Don't worry

Something that I've had trouble realizing is that one decision does not define you.
If you listen to a Justin Bieber or Avril Lavigne song that doesn't make you mainstream or put you in some specific group. If you have a one night stand that doesn't make you a slut. If you have a panic attack and stay in on a Friday night that doesn't make you a recluse loser who has no friends. People aren't so easily defined and doing something bad or risky doesn't mean you have to continue doing that. Just because someone sees you do something doesn't mean you are defined by that action. So what if you go out and act crazy but then next time you are quiet and don't feel like talking. Don't put pressure on yourself to fulfill some role you feel like you have to fulfill. If you are known as the shy girl don't feel like you can't do something loud and obnoxious sometimes because people expect you to be a certain way. Fuck people's expectations and do what you want because you have enough pressure on you as it is without the added pressure to fulfill someone else's image of you.

Everyday

use the energy you would spend on regretting, on doing something you want to do today.

use the energy for hating someone or holding a grudge to forgiving and letting go.

use the energy for worrying on being thankful for the moment and breathing in the simplicity of being.

Wrote this for myself. Need to be reminded sometimes.

The way I see it you have to be able to have fun by yourself. You have to be okay knowing you’ll be lonely sometimes. You’ll have to make the best out of situations that didn’t turn out like you hoped they would. You have to beat off jealousy and self pity because they are easy paths to sadness and not worth it at all. You have to keep yourself from sinking into hopeless daydreams as much as they satisfy you’re longings. You have to stay away from phrases like “What if I would have…”, “I wish…” Instead of wishing and fantasizing, make something happen, anything. It doesn’t have to be a huge extravaganza. Maybe just a walk in a garden with friends. Now a days we see all these lives and people that seem perfect to us on TV, in movies, on Tumblr, on Facebook, and the reality is that you will never be them. Your life will never be a storybook or a romantic comedy. It’s you. You are your life and you are beautiful and unique and one of a kind. So don’t let yourself go to waste waiting for prince charming to kiss you or Noah to write you 365 letters. We live in a time of perfect endings and carefully written characters that always know what to say and always end up madly in love. Reality is beautiful, but it’s not perfectly manicured with background music and cinematic moments. Find the beauty in YOU, in YOUR life. Sit outside and just think, soak it in, you are your own story without an audience, and that’s ok because we don’t need indie photographs to know we had a good time, we don’t need a hundred likes on our profile picture or a bunch of notes to know we are beautiful, we don’t need someone to save us from sadness, we don’t need a significant other to make us whole. We are here. This is it. Don’t wait for approval, don’t wait at all. Start being happy. 

Pistachios

My grandpa loves pistachios. Every time I went to visit him we would sit and crack them open together. He told me something I haven’t forgotten to this day. He said that the best ones were the ones that were hard to break out of their shells. He would save those for last and then go get the nutcracker to open them up. They took that extra effort but they were worth it. And now I understand he wasn’t just explaining this so I would know which nuts to eat, he was making an analogy for myself. I know I’m not easy to understand, I’m not easy to get at, I don’t warm up right away, and I can be cautious at first, but someone that cares enough to make the extra effort will get what I have to offer and they will be lucky. 

You have always been here

If you are here now, you have always been here. Everyone begins as a potential existence, the breathe of your father as he chased your mother down in the airport to tell her he loved her, the sun shining down through the clouds making your grandfather realize he needed your grandmother like the crops needed the sun, the bleeding ink in a love letter from your great grandmother to your great grandfather, the sweat, the tears, the glances of love and passion all lead to you. All of those people that happened to fall in love and to have children, all of that love has built up to you. Isn’t that a lovely thought? I know that it all wasn’t true love, it all wasn’t perfect but even the love of other people could’ve influenced something that lead to you. You are more than you. You are everything that has happened, and I like to believe you are everything that will happen too. You are such an intricate, unique combination of moments and smells and sounds so don’t ever think you are just plain old boring you. Everyone that is here today is here because of those little moments when people made decisions and they all lead to this point, where you are, just where you belong. Cherish your moments because they aren’t lost, they will help build someone else someday too. Can’t you hear her laughing? 

Guts

Why not want it all? Stop holding yourself back. Believe you can change the world, or atleast someone’s world. Stop being afraid of going broke, getting your heart broken, being judged, or feeling anxious. Don’t worry about messing up, making mistakes, failing miserably and being made fun of for having dreams that are too big for your seemingly meager circumstances. Humans are small, look at the stars up there, the sun, the moon are so far away and we are just tiny specks in the scheme of things. So why not have big thoughts and dreams? They will course through your body so hard they make you shake. That’s being alive and once you realize that you’ll feel something so powerful. Not your heart, not your mind, right there in your stomach because you’ll finally realize they are there.

Guts. 

Glowing in the dark

There’s always going to be someone who’s seventeen and on the brink of their life with a perfect body and the closet of your dreams. There will always be people you hope to be but can never become with perfect boyfriends and no worries. And I know that Hallmark cards always say this and it’s become something sappy and overused but there is only one you. You’re the only one who brought milkshakes to your friends when they were sick with letters decorated with stickers. You’re the only one who used to be scared of everything but now would bungee jump or eat some strange food without thinking twice. You’re the only one who has flying dreams over and over again but wants their super power to be invisibility. You’re the only one who writes on their hand when they get nervous or bites their hangnails when they feel uncomfortable. Maybe other people do or think these things but I guarantee that there is such a unique combination of tiny little things inside you that make you different. Maybe someone kissed your forehead on a Saturday night when you were sick and it made you feel like you were safe so you smiled and made a wish on the glow-in-the-dark stars that one day someone would make you feel like that forever. There’s a freckle on the inside of your right ring finger waiting to be discovered and map of creases on your hands that someone once read and said they indicated you would die in a car crash at 33. But you still drive over the speed limit with the music blaring and the windows down. Life isn’t the experience, you are and that’s what you need to realize. He might break it off at three in the morning leaving you in shambles with his t-shirt on but then someone else will realize that you could never be replaced. It’s hard because we all collide and overlap but we all need to know that we are our own piece of this big, confusing world and without us there could be no finished product to frame and put on the wall. 

Nothing is safe

It's like you're heading at a wall at 90 mph but the brakes are broken.
It's like you're on the edge of the cliff and your footing isn't steady.
It's not being able to control what might happen.
It's this thing coursing through your body and crippling your mind.
It's butterflies turned into bombs, exploding at any time.
It's nerves into nightmares, taking your thoughts to dark places.
Nothing is safe.

That's what it feels like when it overcomes me.
Nothing is safe, not even my own body, not even my own mind.
And how am I supposed to trust myself when this could happen at any time?
How can I trust myself when I've said "It'll be okay" a million times?
Just to see how "okay" can turn out to be my head in a toilet
Or my reflection in the mirror with terrified eyes
Begging myself not to fly away
Telling myself to stay on the ground and fight

But it gets tiring fighting yourself
It takes a toll on your emotions
On your body and your relationships
So you swallow the pills they told you to take
And you meditate with your back against the wall
The therapist tells you to stand tall

So maybe ignore it, or maybe face it
But "it" should just get the hell out of my life
Because I'm sick of it's sly little smile
Telling me that it can take what's important
And exciting and turn it into fear

But hope is the only thing stronger than fear
And it's what I've held onto
And what I'll keep holding onto
Maybe molding that fear into something
I can put on my wall and not feel scared

Why I love Taylor Swift

I remember when I first heard "Ours" and I didn't really like it. I thought it was cheesy and I had never liked songs with a country twang. But soon enough I grew to adore it because it's just one of those songs that you can't help to love, even if you have sophisticated music taste or you show disdain towards anything girly or feel-good. I have a great video of my friend and I singing to it and doing very literal hand motions. It reminds me of those nights when we made stupid videos of anything that made us laugh or songs we loved. And there is also a video of us doing a very emotional rendition of "Teardrops On My Guitar" which is a cute song that can remind anyone of a crush that they desperately wanted to notice them. It's riddled with that sappy teenage girl angst, "he's a song in the car I keep singin' don't know why I do". I guarantee everyone had a crush like this when they were fifteen or sixteen, and maybe he or she made you cry, maybe you kept liking them even though you knew it was a lost cause. The songs on her first album are country fluff and innocent pop diddies but I don't care if they might lack emotional depth and true meaning because they are the kinds of songs that you like when you're in High School and you still want to be a carefree kid and yet you're imagining yourself falling in love and boys are starting to become a bigger part of your life.

"Love Story" was my second favorite song for a long time (after "Float On" by Modest Mouse). Like every little girl, I don't care if you didn't play with dolls or you cut your Barbie's hair, you wanted to be a princess. Maybe a badass princess that fought off dragons, but every little girl wants to be that special person in someone's life. The cliche princess falling in love with a prince story is a cliche for a reason. I know I've written and imagined so many princess stories and the melody of this song is just so indescribably catchy and fun to sing, "baby just say yes". It's a versatile song that I've listened to while staring out the window on a road trip or screamed with my friends on a Friday night while we had the windows down and nothing on our minds but the darkened road in front of us. "You'll never have to be alone", those words don't have to be a boy's, to me they are my friends beside me. All of us trying to navigate being a teenage girl in the complicated web of High School and rumors and boys.

"You Belong With Me" makes me smile with the first beginning chords. I remember driving to "teen clubs" with my friends and just screaming it at the top of our lungs. "Been here all along, so why can't you see?! You belong with me!" Every girl has thought this about a boy at one point in their life. Also this song's beat is impossible to resist. If you have a heart, if you remember your youth, if you've ever danced around your room singing into a hairbrush, you know exactly the feeling that this song gives you. It's like bouncing up and down on your bed, spinning in your favorite dress, looking at your friends hair blowing in the wind and singing off-key. These songs are my memories, from a time when I had no idea who I was or what I was doing, when the world was pressing against me from all sides, and they were simple. They were these minutes of simple happiness that made me feel things that maybe I didn't on an ordinarily dull school day.

These songs might be primarily about guys, but songs like "Fifteen" explain more than falling in love. They have that edgy innocence, the feelings of naivete and heartbreak when you realize that people lie and deceive you in order to get what they want. Sure these songs made me want a boyfriend, but what doesn't these days? Taylor never promoted having boyfriends, she was simply telling her stories and even looking into the future hoping for relationships that would make her a better person.

I'm not excluding guys, because I think guys can like her music too, but obviously coming from a girl's point of view I think Taylor is singing for all of us girls. She has such a good way of putting these lyrics that seem like they are from her diary (and she writes her OWN songs so this is sort of true) into these happy, heartfelt songs that make things make sense or even if they don't make sense I feel like my own feelings have meaning. That's why Taylor is so popular, she makes you feel like she's sharing something personal and it makes you feel like you can share your stories too.

"Fearless" will never get old, every time I listen to it I want to be braver and bolder. The album with the same name is probably my favorite of them all. "Best Day" is also on this album and it is the sweetest song about childhood and the bond between mother and daughter. My mom cried listening to it, and I put it in a video of clips of my mom and I for mother's day one year. Needless to say it was hit and I watch it sometimes when I need to reminded how much I'm loved and how lucky I was to have a happy childhood. "I had the best days with you." I started liking this song around the same time I was looking into colleges and it was a nice reminder of my past and how I got to the place I was with the family I had.


"Never Grow Up" on the "Speak Now" album is a similar song, but is just generally about how the world changes you as you get older. I think the message of staying young and not rushing into being an adult is important these days when I feel like the ages for doing adult things become younger and younger. "Enchanted" is one of my favorites from this album, it's about that first meeting between two people and how that connection can be instant. This album is more contemplative and not as peppy but it was still a nice accompaniment through my last remnants of High School. My senior quote was actually from "Innocent", "Today is never too late to be brand new". I think it's such a nice idea, because going through High School we are so scared of making mistakes, but we are going to, it's a given. So much pressure is put on us, we are supposed to figure out our whole lives, and we're seen as almost-adults but were so confused. We do stupid things and we don't take chances or we take paths that lead us away from who we really are, and sometimes we can't help to think "Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything and everybody believed in you?" "Lost your balance on a tightrope, but it's never too late to get it back".

Taylor's newest album "Red" shows her maturity, it shows her growth and her versatility. Even though my friends and I are older we still rock out to her songs like teenage girls. We can still unload those feelings of pent up emotion and frustration about all the things in our lives that are still so similar to High School (because face it people in college are not much more mature). All the people who have started to hate her lately because it's a cool fad, and "she's not country!" or "she dates so many people!" (btw this does not make her slut you don't know about her sex life), or "she's so annoying!" Yes, I don't know her personally but I do know that she is independent (writes her own music etc), she gives a good image which is hard to find these days, and everyone who says they hate her music are the ones who are dancing around their rooms with it blasting in their earbuds, or they should be because I think it would lighten them up a little bit. It's not a guilty pleasure because I don't think you need to feel guilty. It's wholesome goodness that I'm not ashamed to love.

I have friends who have gotten through breakups with her music, who have used it to battle their illness, and I know I have personally used it as a mood elevator. It has made me feel better so many times and it's brought me together with friends and brought myself happiness. "22" is that song basically saying "screw everyone and dance with your friends" which is a good motto going through your twenties because sometimes everything is just so tangled up and messed up and pressures on a different kind of way than in your teens. But turning on Taylor Swift always makes me feel like I'm riding in the car with my best friends and we don't care about our destination, but just the wind in our faces and the music blasting. Her music will always make me think of dancing around my childhood bedroom forgetting about my anxiety, or college apps or stupid crushes. It makes me feel like "everything will be alright if we just keep dancing" and it's that cheesy escape that every girl (or guy) needs sometimes. There's a time and place for Bon Iver or other artists with complex emotions, but his songs are all about "Emma" right? 

Whether she's writing a song about a little boy who died of cancer, "Ronan" or a song for "Hunger Games" about war and tragedy, she has other songs besides the ones about guys.

Now I'm going to go listen to "I Knew You Were Trouble" and forget about my two tests and paper for a little while. You should try it, cause Taylor can be a cure for those Sunday Blues.

~~Rachael