To me, with love.

As you all know, and as I have said a million gazallion times: happiness is a choice that we make. And I am here to talk to you about finding that happiness within YOURSELF. Not in or from anyone else.... but from you... to you. As RuPaul so eloquently states: "Honey, if you can't love yourself, how the hellll are you going to love somebody else!!" and he (she?) is so right! (Can I get a HALELU?!) You have to start with you. You have to love YOU.

Imagine this: You see that boy from across the room and butterflies well up in your stomach. You smile at your best friend. You go to a concert and get chills. Now all of these things are well and good but what if... now just what if you could conjure up those feelings of joy and love and connectedness all on your own? Wouldn't life be great?! If you could just jam around your house alone, not thinking of anyone else, and just smile because you are so darn happy with your life? (And maybe not even with your life, but with yourself in general...)

Now I guess this is sounding kind of silly and maybe even slightly narcissistic. But lately I have been finding myself seeking out more and more alone time, and coming out of that time alone feeling refreshed and quite honestly, happy. This is the total opposite of how I used to be: dependent on others for happiness and distraction. I remember even only a few months ago being APPALLED at my friend Ben for saying he rode around in his car with no music on and thinking "how are you ALONE with your thoughts for that long without going completely INSANE!!?"

But, lately I have found comfort inside my own head for the first time in a long freakin' time. It is like I have cleaned out and dusted the attic that is my mind. And I have only brought things up to this attic that deserve a place.

And I have made a little space up there just for ME.

Me? But wait Olivia, I thought that after that last post you had no idea WHO YOU ARE? And well, that is still pretty much true... but I am working on it. I am working each day to do a little something to find out who I am and to build a better (happier, more independent) Olivia. I want to find her under these ten pounds that I have gained post-chemo and under this haircut that, while people say it is adorable, I hate like every 3 minutes. I want to find her behind the thick walls I put up. I want to find her underneath all my BIG TALK. I want to find her so that the word "cancer" in every lecture wont make me feel (imagine?) that one hundred side-ways glances dart my way. I want to find her and love her and make her happy. (Sorry if that got creepy...LOL)

So I have been running, everyday, and doing yoga, and studying in quiet library spots, and even driving in silence (sometimes...). But most importantly, I have been learning to love myself again. To be comfortable in my own skin. To shake off these doubts and fears. To feel good enough. For myself and no one else.

And it feels damn good, y'all.

lovelovelove,
Olivia

Little miss, do your best

Little miss, never rest

Little miss, be my guest, I'll make more anytime that it runs out

Little miss, you'll go far

Little miss, hide your scars
Little miss, who you are is so much more than you like to talk about

It's alright, it's alright, it's alright

Yeah, sometimes you gotta lose 'til you win

It's alright, it's alright, it's alright

It'll be alright again

It'll be alright again, I'm okay

It'll be alright again, I'm okay (I'm okay)

It'll be alright again, I'm okay

Welcome back, Olivia.

Hello new school year. New hair cut. New friends. Oh and new Olivia. I am back in Memphis and I am better than ever. You know, thinking back, I haven't felt this good/healthy/awake in over a year. It is just crazy to me how I got so used to just feeling BAD, and tired, and sick. Even before the crazy diagnosis, I remember thinking in September... "you know it isn't normal for a 23 year old to go to bed at 9:30 every night and take 3 hour naps every afternoon...OR MAYBE I'M JUST IN MED SCHOOL??!?" HA! I am amazed I even had the time to sleep that much and do well first semester anyway (except that our first semester wasn't THAT bad... and it is nothing like second year, which is studystudystudy all day all the time.)

I just feel so good. So alive. So happy. So everything. It is almost overwhelming. It IS overwhelming.

Sitting in church this Sunday I became so overwhelmed with happiness I actually (silently, and rather stealthily) burst into tears during communion. You see, before, when I was sick, that is the quiet time during Mass when I would pray for God to make me whole again. For Him to cure me from the inside out and to fill me with the strength that I so desperately sought. But there I was this Sunday.  Just sitting there and feeling SO WHOLE.  Knowing that my prayers had been received and answered.

But not knowing where to go from there.

I am healthy and emotional and silly and loud and snarky and passionate. I feel like I have been given back my life, and with that, my old identity. But WHO AM I? Because I do not feel like any of the old Olivias at all. But more like a completely different and changed and affected girl. And I don't think I want to be crazy Sophomore Olivia or motherly Senior Olivia or dependent-on-boyfriend Olivia or any of the other ones that I have either forgotten or dare not share with the world. I want to be something bigger, something more. Something more... me.

How do I achieve this new level of "me"-ness, you ask? Well, something in church really struck me this weekend and kind of answers that exact question:

***
Brothers and sisters:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.

So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. (Ephesians 4:30-5:2)
***

There it is, plain as day. Let go of everything that is not love. Let your bitterness for your past escape from your heart and breathe through moments of passing anger. Life isn't about holding onto evil, but rather overcoming evil and stepping into the light. And I think that once you learn to live in this light (as a friend so eloquently wrote in her own blog recently...), in love, in happiness, in compassion, then you can finally be who you are truly meant to be.

I guess I don't really know who I am anymore. When something defines your life for so long and is so permeating, it's hard to let the real you show through all of that. And now that I am stripped bare of these curtains that I hid behind, I am left standing there front and center in a great big spotlight. Naked to myself and the rest of the world. Finally able to see myself, without pretenses or excuses. It is just me, whoever that is now and whoever that turns out to be.

And so here I am now, sitting on my bed and smiling to myself like an idiot. Because I just cannot help but feel so blessed to have my life back. But not just my life "back." I feel so blessed to have this glorious opportunity at a new beginning. To prove to myself and the world that I am back and with a vengence. I am going to go far and do big BIG things with this new lease on life.

Who ever I am, I am happy, so deliriously happy standing in this new found light. Living in love. Letting go of bitterness and basking in compassion.

I am so me. And it feels great to be back.

With all my love,
Liv

Miss Almost.

I blame Corie for all these emotional posts because she told me Grey;s Anatomy would be "a good summer show to watch"... but geez I just loved this song when I heard it at the end of my most recently watched episode...

Miss Halfway- Anya Marina

You oughta hear the mirror in my house
You oughta fear her pretty, pretty mouth
Says I'm imperfect in every way
Miss Almost
Miss Maybe
Miss Halfway

All my friends in L.A. got jobs on Melrose Place
I play Replacements songs and sigh
A waitress in the sky

You oughta hear the things I've been thinking
You oughta swim in a heart that is sinking
You try to break me with all the things you say
Miss Almost
Miss Maybe
Miss Halfway

Tony makes 60k, invests in IRAs
But I'm busy making paper airplanes out of resumes

But I'm gonna burn
I'm gonna shine and multiply
I'm gonna fill up the great divide
You'll never break me with all the things you say
Miss Almost
Miss Maybe
Miss Halfway

I'm gonna burn a pie now and then
And I'm gonna say the wrong things to your friends
I'm gonna burn and shine and multiply
And when I do, you're gonna see me in her eyes
I'm gonna burn and shine and multiply
I'm gonna fill up the great divide
You'll never break me with all the things you say
Miss Almost
Miss Maybe
Miss Halfway