Holy business!

I haven't blogged in ages!! Not cool.
I've tried before now, I really have, but I always end up deleting what I wrote. I guess I just haven't known how to say anything that I want to say.
But, here I am. It's 12:03 am and my nails are wet.
It's summer. Aside from November, June/July is my favorite chunk out of the entire year. There's something about summer that is so sweet, but in a way that aches because you know it's going to end too quickly.
I'm doing my best to savor it.

I suppose I'll catch you up on some of what's gone down during the rest of my spring semester and the first half of my 20th year of life.
I donated blood for the first time. I'm B+. I'll probably do it again. They gave me free frozen yogurt after, so.
I changed my major to English with a creative writing concentration. I gave being a Psych major the old college try (hehee...), but honestly, I'm just not the type of person that can give my time and energy to something that I don't have a fire in my heart for. I can't do my best at something that I'm not interested in or passionate about. I just can't. I gave up on Psych and counseling because I just felt drained and unhappy at the thought of continuing to pursue a degree in it. It didn't excite me the way English always, always has. Writing books is my dream, that's all I've ever wanted to do with my life. That's what I wanted to be when I grew up, a writer. I want to learn all I possibly can about my craft, I want to be excited about the education I'm receiving. So I finally decided to stop doing what everyone said I should do by just trying to write as a "side job." I decided to do the impractical thing and actually follow my heart. I decided to do what I've always known I wanted. It's my name that's going to be on the degree. It's my debt to pay after graduation. Daggum it, if I'm going to be paying off student loans for the next ten years of my adult, post-grad life, I want to have studied what I loved. And, so, I'm going to finish out my college years learning all I can about writing. And I'm really, really happy about it.
I also got in touch with my emboldened, spit-fire side. I didn't know she existed, but she does. Boy, she does. See, there was this public speaking class this semester that I absolutely DREADED. But towards the end of it, we had to give a persuasive speech. And after you finish the speech, the professor (this seriously intimidating man) pretty much asked you all kinds of questions about your speech to try and trip you up and force you to defend yourself. But when he tried to argue the points of my speech, something came over me! I went just straight crazy, beast-mode up there, shooting everything back at him. I was completely unafraid, I had full confidence in the knowledge that I could take him on. Everyone in my class, including him, cheered for me when I sat down. And ever since that day, I've felt this power in my veins. The power that comes with the knowledge that I'm strong inside and I can fight back. It feels really, really good.
Got a turquoise streak in my hair. It's actually a piece of real hair that's been dyed turquoise and woven in with my real hair, so it should last a few months. But I wanted it. And I'll only be this age once. So, I got it. And I love it. People tell me I have mermaid hair, which makes my heart happy because I absolutely love mermaids.
I kind of love Audrey Hepburn a lot right now. Her movies are magical. And so are her eyes. And the way she works pixie cuts. So far I think Sabrina is my favorite.
Decided on a tattoo.
I started my Tumblr back up again, which has been a good thing and a bad thing for me. It's been good because it lets me be myself. It teaches me about what I like and it lets me live and be excited about all the little things I get excited over. Like bohemian/bazaar-esque interior design or ethnic cooking or vintage lingerie or mermaid tattoos or...WHATEVER I WANT. I love that about it, that it lets me be who I am and like what I like. It's been bad for me in that it makes me confused. It humanizes issues that, when I was younger, I easily saw as black and white. Right or wrong. But when I see the faces, hear the voices of the people that are affected by these controversies, these people that (as a Pentecostal Christian) I've been told are living sinfully...it's like, I can't work through it anymore. Because they're not evil. They aren't these grubby, bad people that burn Bibles and have orgies in the ashes. They're just people. They're people and they hurt in a lot of the same ways I do. How do I condemn people, flesh and blood and bone? How do I say that they are wrong? Who am I? What do I know about them, about life? It's one of those "the more I see of the world and this life, the less I know" type of things. And it's hard. Oh my goodness, it's hard. Because I want things to be black and white again. I want to be able to say that this is truth and this is not and this is why. But I can't anymore, not about everything anyway. I wonder if I ever will again. But you know what? I'm learning that it's okay to not know. It's okay to be a Christian and not know. If anything, my first year of being at a real university has taught me that. It's taught me how to know what I believe and how to figure out why I believe it, but it's also taught me that it's okay to look at life and all its struggles and reach within only to come up empty. It's okay. Because it just is.
Side note, but you know what I've noticed? People say that those who have faith are weak, that they use their belief system as a crutch because they can't make it through life without it. But really, after thinking about it for a while, I've found that I believe that it's those of faith that are the strongest of people. Because literally everyone (particularly at this age, the young adult stage of life) is giving up on religion and being bitter at God and living it up by doing whatever they want. To be a person of faith (especially in the REAL world, outside of a Christian covering) means, a lot of the time, that you're walking alone. You're different, you place value on things that other people don't and never will. You seem backward to the rest of the world. To me, that's something that is really, really hard to do. It's easy to give up on something when literally everyone else is too, when everyone is giving you a thousand reasons not to believe. That's the simplest thing in the world, to just throw God away because life got hard and people who are smarter than you are being all science-y about everything. I think it takes a stronger person to keep going. To not give up even when you can't seem to counter the arguments.

I suppose that's all I've got for now.