Like a sunset in the sky you distract me from my fears

A daughter needs a mom to remind her, on bad days, that she is not alone.

A daughter needs a mom...

     to carry her when she is tired.

     to show her the comfort of a warm embrace.

     to sing her to sleep.

     to teach her to laugh at herself.

A daughter needs a mom..

     to tell her that the road to happiness is not always straight.

     to explain that the sweetest flower may not always be the pretties.

     to instill patience in her.

A daughter needs a mom because without her she will have less in her life than she deserves.
- Gregory E. Lang

"To Lindsay, (my beautiful, intelligent, talented... daughter), you mean the world to me. Always dream big and remember why a daughter needs a Mom.
                 Your Mom (where you inherited everything from...)- Christmas 2005"

My mother has been the greatest inspiration in my life. She alone is the reason I have been able to come so far in life and have been given the opportunities that I have. My mother saw the potential inside me and pushed me to excel, teaching me never to settle for second best. We are so much alike that we constantly were butting heads while I was growing up. This lead to a lot of fights. But honestly, who can say that they didn't fight with their parents growing up. It's a rule that every child should do the opposite of what their parents tell them too :). It wasn't until after I moved out that my mom and I began to see how much we really needed one another.

When I first started living on my own I thought that I would be lost. I soon realized that my mom had been preparing me for this moment my whole life. There was a reason she raised me to be an independent individual. She knew there would be a time when I would have to step into the world and live my own life. I couldn't have been more ready and I owe it all to her. It was then that I knew for certain my mother was, and always had been, my best friend. She was there for me when I needed her. I would literally cry to my mom and she always knew exactly what I needed to hear. She comforted me when I had my first breakup, telling me it wasn't the end of the world, and he wasn't good enough for me anyways. She was there when I got my first bad grade on a test in college, telling me to suck it up and study harder ;), saying it was just a fluke and everyone gets at least one bad exam grade so not to worry or stress over it. If you know me at all, I am a complete nut case when it comes to grades and I only settle for absolute perfection. But through it all my mother taught me patience. She taught me to take things as they come, and if something doesn't work out it was for the best and was never meant to be.

Growing up, I watched my mother raise my brother and I on her own while working full time and going to school to get her teaching degree. In my eyes she never struggled. I'm not naive to think it wasn't hard for her, but she didn't let us know if she was worried or if things were difficult. She always showed such strength and determination and I hoped that I would become half the person she is. I remember staring at my mother, knowing she was the most beautiful being I have ever seen. I would watch her put on make up or get dressed every day, and when she didn't know it, I would sneak into her closet and try on all of her clothes, especially her shoes. I wanted, and still want to this day, to be everything my mother is. There is a framed picture I keep of my mother that I look at every day. It's a simple picture of her posing with her hands on her hips leaning against a car. It's the simplicity and ease in which my mother shows with no effort at all that makes it my favorite picture. Without even trying she managed to look absolutely astonishing. Whenever I miss her or if I am stressed, and a hundred phone calls a day just aren't cutting it (and believe me we really do talk to each other that many times a day), I look at this photograph and remember it is all worth it. I tell myself if my mom can do it, then so can I.

My mother is the greatest inspiration in my life and I hope that with all my accomplishments, and those still to come, my mom will be proud of me. I wish that one day she will be able to talk about me with such pride and admiration, showing me off, and telling everyone around her that I am her daughter. And when she does this, I hope she knows that she is the reason I have become such a great person. I want her to know that if I didn't have her in my life as my mother I would have never become the strong individual I am today.I owe it all to her. (Mom, this also means that if I become a horrible person or mask murderer it essentially is your fault too ha ha.) But in all seriousness, I want people to compliment my mother and tell her how much of a wonderful job she did raising me because she deserves it. I love you Mom

-Always and forever your Binny Nell (Binners)

If I had everything would I still want to be alive

"Somewhere she is on the streets

Trying to make things better

Praying to God and breathing deep

Gotta break this long obsession

The look on her face, a waste of time

She won't let go, gonna roll the dice

Losing her grace, starts to cry

I feel her pain when I look in her"

- Buckcherry

I started with the intention of only telling a story about my illness. I've now come to realize that one simply can not just write one story. You have to incorporate other points, or instances, in your life to show how you may have come to a certain conclusion; why you have the viewpoint you do when confronted with a topic. I can't just tell you I'm sick and go from there. Past experiences make me reflect on situations in different ways. I base my conclusions on things that happened before and it's going to change how I perceive things after. 

I've become a completely different person in the last few years. I would like to be able to tell you that I have grown, matured, but that would just be trying to flatter myself. What I have truly become is a person who is paranoid, obsessed, jealous, and depressed. I managed to lose the carefree personality that I once held. This all came from wanting more than life has to offer. I have too many questions that will forever go unanswered and as a result I have become obsessed. My mind is on a constant repeat. It never slows down and it never stops for anything. This is what drives me, the need to know all, the need for "why". If I could slow it down then maybe I wouldn't have such difficulty in keeping people close to me. Instead, I push them away with paranoia. 

Being sick only escalated my quirks. I was given an infinite amount of time to sit and think about everything and anything. I had more time to imagine and visualize outcomes and look deeper into my questions. I am looking to writing as a way to release this pent up obsession. I hope it will keep my mind busy enough that I will allow the little things, so minuscule, to slip through the cracks, in turn, making me function slightly better. If there even is such a thing as functioning properly. Who decides what is proper anyways? <-- See, it's a never ending cycle. I'm never satisfied. It can never, and will never, be simple for me. Complicating is a way of life. Things that should not have even been given a second glance are dissected on the table until absolutely nothing can be further extracted, until I feel I am satisfied with the result. Will I ever be truly satisfied though, or should I learn to settle. . .

I love the way you lie

"It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace." 

I understand that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, but when do you get to the point where you don't have to worry about something killing you. Is there ever a time in our lives that we live for the moment, not worrying about what is going to happen or what may have happened in the past. I think I have become as strong as one can be when it comes down to it. I'm tired of going through something and coming out the other side alive only to find myself alone or more afraid than I was to begin with. This accounts for any situation, whether it be an illness, relationships, family, friends. What worries me the most, besides being ill, is being alone. I know I am young and have the rest of my life to find the right person to be with, but I look around and see others that are happy. Others, younger than me, who have already found the one. I don't want to put my heart and soul into something that is going to end up destroying a piece of me. I say that I don't want to do that, but I always do. I fight tooth and nail for what I want. I may not always show it in the most desirable way but I am committed one hundred percent. That is my downfall. I give myself to someone too much and I stop living my own life. I become wrapped in their lives, I forget that I had a life before them. I think people tend to forget that while making someone else happy is important, it is also required that you make yourself happy in the process. Otherwise, more often than not, it will never work. So I ask myself this, when does my road come to a dead end and I find the happiness that I strive for? When does the disease go away, when do I find someone that will never break my heart? I've been feeling upset lately for various reasons and I think I would be better if I didn't have so many questions. I want an answer for everything, every detail of why. I have yet to realize that there aren't always answers for the questions you seek. Some times it is what it is. People fall out of love, people get sick for no reason. Shit happens. I just wish I didn't kill myself stressing over it, allowing something that may be so insignificant to pick at my brain until the insanity sets in and I explode. Maybe some day I will learn the truth of why things happen when they do. Through everything there is one thing I notice. People dwell on the bad things more than the good. We, or maybe it's just me, never remember the good times that happened. Or we try too but so many bad things out weigh the good, making it unbearable. I try to remember the happy moments, but then I realize what I am going to be missing once thier gone. Maybe it's better that we don't have scars to show from the happiness, because then we can't miss what we hardly remember.