mistakes

Goodbye.

| TeaKisses

Strong tea watered with rain and tears
Leaves me thinking about these past years
We were so in love
So hopeful
So naive
I let you make me think that I couldn’t leave

Without a question I said yes
Not thinking of how we would afford the dress
I cried every night
Alone
In my bed
There were so many things needing to be said

Not long after that my pain was too much
You wanted me close but I said not to touch
I couldn’t believe it
I’d settle
So low
But I knew from this place I could bloom, I could grow

I said my goodbyes in a tearful refrain
You succeeded quite well in hiding your pain
I opened the door
You kissed me
Goodbye
You left without a word or a tear in your eye

Now a year has passed since I said yes to you
The time went slowly but yet it still flew
You have moved on
From us
And so have I
Now this is my final goodbye

Goodbye.

The Hill

| TeaKisses

They walk towards the hill, her hand in his. They are walking slowly while enjoying each others’ company. She looks at him and giggles, he smiles back. He has a backpack on and she is carrying a package, clearly a gift for him. They are happy. You can tell by the way they move around each other, it is like the gentle ebb and flow of the ocean. A constant, even but unrehearsed dance. The sound of someone mowing the lawn in the distance mixes with the soft humid breeze, teasing the leaves of the poplar trees. They near the hill, she stops to look at him. He looks back at her, planting a soft kiss on her nose. She starts with a skip and leads him halfway up the hill where she spins around in circles, letting her soft skirt catch the wind and levitate up into a disk around her. He grabs her around the waist and pulls her close, from where I am sitting the sun glints in between their close silhouettes. He sits down on the ground and pats the vibrant green grass beside him. She sits. It is then that he opens his backpack and pulls out a black box. She smiles and from the box pulls out a pair of purple runners. The smile on her face tells that this is something she is pleased with, but not what she was expecting. She then hands him the package that she had been carrying. He tears off her neatly wrapped paper to reveal a knife. He grins and kisses her with vigor. He places the knife in his backpack and motions to the shoes, she stands up. She slips off her sandals and steps into the new pair of purple shoes. He gently does up the laces, glancing back up at her face ever so often. She smiles down at him and runs her fingers gently through his hair. Once he finishes with the laces, he looks up at her from on his knees, and with her gaze locked in his he slides his hand into his pocket and pulls out a box. She doesn’t notices right away. He holds up the box and says something. She lets out a scream of delight and kisses him urgently. He smiles and stands up. They embrace. He picks her up and spins her around still holding the box tightly in one hand. Her newly shoed feet land in the grass and he slips the ring onto her left hand. She stands there in awe, her face is un-readable and she seems happy but hesitant. He picks up his backpack and they begin to descend the hill hand in hand. They are walking faster this time, with more purpose than before. She turns around and looks back at the hill with a look of confusion. It is clear that she is not sure about the decision she has made. He puts his arm around her and she looks forward again, snapping back to reality.

Based on actual events.

2:2:2

| TeaKisses

Will you regret it in two hours? What about two days? Two weeks?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions then you should probably not go through with said thing.

This little piece of wisdom I recently got from an episode of Glee. Now is not the time or place to go into the fact that I watch Glee, it is one of those things you will have to accept and move on with.

I have used this trick to make a couple decisions in the past two weeks and it has stopped me from making some pretty rash choices. I am the type of person that goes either all in or not at all, I’m not good at waiting for something I know will happen anyway. I also tend to jump into things with two feet without really thinking them through first. Due to this little piece of my character I have gotten myself into things that I really didn’t want to be involved in. Not that they were bad things but I should really have thought about them more.

Recently I have been seriously thinking about switching schools and going into the Red River College Media and Communications Program. My reasons for wanting to switch are that I have a hard time taking in information via reading it or being talked at in a lecture style. I am much more of a tactile learner and thrive when what I am assigned to do are hands on projects. I know that if I tried hard enough I could apply myself and really get some work done but I don’t think that I have learned really good ways of studying and taking in information. These weaknesses mixed with the idea of an almost completely hands on program made me very open to the idea of leaving my community, friends and all that is familiar to me.

Along with my weaknesses regarding school, I have always been the type of person that quits easily. Pain scares me, failing scares me as does disappointing people. Therefore quitting and making really good excuses for it seems to be a good alternative. Blaming it on the fact that “It really didn’t feel right and I don’t think this is where God wants me” is always an easy excuse to fall back on. I should know, I have done that countless times. Reality is, I’m just too scared of failing and when I am challenged to the point of feeling like I can’t take anymore I am very easily persuaded to quit.

Quitting has never been a good thing for me, yes I have made it through without scrapes and bruises for the most part but I think sometimes its good to fail and to lean on the people who are there to help you up. As cliché as this sounds, I’m not the first person to go through lots of these experiences and I won’t be the last. Sticking to something and not quitting is a huge accomplishment on its own, doesn’t matter if you failed along the way. You didn’t quit, you persevered. I can accredit most of the situations in which I haven’t quit to my faith, I know that God has a plan for me and that He will guide my path. All I need to do is look to Him and have faith and patience…Easier said than done.

So to pull this full circle; I am not quitting my degree and moving to a different school. I will push through and learn what I need to even though it will be really hard and I won’t like it. I will trust God and the plan that He has for me…or at least I will try. I will think before I leap because it is the times that I don’t look that I end up falling flat on my face.

Why.

| TeaKisses

I have started to come to the realization that being able to be honest with yourself and the people around you is a difficult but intensely rewarding thing. Over the past couple months I have grown not only as an individual but also as a friend, I have begun to see how amazing friendships can be when effort is put into them. There is one person in particular who has come to mean a great deal to me, we never used to get along very well but due to certain circumstances we have grown very close and she is now one of my closest and dearest friends. This poem is for her.

I have always been one for pretty words, and a couple years ago I tried my hand at poetry. I can’t say that I am very good and I may not be following all of the rules of poetry but for me poetry is what happens when my soul speaks with words rather than my brain. My brain likes to over analyze things but my soul knows exactly what it wants to say. So I present you with a poem that came together out of the blue. It captures some of the feelings that I have been experiencing over the past couple months. It seems a little more depressing that I had really intended but I think It gets a point across…so without further ado. Why.

Tears ooze a soothing balm
Over the fissured soul,
Bright eyes faded to grey
Clouded with misery,
Deep breaths come out
Cut. Up. In. Sobs.

A china tea cup in your palm
Gold leaf pealing at your touch,
Cracked from over use
And un-careful users,
The slightest movement causes a leak
Bitter tea trickles through your fingers.

Wind wanders lonely
Calling through forgotten panes,
Shut out of all that is love,
Voice of a vexed lover
Whimpers one word,
Why.

~ Bethany Epp ~

This blog is here so I can remind myself to be honest with not only the people around me but to make sure I’m not trying to convince the world of something I myself know to be false. Thank you for letting me be honest with you.

How not to get engaged.

| TeaKisses

*SIGH*

So much has been going in my life lately…I know I haven’t updated this in a very long time but in the time that I have been gone I got engaged! I know this should be exciting and it very much is…was. I was not expecting him to propose so soon and when he did I was dumb founded! I didn’t know what to say, of course I said yes, how could I not?!? There was a handsome man kneeling in front of me asking to spend the rest of his life with me, it seems like a dream come true and as much as I wanted it to be it wasn’t. From the moment I said yes to his proposal I was second guessing my decision, I didn’t know if I was ready to settle down and I had not yet made up my mind whether I wanted to do it with him. (Now I know this seems really ridiculous and everybody said that I shouldn’t have said yes, but I couldn’t say no). He did ask my parents the day that he proposed and they said a tentative yes but wanted to wait until we could have a discussion together, they were not expecting him to propose that day. After he asked me we got home and I was overjoyed, after all this was what I thought I wanted. My mother did not talk to me for about a day and a half and when she did she was in tears the whole time and my father although he tried to be supportive and happy for me, I could tell that he was not completely sold on the idea of me getting married so young to someone I had met on the Internet only a year and a half prior. We continued to plan our wedding and discuss a wedding date which ended up being the subject of most of our arguments, we fought a lot in the two and a half months that we were engaged. We fought about the table arrangements, what kind of food to serve, where to have our wedding. Needless to say we were not in a very healthy relationship. Almost as soon as we got engaged he went off to camp to work there for two months meaning I would only get to talk to him on weekends and only for a couple hours which would be a huge stretch from our routine of talking a couple hours a day. While he was away at camp I had a lot of time to do some thinking and really figure out whether this was something I really wanted. In the last two weeks of us being apart something hit me, I knew for a fact that I couldn’t marry him. It was like all of the questions that I had ever had in our whole relationship just came and slapped me in the face. I was a complete mess for those two weeks, crying myself to sleep every night not wanting to admit to anyone or myself that this was something that I couldn’t do. There was one day when I had just had enough of pretending to be okay, I told my mom that I was having second thoughts about everything and that I didn’t think I could continue my relationship with him. She asked me why and this was the tough part, how was I supposed to put into words all the feelings that I had been caging up inside my mind and my soul. How was I supposed to show my inmost feelings and lies. I told her that him and I had to many major differences and that I had so many bigger dreams for my life then feeling like I was settling for something I wasn’t completely happy with. I knew that love wasn’t a fairytale and that love is not like it is in the movies, but I also knew that love had to be better than what he and I had.  I  then continued to call him and I told him that we needed to take a break so I could collect myself, I needed time to figure out how I was going to break up with the man who thought I loved him. I kept putting it off which only made things worse. He came to my house to surprise me a couple days after I told him we needed a break. He took me out for supper and we hung out a little bit but when he left I knew what I had to do. There was no option anymore, I was no longer in love with him and I could no longer lead him on. I moved into residence at university the day after and proceeded to catch up with friends and get back into the groove of school. The worst part of this was that everybody still thought that we were engaged and I wasn’t going to tell them otherwise until I had broken up with him. He came to see me the day before my birthday which was about five days after I moved to school, he had baked me cookies and brought me ice cream. I felt so bad because never in our year and a half relationship had he ever baked me anything. I sat him down on my bed and read him the letter that I had written out earlier that day because I knew when it came to it I would have a hard time saying what I needed to if I did not writhe it all down. He took it well but I was a complete mess, he held me while I cried then we talked for a little while then he left and I have not seen him since.

Many people ask me how I let it get that far, I don’t really have a good answer to that question but I do know that I felt as though if I let this go I would never have anything like this again. I didn’t want to give up having a best friend and someone that loved me for potentially being single forever. In our relationship I felt very put down and like all my dreams, talents and ambitions were being forced down so I could fit the square mold that he was trying to put me into. I am more than a house wife who will wait around for her husband and answer to his every beck and call. I am a loving person and I know I will make a great wife someday…SOMEDAY! If it is God’s will for my life I will fall in love again, but for now I am single and I am free to make my dreams happen one day at a time.

You always remember your firsts.

| TeaKisses

You know when you listen to a song for the first time and you think to yourself “Hmmm, thats an interesting song”. Then you hear it again, it may be hours, days, weeks, months later but you always remember what you were doing when you heard it for the first time; or if you don’t remember what exactly you were doing at least you remember a general feeling, person or even place. We always remember our firsts.

A number of years ago I went to my cousin’s high school performance of Les Miserables; it was an amazing show and I cried because at the time I could not fully comprehend that it was his character that died and not him. Anyway. There was a smell, in the theatre, that I will always remember. It smelled old and musty mixed with the smell of a fog machine; I had never smelled a fog machine before and so I just assumed that this is what history smells like. Now whenever I am in the same space as a fog machine I feel depressed and all I can think about is the French revolution. Strange right?

When ever there are very emotional points in my life I tend to ‘pick’ a song and stick to it; listening to it over and over again. Applying it to that situation and the people involved. I have often done this for the various relationships in my life so sometimes one of those songs will come on the radio and either I will turn it up or turn it off. Depending on the outcome of the relationship I get good / bad feelings.

Now the inevitable. Your first kiss. Many peoples’ ideas of first kisses are romantic and perfect. Perfect guy, perfect scene, perfect music…everything; but I think that if people actually asked around for stories of first kisses the outcome would be very different. I always imagined my first kiss to be everything I described, needless to say…it wasn’t any of those things. Yes, I do often wish I had not kissed him; but I would be a totally different person and I have grown a lot because of the mistakes I made. The only reason he kissed me was because I had never been kissed; because I was willing to settle. Never Settle; especially on a ‘first’.

No matter what happens; whether you meet someone, smell something, or listen to something. You always, always remember your firsts.