silent strength

After nineteen years of being leaned on, it's hard to stand up straight. And that's why I can't go home. But after forty-six years of being crushed, it's almost impossible to stand at all. And that's why I have to go home. How do you explain to the ones who depend on you most that you can't bare their burdens with them anymore? That you have your own and need a little understanding. A little compassion. The ones in your lives that are there for everyone else because only you can see the pain in their lives. You can't go to them because everyone else does. Because they come to you, so you have to smile and stay strong. It is exhausting and I am tired. I'm tired of silently crying myself to sleep at night. Of aching for your pains. Of pushing through the long days just to cling to the few good ones. But I must. I cannot stop. Too many people depend on me. If I stop, I admit defeat. I fail myself and I fail them. But worst of all, I fail my God. The only one who is there to bare my burdens when no one else can. The one who I run to last, but who was there first. Oh God, I cry to you! My heart bursts in anguish as hot tears stream down my broken cheeks. No words flow forth from my mouth yet my heart does utter endless woes. And you hear each one with careful consideration! You know each one before I comprehend it! Oh God, you are my saving grace once more. Like so many times before and so many times to come, you are my Savior. How I long for your comfort! How I long to escape reality and be with you always! But, I understand I cannot. I must push on with You. Deliver me, oh God. Rain mercy on me once more. Make me strong for myself and for others. Get me through this like always. Oh, how I love Jesus because He once loved me!

No Regrets, take two

Well, I am certainly nowhere closer to understanding this new and improved me/Charlotte. Not that I'm looking to reinvent myself, just find myself. Gosh. How ridiculous and cliche does that sound? The freshmen in college is looking to find herself after one semester outside of her simple country dome. That “simple country dome” is partly the reason this finding myself is such a process. I hated it, the country dome. Simple as that. It was awful and I wanted anything that wasn't it. I didn't have a country accent. Country music was awful and belonged in the trailer park. Hunting was for rednecks. Of course I was wrong about these misconceptions, along with the huge list of others I have piled up.

I do have a country accent. I just suppressed it in an effort to escape my small town. Country music was actually pretty catchy and even sweet. And hunting can provide some very yummy stew when prepared properly.

I am home for the holidays and had a wonderful coffee date with a close friend. We talked about everything from the important things happening in our lives to the not so important day to day happenings of our lives. But in these discussions I realized that everybody I knew in high school has changed in this first semester of college. I am not alone or special in this adventure. Now some people have changed in that they are who they pretended to be in high school, but others changed into who they pretended not to be. That super cool guy is really this shy sweetheart who was too afraid to ask.

I have no more a clue who I am or where I'll be in ten years anymore now than when I typed my first official blog more than a month ago. I said in it I would have no regrets yet failed to start a blog. Sounds like a regret to me. So I’m fixing that. Thanks to some unintentional encouragement from my big sister. She started a blog a few days ago and it gave me the courage to do what I've secretly been wanting to do since my first entry. Now it is not for you, the reader. (although I do hope you enjoy it, relate to it, gain from it.) No. This is for me. Charlotte. But, the me/Charlotte. I am putting myself out there for others to see. And that will come with judgments, but in every judgment comes truth. Something inclined that person to make that particular judgment. I will take from those judgments, all few and far between...i hope, and learn. Build. Find.

No Regrets

I have no idea where I'm headed, and that's okay. A few months ago I was terrified to admit this. I always wanted to take a year between high school and college and travel. To explore. How can it be expected of an 18 year old to know what school they want to go to, what major they want to take, who they want to be? It's ludicrous! And my parents, my family, they expected it. I was to graduate high school and go to college so I could get a degree and make something of myself. Education was important to them and is to me. But it's not my only importance. I have to find who I want to be and where I want to be it. So, I'm going to do just that. No regrets. None. I am not looking back in twenty years wishing. I am looking back in twenty years smiling. So here it goes - No Regrets.

I sat around the ice cream shop with my friends in the last few weeks of summer. We were dreading goodbyes but, desperate to go. I was entering into a University as a freshmen with an undecided major. I'll figure it along the way. I told this to myself and everyone else who asked, “So what do you want to be?” But what I didn't tell them was the uncertainty that loomed over me every time I said it. I took my glasses off that night at the ice cream shop and announced I was changing my name. I was getting contacts and going by Charlotte, Charlee for short. Of course, I had no true intentions of actually doing this and they knew that, but they played along. I was not Charlotte, nor would I ever be Charlotte. But I'm intrigued at who she could be. Charlotte would live with no regrets and go after it, whatever it may be. I will find my inner Charlotte and embrace her. But she'll be better than Charlotte because she'll be me. And I am living with no regrets.