On December 31st I worked harder on that blog post than I EVER have on ANY of them, by FAR. I took my time yet hurried to finish it by midnight, and I was freakin’ proud of that!! But then it was like, yay 2018!…Hmm…Been staring at the empty blog screen/blogshoot folders for 17 days and I’m wondering when inspiration will strike. I was literally just sitting here like “wow I did a couple small blogshoots this year and I have zero inspiration to edit them.” *starts looking at pictures from this time last year where I was struggling in a parallel way* “Maybe it’s time to tell the truth.”

It seems bold. It seems new. It seems risky. But it’s not. I’ve always been honest, but what about moments like this? When everything is kinda up in the air or frozen or changing, who am I in these moments? Because not being able to get any words onto this page was like writer’s block’s fault for 2 weeks but now there’s just…Nothing else left to say? So I get to tell the truth. No secret, no lie, no facade, and just so you’re not overhyped, here’s a spoiler: I’m not trying to undo any deceit or crime with words. The truth is… I can be boring!

Actually I’m a bore more often than you’d think. Not in the way of entertaining people, but in the way that I don’t do much. I become sedentary. Yet underneath the covers that I lay in for hoursszzz I can be real, I can seem fake even though I honestly feel like (at heart) that I’m just bouncy, (see that’s real honesty, admitting what’s probably not even true lol) the truth is I have nothing to apologize for. Telling the truth and apologizing are two separate things. I wanna show you guys the very first blogshoot I did for this year that I call How To Be Rich, and the inspiration that FINALLY fueled me to blog about it is that I’m like…a fruit. I’m simple yet ultimately complex and beneficial in ways you don’t even realize. I’m an amazing girlfriend, an awesome mom and best friend to my cat, a fantastic friend, and I want nothing but to spread good vibes. So… let me teach you how to tell the truth. Grab the Jasper.

I think some things that people really need to know include the fact that being honest doesn’t necessarily being vulernable. If you wear your truth so blatantly and love yourself unconditionally then you’re pretty much bulletproof. Telling the truth has nothing to do with how good you sound or how awesome people think you are, because in fact we all know it’s harder to tell the truth when it’s hard truth, and it’s admirable to admit that hard truth.

One thing you need to learn about is integrity & honesty. Values and their different weight… all of that.

Fact: Those white scars on my arm have always bothered me and in August I decided I wanted to get a heart chakra tattoo to cover them, but that’s still a work in progress. I’m going to get it probably before the summer, though. The thing is I hated how visible those scars were because that was from my self-harm at age 15 and at age 19 I’m far past that. Wearing my truth on my sleeve isn’t quite as comfortable as wearing my heart on my sleeve, but there are so many things that people can’t bother me for anymore just because I’ve accepted that shit for myself.

I feel like the crystal that vibes with me the most is amethyst, but it’s funny because that’s starting to remind me of that Steven Universe show again that I discovered on my flight to New York and Amethyst’s personality seems totally different from mine yet I swear I can totally resonate with that. Amethyst really represents my inner mood, kinda like my moon sign (Libra). I think the coolest thing about getting to know myself is that that applies to literally everything I do in life, everywhere I go and think and feel…Reminds me of BoJack Horseman which to me is the most realistic show I’ve ever seen. I’m not joking even a tiny bit. It’s scary real, especially if you know about Hollywood. (Or in their world, Hollywoo.)

This shoot was actually super fun, too. I wanna tell you guys some of the outfit details, including that shirt is from Nasty Gal, the heart necklace is from my boyfriend and the rose quartz necklace is from my stepmom, and that red bra is from Victoria’s Secret.

Jeans are from Guess Jeans and boots are from StitchFix!

So what kinds of truth do you guys have? What makes you feel vulnerable? What makes you feel in control? What do you do when you feel the reigns slipping?

Like seriously ask yourself that.

The truth about drugs is a fun one. Drugs are so complicated for each person and so many people hate them so much and some people do all of them. I’m somewhere in between. But I love to be honest to my fam about drugs and stuff because they definitely help me figure out why I feel some crazy way, if something happens. A lot of people think they can handle it themselves so they make it solely their own responsibility, and then nobody understands why they’re so irritable or sketchy or zoned out. The key to drugs is moderation and we ALL KNOW THAT, but what’s hard is to KEEP the drugs in moderation. Weed is one that can’t hurt you much and you can really go crazy with once you know yourself and your tolerance and be sensitive to that, but most other drugs have pretty specific lines in the sand that you don’t see until you cross them. It’s like we think doing all this and that will make us feel this and that way, but honestly being sober is a privilege to me because not a lot of people can feel THIS sane sober as I can. Like, I learned that the hard way, that most people aren’t stabilized in this way because they didn’t go through 2 years of almost dying just to find the right medication match like I did. Fun fact, medication isn’t for everyone. Not everyone needs a handful of pills day and night. However, I do. I’ve felt pretty stable and normal the past year especially because I took the medication and I took what I knew about myself and tried to put myself into situations where I could feel healthy and happy, getting rid of the people and things that drove me crazy. How do you tell the truth when your mind doesn’t know the truth?

all you’ve ever wanted was someone to truly look up to you

and six feet underground now, i do

Man life is getting hard recently. No matter how stabilized I feel, the levy always breaks when someone I love is put through this incredible hardship and all I ever want to do is help but it’s so much more complicated than any of us realize. Being there for someone is…important, but complicated.

the little things give you away

everyone here is ready to go

it’s been a hard year, and I only know,

from down this low, it’s only up, up we go

how do you tell the truth when the truth hurts your heart?

death is harder to come by than it is to breathe.