Eight Years

I started this blog in December 2005 that was eight years ago, EIGHT!
Wow.
In that time I've graduated high school, dealt with death in a completely new way, gone away to college, gone out of the country on my own, graduated college, worked for a whole year like a normal person with an 8-5 job, gone back to school and applied to veterinary school.
Also in that time I've watched 2 nieces grow older and 3 nephews be born and grow.
I've gone from being a teenager to being officially in my mid-twenties.
Thirty is looming ever closer mostly because I will be looking it right in the eye if I manage to get into and through vet school.
But while I know I have changed in the last 8 years, its only been this past 1 year that I feel more changed than ever before.
I still have a lot left to experience but last year I was still kind of stuck and angsty and worried about relationships. Kind of like, I have to have a romantic relationship to save face in the world. I need to be coupled off with a person for X amount of time for it to be worthy and then maybe I will be happy. Thats where I was last year.
Thats not where I am this year.
This year I am decidedly less angsty. My life is happy, though I could stand to move out of my parents house- I dont push it because I know it will happen, eventually. I have friends getting engaged and married left and right and I am genuinely happy. Like whoa- who knew that I would be excited to go to so many weddings? And I even look forward to them believing that there won't be someone on my arm. I am me, I am actually a pretty cool, though oftentimes boring person and I am ok with who I am. Really. For like the first time I am happy being me. Just me. Period.
I am not looking for that relationship to define myself as a normal person- lets just go with the fact that I am not normal in that respect though incredibly, totally normal in other respects.
I am better at depending on myself for support- I dont always like it and there are times when all I want in this world is a hug, but I get through it.
And while I might be in a holding pattern right now as far as where my life is going. I will know definitively my moves for at least the next year in approximately 106 days.
Times are a changing, people. Hold on!

Reduced

Her ankle is broken. Her state relatively fragile.
Now she is safely recuperating from surgery in the hospital and we are all home safe.
Time for me to cry myself to sleep.
Fear for what could have been.
Fear because the hospital she's at is the hospital I last visited when my other grandma fell.
Fear because Grandma Carnes died at 85, Grandma Albert is now 85.
Fear of the unknown.
But relief that she's fixed.