The New Year

   When I logged on to this blog, I wasn't expecting much.  The last time I had checked I had around 4800 views, so I figured that number wouldn't have changed much considering the fact that I have been off the grid for just about two months now.  However, surprises are real.  I logged on and was baffled when I saw that #backontheyak had accumulated a total of over 5150 views.  So obviously this blog is not a lost cause and there are still a few of you out there who have an interest in what I have to say.  Thank you for not abandoning me.
   It's January 4, 2016.  How crazy is that? I remember the first time I really realized the magnitude of a New year.  I was on my way to a dance with my YMCA Princess group and the year was 2001, soon to be 2002.  I remember thinking, "2002? That's wild."  I would have to write a different year on all of my papers at school and the teachers would have to erase the pre-set 2001 that had been written on all of the white boards.  One of my friends in the limo said, "Imagine what it will feel like when it's 2010!" I remember scoffing and thinking, "Yeah right, we're never going to get to 2010."  Well here we are in 2016...
   Allow me to have a moment of nostalgia.
   Every year I hear people say how year ____ is going to be "their year." As if they had accomplished nothing and had no source of happiness in the previous year.  Well among all you folks saying that you're leaving everything behind in 2015 and are determined to make 2016 the best year of your life, I'm here to tell you that 2015 was my year.  I kicked the year off by mustering up the courage to attend college.  I did, and I killed it.  Throughout the year I continued to make all A's in my classes, proving to those around me that I wasn't a basket case and I was capable of getting my act together.  Over the summer, I was responsible for maintaining the life of two young boys; they taught me patience and compassion and for once in my life I began to consider that motherhood could be a part of my later adult life.  That job gave me enough funds for me to singlehandedly support my self for the remainder of the year, which felt pretty awesome.  In between acing papers and raising two boys, I traveled alone visiting domestic places such as Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia, along with Washington D.C.  I built a better relationship with old friends and I learned to let go of those new friends who may not have been actual friends.  I obtained a new personal record for the amount of books read in a year, and beefed up on all sorts of walks of life.  I flooded my room with French vocabulary in an attempt to become more literate in a foreign language.  However, somewhere between all of those lines, I also found myself in another personal mental crisis.  I wasn't unhappy, per se, but I wasn't necessarily happy either.  Instead of pulling the plug on my own life or running away to India, I learned the importance of relying on my support system.  I found my footing in the eyes of those who truly loved me.  During the turbulence, I realized that maybe art wasn't the path I needed to live on, but rather a side path that I could find joy in when needed.  The path that I needed to live on, the path that was always in my life but I had never considered building a home on was English.  It has always been something I can be passionate about and it is a subject in which I have always thrived.  I realized that I don't need to be different or peculiar in order for people to find me interesting.  Rather, someone taught me that I am perfectly capable of being loved if I remain 100% true to myself.  This person also taught me that the world isn't always out to get you, and that everything that comes out of a person's mouth isn't always a lie.  This person is my precious Logan and he has given me more than either of us thought possible.  I am able to live with my past and the mistakes that I have made, but I am also able to see a future, which is a new thing that I find... pretty amazing.  There is some goodness and kindness left in the world, and for once in my life, I feel safe and secure and beautiful and loved.
   This was my 2015.  Like most years, I exited the year a much different person than when I entered it.  Honestly, I am exiting the year as a person I never planned on being.  That is not a bad thing; it is actually the greatest blessing I have ever been given.  I entered 2016 in the arms of someone I love under a sky full of colors and blasts, and I am excited to see what the rest of the year has to offer.  Obviously, I can't speak for the rest of the year, but today, I am happy.  I feel myself sliding back into that yak and that puts a smile on my face.
   So thank you to those who haven't given up on my blog.  Thank you to those who abandoned me.  Thank you to my boys for naming me the Battleship Queen and for telling me that you love me.  Thank you to my mother and my father for remaining patient and supportive while I adjust to myself.  Thank you to my sister for coming to me when I was in a dark place and bringing me light before it was too late.  Thank you to my Schloemer family for providing me with a home when mine was not an option.  Thank you to Logan for exceeding all expectations and for constantly sweeping me off my feet and for holding me and kissing my forehead whenever I have a breakdown.  Thank you to everyone who participated in building this stronger and wiser Jillianne that is leaving 2015 and entering 2016.  You are worth more than you know.

Melatonin Thoughts: Episode One

   So it's not even 2 o'clock in the morning here on my beautiful southern college campus and I am awake.  I'm not trying to shock you or anything; a college kid and the wee hours of the morning are no strangers.  But anyway, I'm lying (laying? (chickens lay eggs, Jillianne. Humans lie down. (Right?)) I honestly don't know.) in bed, waiting for my melatonin sleep-aid to kick in and I just thought I'd check in with everyone, make sure you're all alive and well.  Also, besides the fact that this drug puts me out *snaps fingers* like that, I am also going in between this page on my computer and the one that is educating me on Italian folklore, so forgive me if my writing is scattered stylistically.  I also have a small stack of Oreos on my bedside table that I'm enjoying while I wait for this medicine to do its job.  Fun fact: Melatonin is also used to treat anxiety along with lack of sleep.  So I find it kind of ironic that Oreos are my vice of choice, because I feel like if there's anything on this world that would decrease sleep and increase anxiety, it would be Oreos.  But hey, whatever.
   Aren't relationships weird?  It's like, one day everything changes.  I am currently in a relationship, with the wonderful Lo who was featured in an earlier post on this very blog in which you find yourself currently.  He is wonderful, he truly is.  He was sick today, so wish him well.  But anyway, every now and again I will look at him and I'll just have this one macro thought that's really a billion things but it only takes a second for me to get the idea:
   Long before I met Lo, I thought I had met the one.  I was much younger and I was in a very different place in my life.  I would listen to those who said things like "The people you meet in high school won't be in your long-term life" and "high school love isn't forever" and I was just like "you have no idea what you're talking about. But me, I know what I'm talking about. I know it. I'm right."  Well, I was wrong.  And I have never found more delight in being completely wrong.  I spent years determined and convinced that I was going to spend my life with this certain person.  Even after we broke up for the last time, I still thought that after many years we would find our way back to each other and be together again (clearly I've watched far too many John Hughes and Nicholas Sparks movies and I need to go read Tolstoy or something).  But then when I decided to take a semester off instead of starting school, I began to realize that maybe that future wasn't in the cards for me.  I couldn't understand.  Why couldn't that work out for me?  I had already been through hell for many different reasons.  When I start school in January, I expect things to turn around.  I'm not saying I wanted this guy to be at my door step, but I wanted a friend.  I couldn't take any art classes so I had to endure everything else.  I had no friends except for the ones I arrived with and my life was numb.  I didn't hate myself, which was refreshing, but I wasn't in love with myself either.  I also couldn't understand why I wasn't being approached with friendship offers; I'm cute, I'm charming.  Life wasn't going my way and I didn't see why.  By the end of the semester, I'm sick of it.  I begin to make plans to transfer in a year or two to a school where I am adored for my charm and cuteness: Savannah College for Art and Design.   Fall arrives.  I have an art class.  I expect to make a friend.  I also expect this semester to not differ heavily from my previous semester.  I still expect to be in bed by 8, watch a movie on HBO every other day, and finish a book a week.  Once again, I was wrong.
   All that time I spent crying and looking at the sky asking someone up there, "WHY?! Why can't I have the things that I want? Why is everything in my life going wrong?!" That same someone was silently laughing back at me, because little did I know, that everything was actually going very right.
   It's crazy how you can be fully independent one day, and then the next you have this other person that you find yourself dependent on.  I'm not saying I need Lo for my survival.  But I am saying that when he isn't with me, I find myself looking around feeling the same way I felt as a child whenever I left my lunchbox at home.  You can live a day without lunch, but the day is so much better with the lunch, and after a few days without it, you just turn bitter and empty and your friends start offering you their rejected carrot sticks as if that can fill the hole.  He has truly become my other half and that is the best feeling in the whole world.  I actually have someone who twirls me around in the street not because I like it, but because he likes it.  I have someone whom I can tell the weirdest stuff to (I'd give an example, but again, it's weird, and he gets the point).  It's more than having a best friend.  Because yeah, I have best friends and they're sensational, but Lo is my best friend and I'm also in love with him which makes it even better.
   So in those heavy moments when I look at him and smile, the gist of what I'm feeling is something along the lines of "I love you. And I'm so glad my life was so shitty because it was all part of the miracle that got me to you."
   That's not really where I thought this post would take me... All I'm saying is that if you're in a bad place right now, keep your head up.  It's around the corner and you have to trust the world.  Good things are coming, and you have to survive in order to see it.  I promise, it's worth your while.
   I'm out of Oreos, I'll talk to you guys later.

This Has Nothing To Do With Kayaking

   Forgive the blunt title, but I don't know how else to say it. And I wanted to make it clear before you read this and say, "What the hell?"  This post is not going to be as linear as the others.  It's going to be more of a stream of consciousness, so excuse me because I'm basically going to be rambling. 

   I am starting to think that I am going to start using this blog for telling stories about things other than kayaking.  I mean, of course stories about the yak will still be told.. but, maybe I could talk about other things, too.  That would make this blog less of a brand and sort of become more of a movement and much more personal than it has been.  I know I have shown emotion in previous posts and written about terribly sad things and such, but I mean I could talk about the real stuff if I wanted to. 

   Maybe I should give you some context here.  Two years ago it was suggested to me that I could have depression.  I laughed at the idea because it was so obvious.  People who don't have depression don't spend their nights begging that spirit in the sky to take them away, and then wake up disappointed when they're still here.  So yeah, I was depressed.  

   I like to think that I am a rather content person.  I am not fidgety and I don't treat my phone like an IV.  I am more than willing to lie in the grass for hours and watch the clouds roll by.  I do not get bored and I love a companion's company.  I am perfectly capable of being able to just be.  And for a while I thought that meant that I was happy.  Because, shouldn't contentment and happiness be the same thing?  Maybe it is more important to be content than it is to be happy; or maybe you need one to have the other.  I don't know anymore.  

   The thing people have to understand about depression is that it is not an easy fix.  The key to pulling oneself out of the dark is not the same for everyone and it is not the same key every time.  You can get yourself to happy times, but that same trick won't do it for you the next time.  After time and time of doing this, you can imagine how the motivation can disappear.  I was in better days for a while, long enough for me to get the crazy idea that it could stay like that.  Then one day I found myself with my x-acto knife pressed against my leg.  The shear fact that I was doing it scared me and I called my friend at 2 o'clock in the morning to meet me in my car.  We sat there for hours saying things that I didn't even know were inside of me and I cried and cried until I truly couldn't cry anymore.  I had my head pressed against the window and I remember looking over at her and seeing that she was crying more than I was.  I smiled a weak smile at her and said, "Please don't cry.  It's going to be okay."  She cried even more and said, "You're not the one who should be saying that right now."  When I told her I didn't know what to do, she gave the simple answer: Do what you did last time.  Oh, simple and sweet friend.  If only it was that easy.

   Depression is scary because it can morph so easily.  It lies to you and there is nothing worse than having something inside you that makes you believe you're better off dead.  You can be in the clear one moment and then drowning in the darkness the next moment.  Something like that does not have a simple solution.  You can't take a pill and call it a day.  They have medicines, yes, but all they do is compress the feeling.  You can still say "I want to die," but when you try to act on it, it feels like someone or something is holding you back.  Maybe that's not the worst thing, but it isn't good when you actually need to show emotion.  Emotion isn't a bad thing when it's not trying to kill you.  The medicine also compresses happiness.  You can still say "This is so fun, I want to smile," but something is holding you back.  

   Depression is also scary because it can make you feel badly for feeling badly.  It makes you feel selfish and whiney.  I have a wonderful family who loves me, wonderful friends who make me laugh, a wonderful boyfriend who accepts me for the toddler I am, and a wonderful cat who is always happy to see me.  But that doesn't mean I am happy.  I appreciate all of the wonderful things my life has been blessed with, but I do not appreciate the demon inside of me that thinks all of those things would be happier without me.  Depression lies.  And it is ruthless.  And it will spin something beautiful into something gray and lifeless.  

   When I found myself crying in my car at 3 in the morning, I don't know if I was more upset over the things I was saying, or the fact that I was upset again.  After I spent so much time putting myself together again.  Imagine if the king's horses and men did put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  They spent years gluing him back together, piece by piece and shard by shard.  When they finally finished, they rejoiced and celebrated! Can you believe it? They accomplished an impossible task.  But then, someone tripped and poor Humpty Dumpty fell to his death once again.  The horses and men stood, looking at the chips by their feet with their mouths hung open.  The idea of spending all of that time again had no luster at all.  But would it be worth it?  Or should they just go home and call it a day?

   

   Maybe #BackOnTheYak could be a metaphor of sorts.  Kind of like the phrase: Back on the wagon.  I'll post updates: happy ones and sad ones.  The ultimate goal is to get back on the yak.  That could be the yak, literally, or a different one.  The yak being a place of original and pure happiness.  Because I'd really like to get back there..