Heaven: 12 Steps to Happiness

It's been since October that I last wrote a blog to my friends. November came. There were countless times in November that I logged into our blog to write to you all, to write to myself, to write, even if only to let someone know that I was alive. But I didn't write in November. The days grew shorter and we turned the pages of our calender to December. Again, I wanted to write, I tried to find the words in my heart to say, but I found nothing. And so December passed and I still didn't write.

And now it's January, and it's a New Year. I puked on the couch on New Year's Eve and fell asleep before midnight, and no amount of shaking or yelling or gunfire could wake me. As the year passed from 2011 to 2012, I was drunk asleep, but I think that, really, I just did not exist. Drunk asleep, my heart beats steady, my lungs breathe steady, my body and my mind can rest. My little friend Rita says, "When you die, your mind can rest." So maybe, drunk asleep at the turn of 2012, the phoenix in my chest burst into flames. Maybe before the chick peeped out of the ashes of its former Self, my mind was at rest.

My friends, I feel as though I have been dead for quite some time. I've lost myself. I can remember the person that I was when I was at my best, and I am the opposite of that. I can remember the person that I was when I was at my best, and try to mimic the qualities that I admired so much in myself. The soft sun through the canopies of trees on a clean winter morning. The dewdrops kissing a spider's web. Lying on the ground and watching the blades of grass tremble in the hurricane from my lips, and knowing how big I was, but then turning over and seeing the sun above me and knowing how small I was too. Knowing that others could love because they had been shown love, and knowing that, because I had been shown love I could also love.

I am no longer the person that I was when I was my best, but, God damn, I want to be. I want to be as tall as the Redwood trees, but I've been timbered. I want to dance with the wind, but I hurt my knees running. I want to grow, I want to grow, I want to grow, but guess what? We're halfway through January and it still hasn't rained. This whole place is dead and I've been dying with it. It was much easier to write this than it was to write about the person I was when I was at my best. It was so much easier to write suffering and misery than it was to write nature and to write beautiful. My inkwells have run dry.

It has been so much easier to See the negative, and whoever's been developing these pictures has been forgetting to fix my positives. I watch them fade over time. I hide them at the bottom of dark drawers so that I might keep them hidden from the light. What good are they if I cannot recall them, if I must hide them away to better preserve them; while all these negatives surround my, perfectly clear.

I let Myself get lost in myself; I ventured into the labyrinth without my breadcrumbs. I have been lost for a long time, so long now that I have to force myself to smile, so long now that I must drink from a sea of tears just to stay hydrated, so long now that my inkwells have run dry and all the paper was burned for warmth.

But I don't want this anymore. I do not want to sail this sea of tears. I do not want to wear this cloak of sadness. I want to empty all of my father's pill bottles into the gutter and be done with them. I want to sever the tie between us and realize that some people are better off without their mothers and fathers. Some people are better without them. In psychology, when we had to stand before the class and tell everyone our biggest fears, I remember mine. I couldn't look anyone in the eye, and I'd been crying that morning, and I said, I don't want to be my parents. But, see here I am, miserable and sad and lost, just like my parents. I am lost without my parents, but I am Lost with them too. I want to cast them off. If am composed of their DNA, let that be it, and if I must be like them, let me be only the best parts of them. Let me be my mother's love for a good book and my father's musical muscles, let me be all the childhood camping trips and family art projects, let me be humbled by talent that surrounds me and the industry that raised me, let me as tough as helltown and as tightknit as them too. Let me be all the best in the people that raised me. Suck it up, my dad always used to tell me. Aaron Burtch, my dad, always told me to Suck it up. He's forgotten how to, but that doesn't mean that I have to. So, Heaven, suck it up. You're tough, so suck it up.

I want to be the best of all the people that raised me. I want to be Helltown, I want to be Oakdale, I want to be Grandaddy and Built Like Alaska, Off the Air Modesto. I want to be Troy and Robert, I want to be my Yaiyai and Papou. I want to be the best girlfriend for Sonny Malcom, because, the truth is, I see him, I want to share and create the best life possible with him. I want to be the best in all of you, my friends. Because without all of you, I would not be here. I would be someone else, somewhere else. But the Universe put me amongst you, and you are the best company that I could want. I look at all of you and I see the best. When I turn to myself, I only see the worst-- but if I am surrounded by the best, I should want to show that I belong with the best.

I want to be the best for myself. I want to imagine the best person I can and become that person.

That was my dream once. It is my dream again. To make myself into the best person I can be.

And so, I've started a personal 12 steps to happiness program. I'm developing the steps as I go, figuring out what I need to focus on in order to better Myself. These are my steps so far:

Step 1: Point out the positives. Stop focusing on all of the negatives and realize the beauty in life again. A shake-shingle wing, a smiling dog, a bird singing in the bush outside my bedroom window.

Step 2: Be physically healthy-- eat well, exercise daily, and dress nicely. I have never really been comfortable in my body, and God knows having the boyfriends I have had didn't help me with my self-esteem any either. But, you know what, I am the only one that has to live with my body forever, so whatever I can do to make myself physically happier is a must. I did hurt my knees running over a year and a half ago and they still haven't healed, but I've been running and hiking on them anyway. I'd rather live with the pain in my knees as long as long as I get to spend the rest of my life climbing mountains.

Step 3: Love yourself. Written on the same notecard, it says, "You are a good person. You are beautiful. You are loved." I have stopped believing all these things. To say them now makes my mouth taste dirty. They all seem like lies. All this negativity has poisoned my heart; there's a worm that lives inside that whispers all of these lies, and I believe him. But I know that he is lying. When I find myself within my chest, I know that he is lying. I am a good person. I am beautiful. And I am loved. I've poured so much love out of me in the past year and a half and have felt no love. What little love I do feel drowns as the oceans rise. I love, I love, I love so hard and so much, but I have forgotten how to feel loved. And so I give and I give and I give, and I am exhausted, but I feel as though I cannot take. I cannot take because I have been denied; what is not offered is not available for the taking. And so I closed the shutters and I didn't pay my electric bill, and I have been living in the dark. But God, I am dying for light and I'm dying to be loved. I'm dying for rain, I am so thirsty, I am dying to grow.

I know how to feel it now, I know what I need to do-- I need to let myself feel it. I need to realize that when Sonny says he loves me, that he loves ME, all of the best in me, he can see me. I'm cheating him when I don't let the best parts of me shine out. It's as simple as letting myself feel the love that he is offering me. I can love him and love him and love him, but until I can let myself feel the love that he has for me, I won't get it. But right now, I get it. And I feel so much love and I feel so loved. As I write this, I feel the love that I'm looking for, I know that's it's everywhere around me and I only need to open my heart to it to feel it. I need to keep my palms up and my eyes green and I need to let it in and out, in and out, as easy as breathing, as rhythmic as the sea, in and out and in and out, I need to let my Mother hold me to her chest the way she's been longing to for so long and like I've been longing to let her for so long. And I feel her, yes, I feel her, she is breathing into me the very best parts of her.

This is what I am working toward, bettering my Self, because I'm tired of spending everyday with the person that I've become. I want to be happy. I want it so much that I'm dying for it, but isn't that wrong? Isn't the point to be living with it?

So today, I am going to stop dying to be happy and start living to be happy.

After all, it says right on my arm-- "To live will be an awfully big adventure."

Zach: And End and a Beginning

Hey

So I'mma talk about the Beginning first. Tomorrow is the first day of school. That's kinda exciting I guess. Even if it is a national holiday and we should have the day off, but whatever. We always start on MLK Day. I'm over it. It snowed today/ last night. None of it stuck, but it was fun to walk in.

I don't really have anything else to talk about in the beginning section I guess, but I will come back to that.

So the End. Andrew and I are no longer anything more than friends at all. We are still good friends, but nothing is going to be more than friends. We both understand how the other one feels, and we both like each other (as people, not so much romantically anymore), but we aren't going to get back together. I don't think that things are going to change in that area of my life for a while. So although I still like him, I'mma move on. Still gonna spend time with him, but I am going to not think of any of it romantically anymore. It was nice while it lasted, but it's over now so.... there.

You guys have probably by now noticed all of the videos I have sent on facebook. Kinda because I am a little torn up by the whole Andrew thing. I have been unsure about us for a little while now, but we hadn't talked about it until today, so now we are both on the same page. But anyway. Making videos for other people helps me to keep my head clear, so... I did that.

But I guess this ending is the beginning of something else. I'mma take some time for myself now. I kind of talked about this in my last blog, but I have been feeling kind of empty for a while now, and I need some time to be selfish. I am not going to do anything for anyone else for a while. I am not driving anyone to the store. I am not ordering food for people (even if they pay for it). I am not planning anything unless it is for myself and no one else. I kind of feel terrible doing it, but I really need some time to be selfish. I need to do something for myself, and I don't need to give any more of myself to anyone else until I have some of it back for myself.

I love you guys. And I miss you.

Anna: Blah.

I just want it to be known that I really don't want to go back to Portland at all, and if I don't express this sentiment somewhere then I am going to end up breaking down and crying on the plane (a public place) which absolutely can't happen.

I just want to spend more time with my family and I don't think its fucking fair at all that everytime I leave I don't know when I'll see them again. I'm tired of busting my ass at school and in MUN only to have people continuously yell at and discourage me. I need a good long break from all this crap that makes me want to shove my head through a window.

I don't want to go back. I want to stay here and be with my family and chill.

Zach: Oddly at peace

So I'm here, sitting in the airport. I got about two hours of sleep, and I am oddly at peace.

My flight won't start boarding for another thirty-five minutes or so, so I just have to kill time, but I don't know, I'm okay with it.

I've been kinda stressed about my life for a while, but right now, it doesn't really matter.

I've been thinking about the things that are important in my life, and the things that it feels like I will never have, and I have broken down crying more times in the last two months than I have in the six years prior. I've had some help with all of the stuff going on, but most of it I have dealt with on my own, which has always been okay.

Last night I couldn't sleep. Not because I was nervous about the flight or anything, but because I was staying up, thinking about how I want my life to be different, I thought about boarding a plane to Korea, or Japan today instead of going back to California (I really need to break the habit of calling that place home, cause it sure as hell doesn't feel like it anymore[don't get me wrong, I love you guys, and I miss you all terribly, but I just can't take it anymore]). I feel like I just need to do something for myself, something completely selfish, because I feel so empty most of the time.

I feel kinda broken. Like I've given all of myself, and I have nothing left that's me, and I need something that is just for me, no one else. That is what going to Korea or Japan would be. I really want to go to Korea, and learn korean (although just spontaneously flying there probably wouldn't be the best way to learn the language) and I think it would be awesome to go to Japan and see my friends that just left (I miss them a lot already).

One of the main reasons I am not doing it is because I don't exactly have the money at hand, and I don't want to ruin my credit. I thought about it. A one way ticket there is a little less than a thousand dollars, and my credit limit is 1000, so that is fine, and I could pay that off with money is an account I have in Merced. A round trip tick though is over 1000, and I don't have that in an accessible account and it is over my credit limit. Rawr. I just want to go. Away. I need it.

I do get a little time to recover though. I get to come back early. The sixth! I get to be back at my apartment on the sixth. And I will see Beth that day for sure, and probably Andrew. Then they will go on choir tour, and they will get back from that right before everyone else gets back for school and we are going to go ice skating. I am excited!

But yes. That is basically my life right now.

Being in this airport though, I am oddly at peace.

Anna: Howdy-do

*EDIT: So I wrote this waay back during Thanksgiving weekend, fyi. For some reason I can't post to Blogger on my laptop. :(
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I realized I haven't posted here since August. Wow. Feels like a lifetime ago. I think it goes without saying that this term has been crazy busy for me....my entire life is comprised of running around campus trying to do ten million things at once. This weekend is the first prolonged relaxation time I've had in...a while. President of Model UN + 16 credits = insanity. AND I'M DOING IT AGAIN NEXT TERM. I don't know how to explain myself, other than I need to finish in four years. Period. I could, theoretically, take less work-intensive course loads, but I wouldn't finish all my credits in time.

I'm also seriously considering/half decided on law school. Shoot me now. And I've realized that I can't talk about my future hopes and dreams without either a) boring people to death or b) igniting a political fight. "So yeah, maritime, human rights, and humanitarian laws just fascinate me, and how about those fascist bastards in government?" Great ice breakers there.

I'm still freaking out about all my usual worries, but I've resigned myself to the fact that they just won't go away ever. Right now, I just want to focus on the last two weeks of Fall term and then spending a whole damn month in the snow wonderland of Utica NY. And by snow wonderland, I mean the warm indoors where my family is. Seriously, I have no idea what to do with snow. I've only ever been exposed to about 2 inches at a time.

I'm listening to Band of Horses right now, and I'm having one of those moments where I just ask myself, "HOW is it possible for such beautiful fucking music to exist??" Know what I mean?

Also, I miss you guys. Since I'm not there for Thanksgiving (nothing new) and won't be for Christmas (sadface), I wanted to leave a little blurb to let you know that I am still active on this blog, and I love you guys and I do like sharing mundane details about my life with you. Like how I'm officially tired of Portland, and a good portion of the West Coast in general. I've got this thing where I get restless after a couple years and need to move on. Going on year three here, I need to leave. All I'm seeing is the negative about this place. But that's another discussion for another time, I guess.

I hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving and will have a fantastic Christmas.

Love.

Zach: I like 2 am... well almost three

So.

I'm up late. For no reason whatsoever. I even convinced Lauren to go to church at 10 in the morning with me because we shouldn't spend all morning sleeping. Boy was I stupid.

I actual thought that I might go to sleep when I got back to my apartment at midnight. Then I remembered that I have a computer, and the internet exists.

So I have been watching youtube for hours, and then spent time editing videos both for myself and for other people. This is because I have become really fascinated by vlogging. That's not really true though. I am not fascinated. I just really want to do it. I think it would be a whole lot of fun. So I'm going to.

I've already got a youtube and all kinds of stuff. I'm just gonna start vlogging. Which I am sure I am gonna feel pretty stupid doing it at first, because heck, I'm just gonna be recording myself talking to, well, me. But I figured that I have so much fun leaving videos to other people, and I have so much fun watching videos of other vloggers, that I might be able to do this.

But yes. I think I am going to vlog.

In other news:

School is pretty easy this year. I feel like I'm not doing anything because, well, I'm not really. I go to classes, and I turn in assignments(most of them anyway) but I am taking a super easy class load, and there isn't much homework (although I should be practicing my clarinet which I'm not because I am dropping clarinet next semester and switching to percussion).

Social things are going okay I guess. Some people think I am a control freak attention whore because I like to plan parties and I don't let people help clean up because hey, you're a guest and shouldn't have to do any work (but this is actually a fairly long story about how I hate how inconsiderate people are and because of that I come across as a control freak attention whore douche-bag apparently). But that is just a tiny portion of my social life right now. Everything is pretty good in general. Some friends transfered away this semester, which has been sad, especially in the case of my friend Tim because he is awesome and I don't think that he is having that great of a time where he is right now and is struggling, but I try to get him up here to hangout and relax some times. And then Kirsten is studying abroad right now and I really miss her. We spent a lot of time together over the summer and I want to see her again soon, but I have to wait until January :(.
Andrew and I broke up. Kinda. I think. We were never officially boyfriend and boyfriend. We both liked each other and we went on a few dates. But Andrew decided he wasn't ready for a relationship. He has been feeling really homesick and he thought there was too much change going on in his life, especially having never dated a boy before. The reason I say that we kinda broke up though is because it's been a week (two weeks?) And no one really knows. We have told a few people (like 4), but everyone else still thinks that we are going out. I am hoping that this means that we might get back together soon, but if not that's okay too (Although I obviously would prefer to be with him). (Also no one [Mostly Anna and Jessica L] be mad at him. He is awesome and we still spend a lot of time together, even just one on one time, and I do think that we might get back together, we just need to take things a lot slower [not that things were moving that quickly before, we were just at a holding hands and falling asleep on each other when we sat next to each other on the couch stage])

This is getting rather long. And I didn't really mean to tell you guys about Andrew. But. Yeah.

Starting a vlog.

Talk to you soon

Heaven: Can someone please show some humanity!

I know that I'm always talking bullshit, that I like to have more fun than I care about "the future." It's kinda true, I love to have fun, I love to do my own thing. I care more about feeling fulfilled based on what I want to do rather than what is expected of me. My definition of success is different than most of yours, I think.

But who am I to say, we're all on different paths.

But you know what, I actually do care about school. Up to this point, I have not had a good, solid college experience. In comparison to CSU Stanislaus, UC Riverside is the best thing that ever happened to me educationally (although I feel like Mr. Huth and Mr. Tribble come to mind even more than UCR). If I could keep going to UC Riverside and have everything that I have at home-- a happy home, a silly dog, great friends, good music, and enjoyable weather-- well, I wouldn't waste a heartbeat trying to transfer back in. It's not like that though, I know.

CSU Stanislaus is by far the worst school I can imagine. I have been shown kindness and compassion by very few people in this school. The majority of the time, staff members are rude, rude, RUDE! UGH! I can't get over how many times I have been brushed off, have been talked AT rather than TO, and have had all of my questions COMPLETELY ignored. Not to mention, I have been called HEATHER by almost every single one of these people, even though my name is featured within the emails at least three times. This did not happen ONCE at UC Riverside. At UCR, every single staff member-- professor, janitor, counselor, technician, gardener-- every single staff member showed kindness and compassion to their students, and the students at UC Riverside were all able to come together and be part of something at the same time as being individuals doing our own thing. I guess what I am trying to say is that the students and staff at UCR work together as a community rather than an a competetive business establishment. People care there, I take pride in being a community-oriented person.

At this school, I have not seen any community. The academic advisor assigned to me has refused me help, and after asking her three questions in three different emails, she has not answered ANY of my questions and refuses to, saying, "I can only advise within the major, I can only advise within the major." Okay, yeah, well I am a fucking English major! YOU CAN FUCKING ADVISE ME BECAUSE I AM A FUCKING ENGLISH MAJOR!!! Fuck! This lady even called me Heather successively-- isn't she an English professor? Isn't she supposed to be able to READ AND COMPREHEND?!

I have been trying to see someone about changing my major from English to a science, but I still would like to discuss English since I am three years into my education. I have a lot of things I want to discuss SOON so I don't keep wasting my time and money immersed in a field I no longer am passionate about. Don't get me wrong-- I love English, I really do, but my path is winding away from it now and I know it. I am going back to my roots. I want to study plants and animals, not words in books. Everything in highschool that I wanted to be-- a biologist, an engineer, an architect-- they were all things based on science and math, two subjects that I was not so good at. But still, I wanted to be those things more than I ever wanted to be an English teacher. I've been convincing myself into something that was a "safe zone", something that I have always been good at. But it's not my passion anymore. Maybe if I were still a Creative Writing student, things would be different. English is not for me.

And I can't find one person who is willing to go that extra mile to help me figure it out. Where is the humanity in this school? What is America breeding? Why is there so much competition and contempt between people? Why can't everybody just be good to eachother?