'll do it."

So I grabbed his hand. 

And that started my relationship with Lincoln Pearce. 

That night he slipped one of his Leather bracelets onto my wrist, that I will save forever.

Lincoln, to me, had been my best friend for 6 years. 

We talked every night at 9:00 p.m. while we dated. usually far too late. 

Since he went to school during the days and I worked, we emailed. morning afternoon and night.. sometimes a couple more during free moments. 

 

We talked about everything. 

 

We decided we would Court rather than date. Because dating was usually for fun and Courtship was about learning and growing with a person on the basis of finding out if he or she was 'the one' and head in the direction of marriage.

Neither of us wanted to date for fun. Were getting older and we know what steps we want and need to take in life.. so we courted, unashamedly. 

 

It felt good to share a similar goal with someone. 

It felt good to talk about Marriage, A possible marriage between each other, Love and the pros and cons with someone mature enough not to giggle when the word sex was uttered. 

 

I was growing as a person with his candid honesty, spirituality, and personal integrity.

Lincoln healed me. He was healing me. 

He was filling all the gaps in my heart and teaching me to love again. 

He made me feel like I'd opened my eyes again.. 

I could breath with Lincoln. 

One night I was feeling all sort of insecure and doubtful. 

I didn't think he was caring as much as I did and I worried that I might not be the one he wanted. 

 

After my sister soothed me with a long conversation, I called Link that night and we talked about it. 

 

I felt so silly.. and foolish.  but I had to say them. 

I worried about allot.. That i wasnt good enough for him. That that were other girls where he was that he might want to date. I worried that because of the distance that he would forget how he felt about me. 

later I realized that was backwards... I worried that I was forgetting how he felt about me, and that was making me insecure. 

 

But even still, as they left my lips they felt foolish, and they didn't seem to matter to me anymore.

He had this beautiful way of calming me down.

I told him I felt foolish about it all and he said ""Shaina- this is important to you and I care about you, so therefore it's important to me too"."

As soon as he validated the way i felt, I no longer felt them. 

All my fears melted away in that moment. I was no longer insecure. 

 

Thats all it took, was just knowing that the way I felt was noticed and meant something to him.

That I wasn't silly in feeling them. 

But Lincoln seemed different after that. 

His tone was different. 

His calls were different. 

He told me that night that he worried that because i had all those insecurities that he wasnt sure what that meant.. or if it meant that we wouldnt work out. 

 

He'd been talking with his parents allot, and his mom had told him that when she met her husband every fear and doubt she had disappeared and she just knew.

he wanted the same certainty. 

 

What i believe he didn't understand was that his parents lived a different life, at a different time, with different people, and the way they fell in love and loved is not going to be the same for him. 

I also don't think he heard the part about the way he dissolved my insecurities.

Before this night, the weekend before, I had driven to Idaho to spend time with him for the first time since we'd been dating- a month later. 

 

It was perfect. We were a real live couple... we held hands in public.. we played at the park, we went out for pizza, we stayed in for a movie, we did what we did best... talk. we laughed, we joked. we kissed.

It was perfect. I was happy. I knew I was falling in love again. 

I didn't think i'd ever fall in love again. 

 

Every love is different. 

Every feeling is different. 

 

With Lincoln, It was cozy, comfortable, exciting, Friendship, happiness blanketed with hope and shared dreams. 

 

I wanted it to last and I had every expectation that it was going to. 

But after that phone call.. I think it was just a couple nights after..

He called me. 

 

I was living in my brothers shop at the time.. on a couch in the child's play corner... its funny how you remember what you were wearing... what you were doing when the call came in.. every word uttered.. every thought in your head...every tear shed. 

I tried my best to compose myself while he spoke. 

I did good holding in the tears..... until i didnt. 

And when they started flowing I held the microphone away from my mouth so he couldn't tell i was crying. 

 

I missed allot of the one way conversation because of the muffling in my head and choking of my tears.

 

I remember all that was going through my head was "Your so stupid. How could i of been soo stupid."'

 

I knew love didnt last. I knew love for me never lasted. but I let myself believe wholeheartedly with Lincoln. Which never happened before- I always held on to some doubt so i wouldnt fall as hard when it ended.

But with Lincoln i put everything out there and tore down every wall. 

because I wanted it to last. 

 

So i beat myself up thinking I should of known not to put so much hope out there. 

but he gave me no reason to hold onto doubt. 

So i let it go easy. 

 

But that night.. while he talked.. i cried. 

And when he hung up after I honestly told him it was ok, that i would be ok, that we were still friends and id never be angry with him.. that i understood.... even though i didnt. .. ..

I couldnt help but fall in a heap on the floor, tucking my knees as high as they could go.. and crying in heaves.. like id never cried before.. or since... 

 

I wasnt just losing Lincoln.. or a part of a future i thought i was going to have... 

but i was losing my hope again. 

I was losing a fire within myself that he had re-lit. I could feel it leave with the hopeless. 

I was left to believe again that no one could love me for long... that love always ended.. that good in love never prevailed... and that men only used up my emotions until they'd had enough. 

I felt ugly. I felt utterly unloved.

I was hurt. Unreparingly wounded. 

Again. 

---------------

The last Shadow.. and probably the darkest of the dark. 

This year I started hating everything about myself. 

Everything. 

I went from appreciating who i was..... to loving who i'd become...... to convincing myself that there was nothing about me to love... nothing for myself or someone else... to love. 

I've floated through the years from 0 confidence to some confidence. But I have never gone so low as to have a negative, below 0 confidence level. until now. 

I cant stand to see myself in the mirror. 

I can't see any talents in myself. 

I can't find a direction. 

I am everything but faithless.. and even there I lack hope. 

 ......

You may read this and find that I am a depressing person. 

You may think that I give my heart away too quickly or too deeply. 

You may think that I rule my life with emotion rather than logic. 

or Maybe you'll find in your reading that i am a pitiful soul who just needs love and reassurance.

Whether its that or something else... 

I'm going to end this year with a gratitude towards those who helped me grow through hurt.... and love. 

You brought me to a high point when I knew who i was.... and when I lost everything and lost focus, your memories and your words have proved to me that maybe I didnt ever really know who i was.. or where i wanted to go.. 

This is good thing. Because theres no where else to go but up right.. ?

 

So this next year for me, 2012,  is a year of re-constructing a Shaina I can love......... without validation. 

 

One day I will soar with those stitched wings and a new heart, knowing I CAN do it alone if needs be and life WILL be ok that way. 

So thank you 2011 for breaking my spirit.