Intro

If you’re reading this, you’ve either surprisingly found this on your own or I felt for a moment my talent was great enough to tell you that this page exists. It may be as great as I drunkenly said it was, or it may be as shit as I think it is on a daily basis. But regardless, I am a person who can only truly depict my emotions by writing them down.

I am a twenty something in a world that thinks that being a twenty something is the worst thing you can be. I have two brothers that make me laugh constantly. My parents are in the process of a semi messy, semi clean divorce. I’ve been dating the same guy since I was sixteen, and things are going pretty swell. We have a cat. He lets me basically be a squatter as I pay off my terrifying pile of student loans. During the day I work as a receptionist that spends 90% of the day dealing with people screaming in my ear, and 10% of the day dealing with people that make me forget about the other 90%. I love coffee (hence the blog name), road trips, and music. I watch the same three crappy shows on Netflix constantly. There’s nothing too special about me; I’m just trying to get through the day being as positive as possible while the depressive voice inside me tries to fight that. You could say I’m constantly battling with myself.

Sometimes I have depressive episodes, I get anxiety when a friend cancels a plan to hang out with someone else, etc etc. There are moments when I’m out with my friends and then suddenly I think to myself “Whoa. Everyone is having fun here and you’re not enjoying yourself”. It can be a struggle, but at the end of the day I always felt better after writing it down.

Anyway, you’re smart and can read, you get it. From this moment on you will see me in the most raw format. This is just how I am when I feel like writing. It’s not going to be as regular as I want it to be; odds are I’ll be on here when I’m upset, drunk or both. That’s really when I like my writing the most I guess. But it is important, because I guess the most important thing you need to know about me is that I think emotional responses are important. So sit back, relax, and watch this emotional rollercoaster play out.

 

Writing Challenge #1

– List 10 things that make you really happy

1. A cup of coffee, hot while waiting for food at a diner.
2. Lighting a candle
3. Listening to music while driving at sunset, windows down
4. Walking down a secluded beach
5. Snuggling with my pets, whether it’s my cat Piper or my dad’s dogs Peanut and Willie
6. Writing and actually feeling satisfied with my work.
7. Lying on my back in the pool.
8. Getting a compliment at work.
9. Having dinner with my brothers or my friends.
10. A really fucking good burrito.

–Write something that someone told you about yourself that you never forget:

I was stressed about something, probably my car. Joe, being the good sport he is, went to the store with me to help me look. I had been crying, and I started going down the anxiety rabbit hole and just started listing all of these things on my mind. Joe just looks at me and says, “Jesus, try to calm down. Sage, you’re so good at helping other people when they’re in a pinch, but when something happens to you, you just self destruct.”

I was mad at him after that, because I knew he was right.

 

Everything Comes in Threes

I remember being fifteen. That’s the year when everything seems to be so important. School, friends, who got the lead part in the musical, the cute guy in geometry class, I could keep going. No one’s asking you about growing up yet. Well, they are but they’re not asking you enough to really think about it.

It’s such a strange time because you think you know it all, that the world is yours and that you practically are an adult. But you’re not paying bills, not working 8 hour shifts, not watching the news every day. You’re meant to live every day without a worry. But sometimes life doesn’t work that way.

Living in a small town meant any regular person knew everything about every other person in town. You couldn’t go anywhere without someone knowing you, and you found yourself gossiping about a person you barely knew. Everyone knew about the twelve year old girl that suffered a heart condition that killed her, or the girl in high school that lost her four year old sister to a brain tumor a few weeks later. It’s sad, but it’s just another thing to bring up talking to a friend. For me, these were both one terrible thing to happen to separate groups of people; my second sad event was losing my Aunt Marie a mere week before it happened again.

I remember not believing it. She died in an accident, people whispered. Facebook was in its heyday then, and people were flooding it with pictures and memories of her. Going to school to next day was torture; everyone was either quiet or crying. Teachers let us take the day to accept it. The wake was a few days later; a sea of black umbrellas, waiting in the rain to say their goodbyes to a young, fifteen year old girl who loved to dance.

I was fifteen. I didn’t know her well. We shared a couple classes together freshman year; we would talk about cute boys in gym class. She seemed perfectly nice, but she wasn’t a close friend, or even a friend. I had no reason to grieve the way I did. But looking back, this was the moment where I knew I had to grow up.

This was when the curtain pulled back, and I could see that the world is unforgiving. Things that can’t be explained happen, things you wouldn’t expect, and there’s no way to rewind and start over. You see, experience and live through times you will never understand. This was when my peers and I knew that we weren’t immortal, this is when we saw parents without a daughter, a brother without a sister. This was when we grew up. Everyone said, “everything comes in threes”, and it always stuck with me.

So here I am, seven years later. Three months ago I attended a funeral for my best friend’s sister, a girl I grew up with that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and died in a car accident. I had to look into the eyes of a grieving mother and father, I had to hug her sister, someone I’ve loved since I was eight. I had to kneel by the casket, saying goodbye to someone I giggled with, shared sleepovers with, hung out with at big parties. She was twenty five.

Yesterday, I found out my old neighbor died the same way. A car accident where she was not the driver. She was twenty five.

I’ve never been superstitious. But here I am, worrying myself in the middle of the night, hearing the whispers I heard when I was fifteen. Everything comes in threes. Everything comes in threes. Everything comes in threes.

My boyfriend is twenty five. I have never seen him drive over the speed limit, or do anything reckless behind the wheel. But the others weren’t driving.

I’m not superstitious. But I know that this world is unforgiving.