Me Loving Harder, Part One

When I was a freshmen in college, all of us little lasses were forced into these awkward orientation groups in which we attended to a bunch of pointless lectures to teach us all about what the administrators thought being in college was all about. It was in this group that I met a spunky, outspoken girl who introduced herself as Biz.

Biz is definitely a unique spirit. The fact that “Biz” was her short for “Elizabeth” rather than “Beth” or “Lizzy” was proof enough. The fact that she wasn't afraid to let her decidedly liberal views be heard in a massive sea of conservative classmates only solidified it. She quickly became my hero.

She has an incredibly infectious smile that honestly spreads to her eyes and lights up her whole face - and everyone's around her. She is the kind of girl that will drop everything to bring you Italian chocolates and boxed wine to cheer you up.

She has a wonderful sense of humor that she applies to everything she does (every single one of her Facebook photo album titles is a Super Trooper quote). She is an amazing artist and to this day I still have several of the pottery pieces she gave me around my apartment.

She is the most outgoing, bull-headed, and strongest women I have ever met. She never failed to be the life of a party and always had a story by the end of the night. She is an absolutely beautiful person; almost painfully so on the outside, too.

She is that kind of girl that you really, REALLY want to be friends with but you’re afraid she’s just too cool for you.

I am honored and blessed to say Biz is my friend. One of my best friends, actually.

You see, she was my person. I could go to her for anything… and sa-weet Jesus do I mean anything. She was the one and only person I could go to for everything from “What the hell kind of shoes goes with this top?” to “My Grandma was just diagnosed with cancer…” to “You will not BELIEVE who I went home with last night!”



She always listened and she never judged me.

Back in June, right before I moved to Fargo, Biz was driving through a wicked thunderstorm to work a basketball camp at Notre Dame. She hydroplaned, ran into a semi, and landed in a ditch. She survived the crash with no broken bones or any massive blood loss; but she suffered severe brain damage from the accident.

Her BPI was so high at one point we thought we were going to lose her. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t lose my person. I never got to tell her how much she mattered to me; how much I loved and valued our friendship.

By the grace of whatever God there is, Biz did survive. She is still learning to walk and talk again, and she struggles with her short term memory. Biz and her family lost her father this past Christmas to a long-fought battle with brain cancer, and she still asks, "Where's dad?" several times a day.

Despite all of this, she is fighting harder and stronger than I could have ever imagined. Through this tragedy she has not only showed all of us how to live – but how to survive.

Biz is one of my inspirations to love harder.

What’s yours?

Why I Hate Valentine's Day

This weekend, roughly eighty seven percent of the people I know will be exchanging absurdly expensive velvet boxes of candy, annoying stuffed members of the animal kingdom, and ridiculous displays of foliage all while making me want to vomit. all. day.

No, really. It’s not that big of a deal.

It’s fine that the only flowers I have ever received on National Schmoopsie Poo Day were from the boyfriend who ended up dumping me as I was getting in the car to leave for college and my father when I was in my twenties.

It doesn't even matter that I have to buy myself those absurdly expensive velvet boxes of candy.

I really don’t even care that I have had a super sexy little hot pink teddy in the back of my closet for the past five years with no one to wear it for.

And I don’t even like jewelry, anyway.

(Me? Bitter? Never.)

Because my hatred of Valentine's Day does not stem from always being single on February 14th. Oh no, no, no. Not this girl. No-sir-ee-bobby! I can't believe I just typed that.

Back when I was a wee tike in grade school, if we were going to bring Valentines for someone we had to bring one for everyone in the class. We even made card receptacles out of paper bags and construction paper during class for this shenanigan of a holiday.

I know what you are thinking. And, no, I did not get shafted on my Valentines like Gretchen Weiners. My pain and suffering runs far deeper than that.

You see, when I was in the fourth grade I had a huge crush on a boy. Let's call him Mr. Meanie Pants. Because I'm mature like that.

I boldly decided to ask Mr. Meanie Pants to be my Valentine. And at the tender age of nine, I had devised a very discrete and devious way of doing so without the embarrassment of the whole class knowing about my crush.

I wrote him a note that I felt was so poetic and heartfelt I almost didn't give it to him. It read:

Clever, huh?

I slipped the note into his Valentine before I popped it into his scarcely decorated Valentine bag.

Now all I had to do was wait... and I didn't have to wait long.

Mr. Meanie pants did not circle yes. He didn't circle no. Hell, he didn't even just ignore it and pretend I never gave it to him to begin with.

Rather, he felt it was necessary to laugh boisterously about the note. Then he read it to his band of hoodlum friends. After they got a good snort and chuckle out of it, the other twelve ten-year-olds in the class wanted to know what was so funny.

He then announced to the entire class that he, Mr. Meanie Pants, would, in fact, NEVER be my Valentine. After his proclamation, he proceeded to savagely rip my note apart and throw it on the ground.

Who has two thumbs and despises Singles Awareness Day?

This fucking girl.

(I have just realized that the fourth grade was quite possibly the most mortifying and traumatic year of my life.)

The Best Moment of My Life

I recently went and signed myself up for a formspring.me account and I have one thing to say.

You guys are weird.

I know I can be pretty ridiculous and I have little to no shame/dignity left, but seriously people? What the hell kind of questions are these? Sexiest piece of lingerie? My signature “moves” in bed? Absurd.

I spent a lot of time toiling with whether or not to be serious or facetious in my answers, but one question totally and honestly had me stumped…

“What has been the best moment of your life to date?”

Holy soul searching Batman!

Immediately about three different things had popped into my mind… The second I finished presenting and defending my senior thesis. Moving into my first apartment on my own. Realizing my bra size was a whole cup bigger in Target bras.

But are any of those really the best moment of my life? I mean, I have had a lot of moments in my twenty something years. So what if I finished my thesis? I’m not the only one who had to do the damn thing. Moving into an apartment? Big deal; I’ve moved into three others since then. And no matter what the tag says, the girls still confirm my membership to the Itty Bitty Tittie Committee.

So I began to dig really deep into the gray matter beneath my skull to come up with that one moment that was so mind-blowing, so magnificent, and so absolutely and completely fantastical that it trumped all others.

Thinking of that one moment is a lot of pressure, people.

It was over fourteen hours later, but I finally found my answer. It was hiding within the quote, "Life is not measured by breaths we take in a moment, but by moments that take our breaths away.” I know that is completely cliché and cheesy, but it is. so. true.

There are so many moments in my life that really were so mind-blowing, so magnificent, and so absolutely and completely fantastical that they make all the awful and shit-tacular moments obsolete.

Like the time we brought home our first puppy, Rufus, and he immediately pooped on the carpet in the living room. But he was so cute and we were so happy to have him we all just laughed.

Or when my grandparents celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary and you could see they were still so madly in love with each other that you couldn’t help but smile with them the whole night.

Then there was the time my brother brought home a paper heart from his second grade class that prompted “Something I will love forever is…” and he had filled in “my sister Jeney.”

Live your life one moment at a time, because otherwise you will miss something. As Cesare Pavese said in another cliché and overused quote, “We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.”

Tell me, what is your best moment?