life of haleigh

 There I was, standing with a forty pound backpack on my back, in a bus full of people, hotter than I’ve ever been in my entire life, thinking about how I used to get nervous on travel days. (I promise this isn’t about Europe, keep reading.) Something about packing the bag up and being at the bus stop on time and blah blah blah always made me anxious to even think about. But this was my 19th public transportation since we’d arrived in Europe and I was finally used to the feeling. When I start to worry, I ask myself what’s the worst thing that could happen? And then I count backwards down to a realistic situation. 1. I’m not going to die. 2. I’m not going to lose all my money. 3. I’m not going to get hurt. 4. I’m not going to get lost because I have all the tools I need to navigate what I’m doing. And then the worst thing that could happen would be like, missing the bus and waiting 30 minutes for the next one. And it doesn’t seem so scary that way. Back in the sweaty bus, I sat ther...

I wish sixteen year old me would have told a few more people to go f*ck themselves. Honestly, I think a lot of us go through life thinking that kindness is the only way to get anywhere. Now listen, that’s not to say to be rude to everyone you meet, but there’s a place and time where it’s perfectly viable to tell someone what they need to hear. There’s a sort of plateau of kindness. A little bit goes a long way to someone who values you. But at a certain point, the curve kind of…flattens out. The less someone values you, the less it matters HOW nice you are, and becomes more about simply how much they like you.  Reality check - some people are just never going to like you. And people think you owe them kindness simply because you just have always acted that way. Side note - being nice as collateral or so you have something to hold over their head in the future is not nice, its manipulative. Don't be a martyr. I think I'll talk about that more one day...but for now: I wish sixte...

This past year has been weird. Not in a way that I struggled all that much, it’s just been a really big long learning experience. I promised myself this year would be about getting to know me for who I was. I promised to relax and be good, better than the good I was last year, and to try start my life out of school with all these amazing different ideas. Plans change, I guess. Without school to stress out over, I found a new way to worry, this time it was about something way more broad and way more brutal, my future . I should’ve been that for Halloween.  It’s all I can think about. Who am I gonna be? How am I gonna get there? Who will be there with me? When will it all make sense? Where will I end up? How much will it cost? How much longer can I wait? Am I going to be okay? Will there be love when I get there? Will I have done all the things I needed to do before the opportunity comes around? And then, in true, wouldn’t-be-a-Haleigh-blog-without-it fashion, a song came on the radi...

I think I was like - the last of my friend group to figure out about being self conscious about my body. Every thirteen year old it seems has this moment of like “oh my god, I’m supposed to hate being chubby?” Well imagine me, a baby-faced ninth grader, finding out I’m supposed to be kinda hot now instead of cute. There were so many feelings that came with that. Because I had friends with long hair and straight teeth, and my braces were still months away from coming off, and because I wasn’t ready to give up heaping servings of spaghetti. I could not, at the time, come to terms with the fact that I was supposed to desire skinniness. In fact, I never even thought I was ‘big’ in the first place.  Then that pivotal moment happened. I think I was 14. We were getting ready for a party and trading clothes, how girls do, and someone quietly noted how they could never fit into my clothes because they were ‘way too big.’ Ugh. My heart still breaks for the me who heard that. I never thought ...

I have spent almost all my life trying to be cool.   At first, it was my big sister who was the coolest. She got braces first, which I desperately wanted, and she had all the knee high boots and hair straighteners and bling-y things way before I did. When she walked out of her room in the morning I stared at her over my bowl of lucky charms like she was THE celebrity icon. There might as well have been a spotlight on her.  The leader of the social ladder. Friends on friends on friends. She got to have Facebook, which of course made me jealous, but when I got a feature in the profile picture, I practically jumped out of my pants. She was cool, cool.  As I got older, she got cooler. She had GUY friends. She went to university. She drank BEER. She was funny, brave, athletic, tall & skinny. Dream girl. And that wasn’t even the coolest thing about her. What made my sister rank #1 for twenty two years in a row and counting was who she was right down at the core. She never, ...

I always mistook discomfort for bad news. Anything even sort of remotely maybe wrong sent up all the red flags, warning signs, alarm bells. I never bothered to figure out why. So, even though I was learning to be with myself, I wasn’t getting to really know who I was. I wasn’t putting two and two together. Not searching for cause of my effects. I was sitting there with a stomach ache thinking, “this sucks” instead of thinking, “did I eat something that caused this?” So I chose to start noticing. To hear my words from other peoples ears and ask myself if I was a person I would be friends with. To listen to my intuition and see people for who they really are. To change my perspective from “why me?” to “why did this happen?” and not to blame myself but just to understand the course of events that led me here. You know that feeling when you’re in the water and you lay on your back with your ears underneath but your face is out? In that moment where you just feel really sort of light and un...