My "get away" place

Everyone has a place that they go to when they need to escape from their lives for a little while. Actually, I have no idea if everyone has this place, but I would hope so. I don't know what I would do without my escape place. Mine is my family's mountain house that my grandparents/distant relatives own. The house is very old and I have so many memories there from my entire life. It has always been there. The house is on a big hill that overlooks a small lake. It can be very touristy at times, especially around the 4th of July, but it is still as peaceful as I can think of. I am craving this scenery so much right now. Nothing bad is going on in my life. In fact, I may be happier than I have ever been. I still need a break every once in a while, so I go there if I can. I go there and don't think about anything...no heavy burdens, no stress, no annoying people...just me and the house and the lake. I am hoping to be there very soon, if only for a couple of days. I need to breathe the fresh air that Charlotte is not at all capable of providing.

That is the lake. I sincerely hope that it never succumbs to suburbia. This place is almost like a family member. I walk around the trails of the lake, constantly thinking and clearing my head. It is always so comforting and massively refreshing to be there.

You know what I have realized, recently? Dan in Real Life is my absolute favorite movie and this place is why. I don't think my family has ever been as cheerful and drama-free as the family in that movie, but it's close! No one else likes the movie all that much so I kept wondering why I liked it so much. All I could think about was this place. It is such a feel-good-romantic-comedy, which I am all about, so I knew I liked it because of that. But, the family feel in the movie is what gets me.

This is how I think I was while there with my cousins...completely oblivious to grown up drama and just caught up in ourselves haha

My family used to come to the mountain house every summer for at least the 4th of July. My cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles would all come up and spend time together with good food and good fire works. I am so grateful for having somewhere like this to come to and feel at home, yet far away from my life. I found myself craving this place once I got into college and my life turned into one big adventure after another. I needed any form of normalcy back in my life and found that this house made me feel at home, no matter what was changing in my life. I am a very sentimental person, so going here has always been comforting for me. I do the same things every time I go, feel the same every time I go, and can go back to my life after a few days feeling recharged and ready to take on more changes. I would love to live there, but then I guess it would turn into the normal and not be my escape anymore...which I am sure I will always need every once in a while no matter how good life is at the time.

Over the past few years, my friends and I have been going up to the mountain house over winter break and spending a few days after exams just relaxing and having a good time. I'll share some pictures from one trip when we were caught in a massive snow storm that left 17 inches of snow and no power for four days...but it was amazing :)

Like I said, this is my escape and I've got the itch to go so badly lately. Hopefully, soon!

In Memory of Ira Yarmolenko

I am writing to you tonight at 2:45 a.m. I can not even remember the last time I voluntarily stayed up this late. Eric has been in New York since Wednesday and I can NOT sleep. This sounds pathetic, and it may be, but I am so used to sleeping in a confined space haha. I am not used to my big bed and I almost don't like it.

Tonight, a Dateline NBC episode was about a girl from my college that was murdered in 2008. Eric was close with this girl, Ira Yarmolenko, and I had a hard time watching the episode. I have since spent most of the night discussing this with friends, thankfully, so Eric does not get this vent-sesh for once. I have a hard time dealing with the loss of young people. Ira was murdered a little over three years ago. I did not know this girl from more than an occasional "hello" because we shared a college English class together. However, she affected my life. Ira was the kindest person I have EVER met. I would say this about her if she were still alive. I have never in my life met someone that was so genuinely GOOD. At the end of the dateline episode, her best friend said something that stayed with me, which I will try to paraphrase. She said that she almost feels like she is annoying people by trying to convince them of how GOOD of a person Ira was. She said that she felt like she was annoying people by trying to tell them that someone that amazing actually existed, but she realized that she had to keep talking about her. She had to keep making people realize that someone that good did exist and someone that human did live. If I did not know Ira, even though I barely knew her, I would have a hard time believing her as well. Ira was a human. She was what every human being should strive to be. It IS hard to believe that someone this amazing did, in fact, exist. Her best friend also said, "It was impossible to be in a room with her and not feel like you were the most important person in the world." I hardly talked to Ira, and I whole-heatedly agree with this statement. She had such a powerful way of talking with people and making them feel alive and important. I know this sounds cliche, but I literally never once saw her without a beaming smile on her face. She was an inspiring human being and I do not say that about a lot of people. It is easy for you to read this and think I am being cheesy and sentimental. I am not. I am being honest. I wish you would have been in an English class and had the chance to say "hello" to her, much less actually KNOW the girl. I can't even believe how much I have learned about her from her loved ones since her death and I cannot believe how much one person can affect a community. Her family has got to be unbelievably proud of her even through their grief.

The previous paragraph explains my lead up into this blog. In my short life, I have known an extraordinary amount of young people that have lost their lives. It is unfortunate, but has also molded me into the appreciative person I am. I have learned so much about life and what is important and most of all, what is not important. I will never spend an absurd amount of energy into complaining about how others live their lives. I can only control how I live mine. Trust me, I could vent to you all day long about how little sense it makes for someone to think that they have the right to tell others who they should love, how they should talk, what they should wear, etc. but I will not. Life is SHORT and I will not give in.

Grief is a tricky, tricky thing. I do not think that there is one certain way a person should grieve. Everyone  is different and has different feelings. The hardest loss I have experienced is that of my childhood best friend, Lynn Marie Stokes. I still think about her every day, which keeps her spirit alive, I believe. Since her death, I feel as if I have almost become obsessed with death. It is a very common thought in my every day life. I feel like a demon-child saying this and this may be the most honest I will ever be in a blog. I do not know the appropriate way to grieve a loss of anyone, but I feel that I have had to experience this way too many times for my young age of 23. I have learned that death is a part of life. I have learned to appreciate the most out of my relationships with people. I have learned that life is unpredictable and not very practical. It is selfish and rocky at times. I have learned that people are beautiful and worth getting to know. It is worth talking with people, it is worth getting close with people. I have overcome the bad habit of staying away because of my fear of losing those that I love. Life is too good for that.

I apologize for the somber mood of this blog, but I have vented more tonight with my friends than I have in a very long time and I could not help but having this come out. Life is good and I am happy. The point of this blog is, yes, to vent a little more, but mostly to spread the message that life is not always pretty...life is never predictable...and life should always be appreciated.