Friday, March 31, 2017

dear little body of mine, 

whew. i love you. i try to tell you i love you every day. i try to tell you i love you within the first two steps of my run because it is actually amazing to me that you can run at all. every doctor ever told me i shouldnt ever run. actually, every doctor ever told me i shouldn't be alive. but that is too much to unpack for one letter.

 this letter is about my 102 pound body. it is small. my hands are nearly child sized. but, despite all the negative words, i do love my little body. but little body, right now you are broke as hell. and i'm sorry for that. but also, needing you to be healed soon. 

my insides are literally falling apart. nearly every organ is messed up. which, if you think about it, is actually pretty amazing that my little body can be so synchronized that it fails in unison. i digress. little body, please stop failing me. i eat healthy. i see a chiropractor weekly, i exercise, i soak in vitamin D and even recently have started using sunscreen. I'm just trying to do all the things i want to do, adventurous and mundane, and you are making that pretty difficult. 

i'm not sure what you need. i'm not sure if you need medicine, if you need voodoo medicine, if you need a vacation, if you need a swift kick in the pants, or what. let a sister know. i'll do what i can to take care of you better. i'll do whatever you want. i am doing the best i can though. we've come 26 years together, surely you want to hold on quite a bit more time? 

little body of mine, i'll try to listen to you more and continue telling you i love you. but please don't fail me now. 

love, 
your concerned and sick owner

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

here is a secret. part of me actually likes fighting with my fiancĂ©. before you get your panties in a wad  hear me out. Brandon and I rarely fight. I am SURE this will change and we are soon to spend all of our days together and surely things will occur. we have been dating 15 months and engaged for 10 days. while dating we had honestly probably 2 fights. one knock out drag out fight, and another where I got mad and we talked about it and it was over. for the first six months of dating we didn't fight. at all. literally. and i would talk to my friends and say "i want Brandon and I to fight." and they'd look at me like I had three heads which you may be looking at your screen right now and thinking the same thing.

here is why: I wanted to see how we would fight. Would we yell? Would we listen well? Would we be honest about things? Would things come out in fights that we had been holding in and building resentment about without ever expressing them until the lid came off the pot and we fought? Would we seek forgiveness? Would we need space? Would he push me to tell him what was wrong when I inevitably said "nothing" when asked?

I'm not always great at sharing my feelings. I'm really great at being honest until I actually feel hurt about something. Then I close up like a little clam. My poor family knows the struggle of my silent treatments, refusing to actually acknowledge hurtful things. I've tried hard to get better at letting people in in the moment. The first time we fought I remember driving around in silence with Brandon, who surely did not actually know why I was mad or refusing to talk, but who has always been very gracious and patient in all things. I remember him saying something to the effect of "ok yeah you can be mad but when we get to (insert destination here) we need to talk about this." He gave me space but also acknowledged what needed to happen without me even telling him that's what I needed.

This weekend (7 days after getting engaged) we had a huge fight. The subject of the fight mattered in the moment, but it doesn't matter now. What does matter now is that Brandon listened really well, he apologized, and he gave me a real plan of how to change the situation, he gave me endless words of affirmation, and at the end of it all when I was feeling worn out, sad, and semi sheepish for how I handled things, he gave me constant reassurance that it was all ok and that it was going to continue to be ok. He gave me space to be honest about what hurt me. At one point I could tell he was super frustrated with me and he could have easily reacted poorly but he didn't. I don't mean any of this patronizingly like oh pat on the head good boy Brandon. All this to say, we fought really well.  Yes, he did something that hurt me, VERY unintentionally and indirectly, but we fought well. Through my tears, through him letting me verbally process why things hurt me so badly, and through holding me tightly.

I'm CLEARLY no saint (see above paragraph) and I am sadly certain that I am going to hurt Brandon way worse than he hurt me on Sunday. I don't want to ever hurt him but I reckon it'll happen. I am hopeful and pray that I will have as much grace as he has shown me.

Brandon is also really good at carrying on with life. Yeah, it sucked to fight on Sunday but he didn't dwell on it (that I know of...). Without this blog probably a month from now we wouldn't even remember it. Similar to how I can't recall all the details of the other 2 fights we've had. We are good at choosing love and joy and are so excited about our lives together that we aren't trying to live in the crap times. When asked how my weekend was yesterday by my best pal Sarah in passing I said Brandon and I had a fight and she said unless it was funny or very important to our relationship I didn't need to tell her about it because it is over and we are ok. And that is very good advice.

So, fighting sucks, and it is hard and sad but also can be really great to see how you and your person react and carry on in love in the midst of it all.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

about a month ago brandon and started a little vegetable garden. i told my friends and family i was very nervous about this. i'm not too good with plants. like i killed an aloe plant after a year and those you should not be able to kill that easily. brandon was president of his future farmers of america club in high school so he assured me he wouldn't lead me or our plants astray. i should also note that the whole month of february was like 70 degrees so we were pretty stoked about this and confident winter had melted away.

we planted them in 30 little pots, spinach, hot peppers, green peppers. then brandon left. like i said, that was almost a month ago and i still text him every day asking him what to do. is it too cold, is it too hot, should i water them, what if it rains and i watered them, are they ok, why are they flopping over are they dying why haven't they all germinated yet? he's very patient and kind and answers all my questions.

i have started referring to them as my babies. because, clearly i'm insane. and again, brandon is very patient and does not remind me that these are not really babies he just goes with it. i bring them and in outside every day and water them and tell them i love them. if i'm having a bad day at work i come home at lunch and sit on my patio with them and love them and they make me feel better.

yesterday at the end of my work day i looked out the window and it was snowing and i literally yelled MY BABIES and grabbed my bag and ran out the door. (have i mentioned that i'm clearly insane). i sped home and got my little plants inside. they looked happier than normal actually i think they liked the snow a bit. it was only like 10 minutes so it was new for them. aww babies first snow!!

this morning i was making breakfast and they were sitting in their boxes on top of my washer and dryer and i told them that they should be grateful that they are allowed to come inside when it is cold out because there is a lot of really sad daffodils outside right now all droopy and sad because it has been below freezing the past few nights. so i told them to shape up and be grateful for what they have. as if they care because really they are plants hannah, they are plants.

but then i told myself the same thing. that i needed to be grateful for things. because gratitude changes everything. so, today i am grateful for these little plant babies and that they teach me funny lessons and i am grateful for everyone who doesn't make fun of me for talking to my little plants and telling them that i love them.

Why would I ever want to write a book? Who would ever want to read a book I wrote? the market right now is definitely oversaturated with chr...