And I'll Wait Forever If I Have To

Today I went time traveling.

I know... you're deeply confused and/or questioning my sanity at that last sentence.

I went time traveling.

Allow me to elaborate.

Time travel (noun): To go back and read through old journals filled with pictures, words, and more from the past.

It makes me forever grateful that I journal and write everything down and save things. I can literally go back down memory road. 

The above pictures are from 2012.

I H I G H L Y recommend journaling.

Now I present to you, five years ago words that retain every ounce of feeling and relevance. 

I was born on October 14, 1989 which makes me 22 years young.

I could go on about how I adore long walks on the beach, how I am a Grey's An-addict, how I am obsessed with One Tree Hill, how pink and purple are my absolute favorite colors, how I love rain, how spiders terrify me, and all the other millions of little details that make me, me, but I assume if you're reading this that you either know me or have read previous entries and know me. 

Otherwise, first of all: you don't know me.

Second of all: you don't know me.

Even you who think you know me probably don't entirely so never make assumptions. I might just surprise you or sweep you off your feet.

Here are some details relevant to my life...

I wish I lived in a castle or my dream house... a white house with blue shutters and a porch that wraps around the entire house over looking a river...

aka the house from The Notebook.

A girl can dream, even when she's awake [especially then], and boy or girl do I dream and believe and wish and hope and pray and wait.

Family is everything to me. 

My home. 

My purpose.

My center.

My love.

I love my family and friends more than words could express or describe. This goes for my few true best friends as well.

I will give you everything I have; the good, the bad.

I am LDS (Mormon)

Families are made and meant to be together forever. I know it's true with all of my heart. Love and charity are the answers and way to live. I know the Savior, my Savior, Jesus Christ, died for me so I could truly live. I seek to emulate this kind of unconditional love to those I come across. I know my Heavenly Father loves me and has a beautiful life in store and ahead of me. He hears my prayers and answers them. 

The same goes for you.

I hope, but cannot promise, that when you read this, as you read these words, this blog will become a place you can go where everything's better and everything's safe.

People always leave. Sometimes they come into my life and then just go, leaving without another word or explanation. They will stay in my heart forever. And sometimes people come back. The most important ones, the ones that matter, will come into my life and never leave, stay forever, clinging to my heart and never letting go.

I am a flight risk with the fear of falling, wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts.

What this world needs is a return to sweetness and decency. Sometimes I feel incredibly disconnected, really uncomfortable in my own skin, kind of a sense of un-belonging, like I don't fit in this world. Like I was born at the wrong time, the wrong decade. Just alone. I want someone to want me, to fight for me, to pick me, to choose me, to love me, but I'll never admit it in words by saying it out loud.

I wish for impossible things. I write the things I cannot say. I think we've got one life, one chance, and what we do with it is up to us. I sometimes wonder if maybe I'm just destined to be alone. Maybe I am currently single but it doesn't mean I'm weak, it means I'm strong enough to wait, and trust that he is out there, the man I deserve. I'll close with a poem...

The Bride

I wonder if ever

I will be a bride

with a white lace gown

standing in front of everyone

looking beautiful

because someone

loves me

that much

When it comes to the heart, things are never simple.

The heart has a language of it's own. You have to take chances and follow your heart while fighting against the doubts and overthinking in your head. It's heartbreak warfare.

I think one of the things that scares me is this: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by or you pass them by.

-Me, 7/3/12

I'm going to end with some quotes from my journal that day penned by other people.

"Be bold and be brave and trust in your heart. It knows things you cannot imagine. Trust that it understands better than you can ever realize. It can never be bravery if you never feel scared."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"You, and no other and for you I truly hope, me, above all else."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"I wonder, every moment I write I wonder, what will be the final word I ever write to you? If I am honest, which I always and only am with you, I already know the final and last word I will ever say, write, or breathe to you. I know it down to the letter itself, the concluding letter of the crowning word, and it will belong, married forever, to the word 'you', which will follow directly the word 'love', and that word will be the exact and penultimate word that follows the word 'I' I and you and only the word Love will separate us."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"and maybe we have to break every to make something better out of ourselves."

-Fight Club

"The world and we are ending every minute of every day. It is up to us to decide if this is the single most horrific thing we will ever hear or the most breathtakingly beautiful."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"I want us. I want to swim in the way you make me feel. I want it to soak my clothes until they become a skin, and I want that skin to soak into my bones. I want to become the way it feels in the instant you stare at me from across this crowded place."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"This is what I believe to be true: You have to do everything you can, and if you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining."

-Silver Linings Playbook

"Nothing in this world is nearly as invincible as it might seem."

-Passage on the Titanic

"We are ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day."

-Brad Meltzer

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs."

-Phillip James Bailey

"It's true that not everything is meant to be. But always remember that everything is at least worth a try."

"You don't care about impossible.

Something I wish I could learn from you.

Write me down as the best idea you had.

Watch the firefly cause I struck the match tonight."

-Amber Pacific

"The most difficult phase of life is not when no one understands you. It is when you don't understand yourself."

"We don't need boys, we just need Jack Dawson."

-Me, to Brie (the best friend) as we watched Titanic

"You're so far away or am I just out of reach?"

-Matthew Perryman Jones

Lemonade

When life gives you lemons, lovelies...

(you know what I mean)

If you only ever read one post I write on here, let it be this one.

Everyone needs to read this... not because it's the most profound blog post you'll ever read, and I'm the Shakespeare blogger of the 21st century or the next J.K Rowling.

(it isn't and i don't claim to be--my lack of talent pales in comparison to their overabundance of it.)

or because you're my Nation full of lovelies & I'm your fearless princeless princess who loves love too much for her own good.

(although you are all the loveliest humans i've been blessed to interact with & i love each & everyone of you.)

 nor is it because I care about "how many followers I can get" or "I want endless profile views".

(i don't...i'd be a liar if i said i didn't want people to take my words & sift through them with me for meaning & purpose meant to teach & inspire. but that's not the reason i write. it's not my Nation, it's yours too. my words are for you, lovely. after all, what good is anything in life if you don't share it with anyone, if you keep it locked away in the dark when you could be inspiring others who are inspirationless & about to give up, when you could potentially save a life with your story because the people who need to hear it are either headed or already on a path full of trials & heartache [almost identical to yours] that you've survived & could help them through it by being vulnerable & brave enough to share your experiences, when it's part of what you were born to do, when you turn your blood into ink, when we are saved only by love--love for each other & the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share by being a writer; being a friend, as Tennessee Williams observed 'We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love', when you're letting fear stop you even though you are a massive forest full of beautiful and vibrant stories and every single one of them deserves you more than those that abandoned you to hell, when words are magic, when they bring light to those stuck in that hellish dark place and you could offer a glimpse of heaven, when even though I feel like Peyton Sawyer--either saying too much or not enough and then they're gone--but I don't care what the haters, the naysayers, the worldly people out there think [i, for the record, don't hate anyone] if we all gave in to people like that, what a sad place this planet would be, i refuse to let one of the greatest regrets in my life be what others want me to be, rather than being myself and loving me for me, and when i know the reason and always have...)

i write because it's right.

Lovelies, don't squander your astonishing potential because your life and potential are priceless.

I am a small city girl with big dreams.

To those who tell me my dreams are too big, I counter that and confront them with the truth that theirs aren't big enough. 

We all know that famous, cutesy Audrey Hepburn quote: "Nothing is impossible. The word itself says 'i'm possible'."

Those of you who know me know me, know the girl behind the blog of inspiration and endless love, know that one of my top 5 dreams is to write and publish my books, my novels, my story. I want to be a writer. The only bad writers are the ones that give up. Believe. I am here to tell you with an infinite amount of certainty that miracles, as rare as they are, are real. They happen to the ones who work hard, never give up, endure, love, change, grow, hurt, keep the faith, and don't let the bitter ones bring them down. I am a miracle. But that's another story for another day...

Even if my dream of becoming a best selling published author never see the light of day, if this blog, if these posts (my heart and soul in words) can save or inspire even one person it will have counted for something and worth everything.

As I said, if you only ever decide to make time to read one entry this is the important one.

...

STOP&READ. 🚦🚦🚦📓
If you read ANYTHING today, read this 👇🏼

To every girl and boy who gossip about me publicly, privately, on social media, in hushed corners, to those who judge me, to those who have stabbed me in the back, to the closeminded or misunderstood, to the just plain mean, to those who love to try, with every fiber of their pathetic being, to make me feel worthless, unworthy of love (or anything), and use my pain and my past to taunt me as a sick form of entertainment, pleasure, and power, to those who broke my heart. 

Guess what? 

You may have made it your mission to break me [and I'll admit you almost succeeded with the living hell you turned my life into] but you didn't. I'm not broken. All of you challenged me to become the girl I wanted to be my whole life. The best me. The badass princess that I am. I am stronger because of the pain, trials, sleepless nights, overwhelming anxiety and deep depression you put me through, and no matter what you have done to me, you have unknowingly done so much more for me. I will ALWAYS be unconditionally and unfailingly kind. Your bitterness and hatred can't change that. As the heroic, Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl said best: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." 

Your hatred will never take away my love. Your cruelty won't make me pernicious. Your ice cold veins can't steal my warmth. I'm one of the kindest, most loving girls in existence. You may be heartless, but I have a heart bursting at the seams full of love. You can take everything I have, try to tear me down, but you can't take me or break me. I am not you. And I never will be. You can pin me down with a hundred arms, but I will resist. I won't stop believing. I will love into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear.  Remember. You cannot take it. I am fearless. I forgive you AND love you. 

I honestly pray that you will someday find true happiness and discover that trying to steal other people's happiness will never make you any less miserable.

I would never treat or inflict hurt upon a person like that. Being the sweetheart that I am, I always try to see the good in people and ignore the bad. Thank you for teaching me I can love people that have harmed me and not let them back in my life.

Love > Hate.

 This world needs love and decency. There's enough heartache, warring with yourself, chaos, tragedy, trials, sadness, and misery in this world. You never know what someone is going through. Choose kindness. Have heart. What it all comes down to is this: all 7+ billion souls and human beings, despite our vast differences, want to be loved. Don't be a bully. Be better. Love is the answer. It always has been and it always will be. Fight for love, don't love to fight. 

<W/L3 Charley Brooke [aka Queen C, the next best thing to Queen Bey ;)]

Unsteady

un(prefix): 1. (added to adjectives, participles, and their derivatives) denoting the absence of a quality or state; not.

"unabashed"

-the reverse of (usually with an implication of approval or disapproval, or with another special connotation).

"unselfish"

2. (added to nouns) a lack of.

"unrest"

I time travel frequently... it's a little bit of magical in an ordinary world.

That sounds crazy... How does she time travel?

I keep records upon records in the form of journals of my life, my years, my moments, my feelings, my experiences, my heart, my soul, and my memories.

I look back at them not so much as a melancholy way of living in the past, it's more of a way to see how far I've come, compare and contrast, and relive the good memories.

I highly recommend writing your life down.

You won't regret it.

Four years ago on this very day, I wrote something that struck me as I read it today. It felt familiar. It was like I could've written it today and it would've rung true. However, I am not the 22 year old girl who wrote that entry. I have changed for the better. Although I may feel some of the same feelings she was experiencing, I'm handling them differently and have another outlook on them. For your reading pleasure, and so you know what I am talking about, here's what I wrote on 6/2/12:

My life is monotone. I go unnoticed and life is beautiful but I feel all sorts of disconnected with a shade of invisibility or perhaps everyone can see me yet I'm unwanted by all, not enough. I am honestly unsure which is worse. I'm lost. I desperately want someone to find me, save me, bring me to life, love me, I wish I could find ONE single person who sees in me the world, the stars, the galaxy, everything. A person who would fight for me. I don't need to be loved and truly appreciated by all 7+ billion people in this world, not even 7 million, or 7 thousand, or 7 hundred, or.... or 70, I don't even need to be the world to 7 people, but is one person too much to ask for? To hope for? To pray for? Why do I dream such impossible dreams?

Please find me.

I want to be found.

But, what if, what if, what if, I'm not someone anyone wants to find?

Or, if I a found, what if no one wants to keep me, or they regret it, and wish they could hide me? Unfound. Undiscovered. Undervalued. Underwater. Unnecessary. Unreal. Undone. Uninterested. Unchanging. Unhappy. Unloved. Unasked. Unappreciated. Unwavering. Unbecoming. Unme. Unclear. Undercover. Unfortunate. Unbalanced. Unbeloved. Unbeknown. Unwritten. Unlike. UnCharley.

Do I still have bouts of loneliness?

Of course.

But they pass...

Always.

Who doesn't feel lonely once in a while whether it be lonely for a person, place, feeling, or thing?

Sometimes we even feel alone in crowded rooms. Remember, the world alone has never lived inside of the word lonely.

For those who do and those who don't know, it's been a hell of a year for me. (over a year)

A literal bit of hell.

I didn't know how to bring back the heaven I strived for. The heaven I built on Earth.

I felt surrounded by darkness that would be my constant and only companion. 

People all around me tried to tell me that one day things would change. I would find the light again. I didn't want to listen though or more like I couldn't. When you're in the middle of grief it's like you're on another planet and nothing around you makes any sense. It's something you have to get through, push through, endure, fight. There is no shortcut and no way around it. My incredible dad reminded me of the most important truth on one of our weekly walks... along with his usual "Charley, never surrender the ground you've conquered." he told me "The light you're looking for is there. It's inside of you."

And he was right. 

I am the light.

You are the light.

We are the light.

We chase and search and claw for light like it's something we can find outside of us in someone else or in something. The reality is that the light is inside of us all along. The problem is sometimes we let people dim our light to the point where we can't see it or feel it, but it's always there. Always. We are made of light. We had to nourish and feed that light. We can't neglect it. The best, beautiful secret is the more we share our light, the lighter and brighter it grows and glows. 

One day, recently, I woke up and could breathe again. I began to not only like but love myself again. I realize I cannot change the past... nor do I want to. All I can change is myself. I love me. Do I want to fall in love again and find my love story? I'd be a complete and utter liar if I told you anything but a resounding, roaring YES. I hope and pray that there's a man out there who will love and want me someday for forever. For now, though, I'm surrendering and giving my heart to Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ. They love me more than anyone. I am also surrounded by endless, unconditional love from my amazing-in-every-possible-unimaginable-way family and friends. And oh my goodness, how I love you all.

I SAVE ME

(along with the Savior, of course)

I am a princess who grew up reading fairytales believing that one day her prince would come and take her away and rescue her... and she was right, or so she believed. Her "prince" did come but, to quote my girl T-Swift, "in the end in Wonderland we both went bad" and he turned out to not be my prince. Now this princess has turned into a badass. I don't need a prince to save me... because life isn't a fairytale. I save me. 

These are my goals... to be Pretty. Healthy. Happy. <3

When a good woman gets hurt, she lets the pain guide her to become an even better woman going forward.

Each time a good woman's heart is tested, it gets stronger. A strong woman is merely the product of adversity, and that's what makes brilliant and amazing--she's resilient.

She'll wipe the picture she painted with you clear from her memories and focus on a story that's yet to be written.

She gets noticed not just because she's incredible or beautiful, but because she radiates her strength and happiness for having survived storms and being broken before.

When you let a good woman go, a better man eventually comes along to show her what she's been searching for all along--and it was never you. 

Lovelies, life is beautiful... if YOU make it so.

 I went to Tennessee and found myself and some of the best friends a girl could ask for...

The Fab Five, Sara, Leigh, Liliya, Karly, and Stacey my life wouldn't be the same, nor complete, without you, the loveliest of women to exist. My squad empowers me.

 "The earth without art is eh."

I've discovered the joy of painting. I am in LOVE... maddening, consuming, love with painting and art.

 We love painting :) I love my family. They are my constant. Madison and I are becoming more that just cousins. We're becoming sisters and best friends. We've got this challenge going to try one new thing every single week or conquer a fear. It's how we discovered our passion for painting. We go to church and institute classes together and make our own fun.

 I love Lambsey, my twin, my bestie. He inspires me on the daily. Exercise is instant happiness. He is the best personal trainer. Whether we're doing our weekly viewings of Better Call Saul or The Walking Dead or joking about the nightmare of a joke Tinder is or jamming on car rides or BFT time, we make starlight together.

 Once again, my family is my life. I am so proud of McHale for graduating with her LPN. She will make the best nurse. I love supporting my family. I have the best support system.

 I am back in college at ISU. I have two more years until I will be a high school English teacher! I am majoring in Secondary Education (English). I am in summer school and while it consumes 99% of my time, it's worth every second. I love love love it.

 Trying new things, being a daredevil, like being the only girl brave enough to cliffdive with the boys this summer ;) Adventuring, getting your heart pumping, feeling alive, alive, alive is unlike anything else.

See you have to be proactive. Put yourself out there. Try new things. Stepping out of my comfort zone has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. Each day is 24 hours of possibility for life, for light, for you, for me, for love. 

I am holding steady in my vow to make summer 2016, and all of 2016, and the rest of my life one worth remembering, so I can look back at the end when I time travel the entirety of it and know I lived it to the fullest.

Will you vow to do the same?

<W/L3 Charley Brooke

"Opposition permits us to grow toward what our Heavenly Father would have us become."

-Elder Dallin H. Oaks

"She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for that sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile even if she was sad. No, she wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald