Sunday Adventure

Sunday Sunday Sunday. Yesterday the 30^th was a sunny warm day in Rexburg, warm being like 40 degrees haha We had bought steaks Saturday night and because it was so nice we wanted to cook them on a grill. So we trekked over to the boys apartments to find a grill, yet when we found one we realized it would be mean to cook and eat steaks in front of the boys haha Our next plan was to check Porter Park across the street, they had a grill and once we cleaned it would be fine. So we established a plan; Erin and I would clean the snow off the grill and the balcony (where we planned to have our winter picnic) while Michelle and Kimberly made the mashed potatoes, rolls, corn and waited for us to come get the steaks and help carry the food.

Erin and I set off on our mission with the best tools we could find to clear the snow; a Swiffer; a dust pan; a cutting board; and a serving spoon. We started on the balcony but soon realized our wimpy tools were no match for the inch of ice. It was then that we spotted a patch of grass that seemed to be saved just for us. We made our way through the deep snow, paving a trail to the clear spot only to discover it was all swampy. Disappointed but unwilling to give up we marched across the street. Swiffer, dustpan, cutting board and spoon in hand as people gawked and wondered what in the heck we were up to. We made paths through the park trying to find the most desirable place for a picnic, with ground that wasn’t too wet, back rests and just the right amount of sun. It was then that our eyes spotted that most beautiful picnic spot available in Rexburg. It was one of the play levels on a climbing gym. We got right to work at chipping off the ice and clearing the snow it took a while but 30 minutes later we were done and giddy to have the most amazing winter picnic ever. We skipped back to see the progress they were making in the kitchen and then we all set out with our coals, spices and oil to grill our steaks… we were quite a sight to those driving by haha Well our excitement was hard to maintain because we just couldn’t get the coals lit…. maybe it had something to do with the freezing weather, who knows. Haha We even borrowed gas to aid the coals… but eventually we gave up haha A boy told us the or apartment complex had its own grill so still determined we pulled it out of the shed. It used propane and we thought we were set. 30 minutes later when it was slightly warm and our toes were numb we put the steaks on…. Needless to say after another 30 minutes had passed they were still as pink as ever. Frozen and hungry we returned to our apartment, cooked our steaks, heated everything else up and enjoyed a very yummy meal in doors.

During our adventure Erin and I talked about how as a kid this was our life. You would work so hard to do something the long way and it was so fun that even when it didn’t work out it was okay because the game was in trying. I love adventures and as a kid this was all my life consisted of, most of those times were with my cousins. It was Taylor (my age) Tanner and Landon (same age) and I, always. I was the only girl yet it was always us four against it all. I remember playing trampoline basketball in the pouring rain (Tay Tay and I won thank you very much), going camping and having a pinecone war with random kids we met on the trail, and making a band out of stumps in our grandparents back yard. Back yard whiffle ball, volleyball, football, baseball and kick ball. Silly chants and names, bike races, almost getting hit by cars, catching the neighbor’s yard on fire, hikes, swimming, fishing and crazy talks about life and growing up. We built a tree fort, had an air soft war which put one of us in the hospital with a bullet in the eye, slept under the stars, and faced raccoons together.  We cleared trails, snuck out, pranked, wrestled, got buried up to our necks in sand, I pushed Landon into a cactus, and we ate till we were sick. New Years was spent with buckets of handmade confetti and pillow fights and always enough pie to please everyone for days haha

As we’ve grown up these adventures still happen, just in a more mature manner haha When we see each other we always spend the whole night talking, catching up and filling each other in. Taylor and I are off at college now… and things really have changed. It’s scary to think about us all losing touch even though we always promised we would all go camping together every summer when we were old and married with kids. I don’t know if that is going to happen but I am so happy for the childhood I was able to have. It was full of adventure, laughing and getting into trouble; I wouldn’t have it any other way. All I know now is that some days I just miss those old days haha I loved my adventure with Erin and all I know is that my husband better go on crazy adventures with me haha He better be the type of person that wants to go on winter picnics, hike and find something new for no reason, make a fort in the living room with me, jump on the bed and be daring haha. I refuse to get old and boring hahaha

FEARLESS

"To me, FEARLESS is having fears,

FEARLESS is having doubts, lots of them.

To me, FEARLESS is living despite of those

 things that scare you to death.

FEARLESS is falling madly in love again,

even though you have been hurt before. 

FEARLESS is getting back up and fighting for what you want

over and over again

...even though every time you've tried before you've lost.

FEARLESS is having the courage to say goodbye

to someone who only hurts you,

even if you can't breathe without them. 

And when someone apologizes to you enough times

for things they'll never stop doing

it's FEARLESS to stop believing them. 

I think allowing yourself to cry

on the bathroom floor is FEARLESS.

Letting go is FEARLESS.

Then moving on, and being alright

...thats FEARLESS too."

-Taylor Swift

A Chuckle a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

So last night after we got home from a fun night of partying my roommates and I decided to be responsible and go to bed before 2 o'clock instead of watching a movie. For the past couple of weeks our bishop has been stressing that we should be at church at least 10 minutes early, this was our gaol. So off to bed early we went with plans to wake up in time.

So this morning I get up with the extreme urge to pee. Looking at the clock I realized it was 8:24 our church starts at 9..........I woke everyone up and they all jumped out of bed in a hurry. Showers, hair, make up, clothes were all done as fast as possible and we left the apartment at 9.

When we reached the car we had our work cut out for us because it was covered in snow. We brushed and scraped and when we tried to open the doors to get in we found them FROZEN. After we all climbed in through the one door we got open we were frozen but off on our way. Until we realized that that one door was frozen OPEN. And of course it would be my door that wouldn't close so as we drove to church I held the door closed to keep from flying out, even though Michelle was trying to push me out. haha

Now like 15 minutes late we went up the stairs and made it to the door. We had to wait because we missed the sacrament, and then we slid into the back row. We finally thought we were safe until the first speaker started talking and what is the lesson on??!?!?!!? Of course it is on "Being prepared and the importance of attending your meetings". The first speaker called out people on the back row and each speaker after that talked about "being prepared and taking the time to be early to your meeting", and "prepare and be willing to exercise your faith and come early".

It was all too funny. Ohhhh man. I spent all 3 hours of church trying not to laugh. Which was only made worse because it was church and I had to be quiet.

After all of that we decided to go to the local family ward down the street for sacrament. We were there 15 minutes early and we just so happen to pick the most child populated ward in Rexburg. We spent that meeting laughing at all the crazy silly kids, and I even got to hole a beautiful 3 week old baby girl :) hahaha
What a day. Gotta love silly life.

How can you figure out what you’re made of if it's always easy?

There are moments in your life that don’t seem like a big deal as they’re happening, just the trivial passage of life and new experiences. Then when you take a moment to look back you realize how much that seemingly meaningless event altered your life. How did you not realize the impact of something that transformed the world you knew into the vastly different world you now know? When I look back I can identify my day that changed everything, and it really was just another ordinary day. ..

Dance Festival 2008 was one of the best experiences in my life up to that point. Dancing, singing, funny friends, and a boy who followed me around like a puppy. He had these big shinning blue eyes and this way of making me laugh whenever he was around. I kind of started to like him… but only kind of haha I guess what I mean by that is that it wasn’t love at first sight. haha  After  Dance Festival we talked on the phone, he was quirky and easy to talk to. Another church dance reunited us and we went for a walk together outside. While holding my hand he asked me what the date was, I can still see the little smirk on his face when he said “What’s the date today? Is it the 6^th, or the 7^th?” My response was hesitant but I answered “…no it’s the 8^th.” His face broke out into a big grin at that point followed by “That’s right. Breanna will you be my girlfriend on 8/8/08?” My favorite number was 8, always has been and always will be. So on the best day of the year I went ahead and said “yes” to my first boyfriend at 16 years old.

At 16 I had never kissed a boy and as an independent individual I was lost about relationships. He was really eccentric and open, I received many messages with his feelings and emotions towards me and while they were super nice it was a little too much for me to believe at the time. It also took me a while to get used to having a boys arm around me, not going to lie I was really uncomfortable and out of my element with even holding hands in the beginning haha I remember the first time he tried to make out with me… long story short, I ended up spitting out the window when I drove away haha and vowed never to do that again because someone else’s tongue in my mouth was just disgusting. Needless to say I got over that one…… 

                

I wasn’t the best girlfriend…. Not even close. It took longer for me than most to go from being independent Breanna to independent Breanna with a boyfriend. For the time I was getting used to having a boyfriend I was untrusting and probably a little resentful for the fact that I had to do it all (because in my mind I did). About a month into our relationship I found out he had kissed another girl. I was embarrassed and upset, yet really glad that I hadn’t let this boy in enough to break my heart. The only problem with that one fact is that it left me wondering, what if I had been more? What if I had acted and done what girlfriends are supposed to do? My curiosity got the better of me and even though everyone told me “once a cheater always a cheater” I let that boy back in, still untrusting and still holding my heart back, but with a resolve to be a better girlfriend.

With each phone call and hang out we grew closer. We became  best friends. We spent usually around 2 hours a night in separate towns, in our own beds, with phones pressed against our ears talking long past the time we knew we’d regret it in the morning. He was silly, great at listening; he was never short for words or things to say. He was serious and thoughtful when I told him things about my past and my wondering philosophical questions haha, he was witty and quick every time he spoke, always with some funny remark that would leave me giggling, the laugh he loved. We had a lot in common and I went to bed most nights with a smile on my face, left wondering why someone would care enough to know how every bit of my day went and what goes on in this crazy head of mine. He was sweet and had the nicest things to say and hearing his feelings for me left me in awe:(message from him) "When i just imagine you smiling, it will make my whole day better. that is just imagining. but when i do actually see you smile it is like a blessing to me and im thinking "whew, i dont know if i can handle another" lol. i love making you smile more than i have for anyone i know. you are very very very beautiful. your everything i wanted in a girl.  your smart, your mormon, you luagh at my stupid jokes, your gorgeous, you have the brightest eyes i have ever seen, the brightest smile i have ever seen, a very hot voice...i could go on and on all day, but what i feel for you feels like im going down steep hill in the car when i was little where my parents would go a little bit faster and say "whooo" and my stomach would feel funny. and when i talk to you my adrenaline goes through the roof where i am like shaking and my voice quivers that little bit. lol thats like my feelings breanna in a nutshell. now you get the jist of it. i feel awesome talking to you, like i wanna tell you everything cuz im comfortable" May 8^th 2009 I told him I loved him for the first time. He had told me a while before then that he loved me but my always careful self said “I’m not going to tell you I love you until I know I mean it”. So on May 8^th I told him I loved him, and while I did love him I was still guarded.

Our relationship was never easy. He lived 30 minutes away with no car, both of us in high school with sports and other activities. If there is one thing I know for sure it’s that we had to work at it every day we were together, it wasn’t a relationship of convenience. Due to that there were many ups and downs, more than probably normal. Our biggest hang up and source for most fights was his line “You don’t love me enough, you don’t want me the same way I want you”. This boy was experienced…. And to him “doing stuff” was associated with love. While we both had the same religion the paths we took in that faith were different. Staying with what I know to be true was a no brainer, yet that ever present sentence “You don’t love me enough, you don’t want me the same way I want you” orbited my brain on a daily bases “You don’t love me enough, you don’t want me the same way I want you”. I can’t tell you why or how exactly all I know for sure is that a year into our relationship a line was crossed. Now regular teens today would laugh at my innocence and brush it off as not a big deal, because in truth it wasn’t something that big or horrible, but it brought me to tears. I made a mistake and that fact angered me and filled me with guilt and resentment. I put an end to anything of that manner and he understood. He wanted to reach the faith I had. We had talks about him wanting to change and go on a mission, about how I made him want to be better. He told me I was the only person in his life that believed in him enough and who pushed him to be a better person. So my belief that I could help him change was born. He would still be upset when I pulled away from making out that got too intense but he continued to work on improving, and my hopes soared. That disappointed look would always appear on his face but I did everything in my power to show him I loved him the best way I knew how. There were messages, notes left on his bed, trips to bring him lunch, money for fun activities, exciting plans, and many gallons of gasoline spent. Our different ideas of love clashed and while I wasn’t willing to budge he continued to say he was working on being different.

Going into my senior year of high school was one of the most exciting times of life. Activities, sports events, great friends, parties and hangouts made it an unforgettable year. Him and I grew incredibly close through the school year as well. It seemed that I was most happy when he was around. I laugh and have a good time with everything, yet having him there took things to a whole new plane of happy that was only noticeable to me. He knows me better than anyone on this earth, and could sometimes state my reaction even before I could. He was the first person I ran to with good news or bad news. The only one who appreciated my dumb little stories and he was the person that made me feel beautiful:(message from him) "Tonight i was thinking about you and how cute you are and how you keep me in line! :)  I was sitting there watching a movie and all I could think of was this really wierd blonde girl that also happens to be very cute! As you can see, that girl had such a great affect on me that I am currently sending her a message at 1:30 in the AM. What in the world is going on in my head you ask? well, the answer to that is Breanna Ashley Rushton, yes, the girl of my dreams. My other half. My dream come true. The one and only. The thief of my heart. I just thought that you should know that your amazing and i will always love you. even at 1:30 in the AM at a friends house. Seeing your cute smile and those gorgeous hazel/green/blue eyes makes me go completely giddy inside! :) I love you with all my heart and I know that your the only one who can understand this nonsense...and I like that...a lot! ;P  meeting you was like winning the lottery times a freaking billion".  


We hit a rough spot toward the end of the school year and while sitting in his car listening to him say “I don’t want to make you cry anymore. I’m not the best for you, and I hate being the one to make you cry” our relationship almost ended right there. But I looked at him and said “You are the one that makes me happy…” As I sat there looking at those deep blue eyes, I jumped. The girl that thinks through everything, the girl that has logical examples, who does pro and con lists finally let her walls down. I figured with my last summer before college almost here I didn’t want any regrets. I didn’t want to be left wondering in college if we would have made it in the long run if I had gotten out of my own way. So it happened. I graduated, and then had the most amazing summer of my young life. Every day I spent with him was my new favorite day. We had a list of fun, crazy things and then spent our summer crossing off our silly ideas such as quarter driving, walking on the beach at midnight and going to the zoo. I had the most magical night of my life on July 4^th 2010 and I laughed more that summer than I thought possible. More than anything though that boy became a vital part of my life, he was where I felt most comfortable. Where I felt most like myself, I allowed myself to be vulnerable to him. I don’t like people to see me weak, but I let him become the best shoulder to cry on and the best person to vent to. I let go of my mindset that it was Breanna against the world and it became him and I against the world. I trusted him, and even let myself slip and I planned and hoped for a future with him.

It’s a long story of how I found out but the end of July brought proof that he had cheated on me around the time of my graduation. It was more than a kiss this time, to say the least. I don’t have words to describe all of the feelings that passed through my mind…. Despite all of my better judgment and logic I had jumped and completely let that boy in, only to have my assumptions proven correct. It was probably the lowest I have ever felt. It was humiliating and unbelievable. Every moment I felt like curling up and just crying out everything in me, sometimes I did. I hated him, I felt played, I felt like a joke, I felt like everything was crashing down around me and sometimes it all hurt so bad I couldn’t breathe. Then there were the times I wished I didn’t have to breathe anymore... One thing you have to understand is that my brain has a constant stream of positive thoughts going through it and every bad emotion I felt I knew the opposite positive side too. Yet it hurt with such intensity that positive Breanna doubted her ability to continue and make it out.

This is where the story should have ended. This is the point where the strong independent Breanna should have returned and that resilient girl should have forgotten that loser boy that broke every promise he made. Yet I have always had this irrational thought that you should remain friends with your first love. This absurd notion that if we didn’t remain friends it discredited any real feelings that were ever there because as dumb as it sounds I knew that boy better than anyone and speaking to him I knew he was sorry. I know his faults and I know how badly he wants to get better… and my addiction to helping people kicked in. I felt that if I could be his friend then I could still help him somehow, everyone always gave up on him, I didn’t want to be added to that list. Looking back on it now it even sounds stupid to me. I can’t explain it right because even I don’t know all of the emotions whirling around in my head.

So I tried. I remained his friend. The hopeful side of me thought that we could stay friends and help each other with problems like we always had, the emotional side of me wanted to punch him in the face repeatedly and pluck every hair off of his body one at a time and the rational side of me knew that by trying to make all of these different sides work the only person I was hurting more was myself. Yet I still tried. We saw each other before I left for college, we texted, and saw each other Thanksgiving and Christmas break. There is no logical explanation I can string together in my head of why I let myself get dragged deeper and deeper into the hole that was this boy. Maybe it was to prove to him that I was better than this random girl he didn’t have feelings for, maybe it was to prove it to myself, maybe I was curious, maybe it was that still present statement “You don’t love me enough, you don’t want me the same way I want you”. At that point in my life I had really stopped caring. I felt hard, I felt that the things I had grasped to so hard and knew to be true prevented me from having the most important thing in my life at that time. More mistakes were made with that boy… and the more I developed into a self-hating, resentful shell of the blissful girl I once was.

Tough love and self-reflection brought me to the point where I knew that this boy was poison to my life. I took the steps to finally cut him out and am beginning the healing process. Looking at it all now there are still many emotions swirling around in this crazy head of mine, some days it all makes me sad and I miss those comfy arms, that wide soft chest and those loving blue eyes. Other days, well most days if I’m being truthful, I am angry. I am irritated that he ruined the fun and innocence of first love, infuriated by how selfish he was and how he took advantage of me and my caring thoughts to stay his friend. He made my notion that sometimes people surprise you and they do change, harder to believe. He took almost 2 and ½ years of my life, made me self-conscious and self-doubting, he made me untrusting with every pinky promise he broke and with every lie he told. At times I find myself wishing I had never met him.

There was a time that I thought that I was on the losing end. That I was the one that got the short end of the stick, that I came out on bottom. Now I see that that will never be the case. I did not mess up that relationship. I did everything I could and at every moment I made the choice that best made sense in my head. That boy is the one that ultimately lost. He forfeited the girl that believed in him the most, the one that took his weaknesses with his strengths and loved him anyway. Absent is his best friend and as he stated “the best girl he could ever get, the girl he wanted to marry, and the girl who’s place was impossible to fill”.

Sometimes I ask myself if I would ever go back and do it all over again knowing the outcome now…. And my answer to that would have to be yes. This has been one of the toughest moments and lowest times my life has seen, but as the cliché saying goes “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”. By taking me to my weakest I am more capable of understanding myself and how I act and react. I can recognize how much I can handle and I better comprehend the person I am. I caught a glimpse of what it means to love someone and even though it brought me to my knees in heart ache I refuse to let it ruin me. I know how strong I am and I know that with my positive outlook and still firm faith in my religion I will reach the high point at the end. Someday I will drive around my home town and not see memories every direction I look of the boy that taught me what it means to need someone, that it is okay to be vulnerable, and the boy that took and broke a piece of my heart I will never get back. I know that my life is still full of beauty, and that sometimes things and people can surprise you. I win because I will never let him take away my knowledge that as hard and scary as life is it full of magical moments that make it all worth it. I win because I can look at myself in the mirror and he will never have the power to take away the huge grin on my face and the light in my eyes. I have taken every mistake and difficult issue and turned them in to valuable lessons learned. I believe that I am actually a better person today because of the events that took place and I can’t answer those questions the same for him.

Yes some days are still hard and yes I will carry this lesson and hurt around forever. I will be cautious and the warning I am trying to teach my sisters now is the same lesson I will preach to my own daughters some day: Never let a boy weaken you, stay true to who you are and above all else stay positive. The church is true, and always hold fast to its teachings. Heavenly Father will never leave you uncomforted and forgiveness is there for EVERYONE. Remember that each day is a new day and that no matter what happens life will always be a thrilling place full of magic and beauty.