the list that wrapped up 2013.

so i haven't blogged in a while.

but guess what? my one and only new year's resolution is to blog more. (i never make other ones. i'm never going to the gym. and i'll probably still watch just as much netflix.)

BUT THIS IS MY ANNUAL NEW YEAR'S POST

BECAUSE RIGHT NOW IT'S LIKE... TWO IN THE MORNING AND I'M A LITTLE BIT TIPSY AND IT'S TIME TO RECAP 2013 IN THE LIFE OF EMILY.

i was thinking about making this post when i couldn't fall asleep last night (my brother was loudly skyping his new girlfriend and giggling like a high school girl) and i focused on a lot of shitty things that happened.

like, ALL THE SHITTY THINGS. and i looked out of my window super philosophically at one in the morning and i was like

dude 2013 really sucked.

and then i scrolled through my iphone pictures and i smiled a bunch because i realised that 2013 didn't actually suck at all.

2013 was really effing awesome.

i don't want to focus on bad things. i mean, some of the stuff in this list will be bad. but you know what? every bad thing is a learning experience and such.

i'm already getting too sentimental. let's get into the top 50 things of 2013 for emily so we can bring in 2014 right.

WITH PICTURES!

THE LIST!

1. i went to the united kingdom for a whole month.

(honestly, my entire list could be all the cool shit i did in the united kingdom. but i'll try to tone it down.)

2. while in the united kingdom, i spent the weekend in edinburgh, scotland. which was gorgeous.

that's edinburgh castle. ON A MOUNTAIN.

3. while i was in edinburgh, i climbed arthur's seat, which is like a scottish mountain? and it was forty degrees and pouring down rain and i was in skinny jeans and toms and it was just all around a weird experience.

VICTORY SCREECH

4. i went to shakespeare's house. and his grave. and his wife's house. and that was pretty nifty.

his wife's house was prettier.

5. i watched the royal shakespeare company perform hamlet, as you like it, and titus andronicus in stratford, england.

6. i also saw three plays at shakespeare's globe in london: as you like it in georgian (which is a really cool language), the tempest where i ALMOST touched colin morgan, and king lear.

7. after watching the tempest for three hours in the rain, i became friends with a woman who i do not know the name of and she took me and several other friends of mine out to a bar and bought us all drinks and i got totally shit faced with a shakespearean actor and i honestly do not remember how i got back to my flat.

8. i took a day trip to cardiff, wales, and whilst there i went to the DOCTOR WHO MUSEUM AND THAT WAS REALLY SWEET.

9. after leaving scotland, i went to the city of york by myself and i spent the day back packing the medieval wall. after i back packed the wall, i went to york minster cathedral, where i have buried a large piece of my heart. and i worshipped there among strangers.

10. i climbed to the very top of st. paul's cathedral. (it was a lot of steps.)

11. i went to all these cool places at night.

that's westminster abbey.

that's buckingham palace.

and that's trafalgar square.

12. i saw some really cool paintings at the british national gallery and some cool mummies at the british museum and some hella old books at the british library.

13. i also went on the tube drunk at night and wound up at parliament.

drunk tube adventures.

14. i also went to canterbury cathedral which is like THEEEE CHURCH OF ENGLAND (and i was not drunk but i swear to god those french kids on a field trip were). 

15. all right, let's go back to the colonies. i got accepted to the sigma tau delta international english honourary convention with my poetry portfolio, hunting whales! (this is in portland, oregon, by the way.)

SUPER AWKWARD POETRY READING

16. my STD ladies and i went to voodoo doughnuts!

17. and we totally went to powell's books. ENGLISH MAJOR HEAVEN, KIDS.

18. ooops. i tore my meniscus.

THUG LYFE

19. i got to write my own vagina monologue. that was pretty neat.

20. i then got to perform my VERY OWN VAGINA MONOLOGUE ABOUT MY VERY OWN VAGINA in alma's performance of the vagina monologues.

that's me and lisa before our second performance.

21. i suddenly found that i could sing and i joined alma's chorale?

22. i went to fraternity run outs for the first time and i sure as hell repped that PMA SINFONIA.

23. my boyfriend of two and a half years broke up with me. which was royally shitty.

24. but i spent a lot of time loving myself and i understood why he broke up with me. which was really fucking freeing.

25. after joining chorale, i met this goofy kid, who quickly became one of my best friends. his name is adam.

26. AND NOW WE'RE DATING.

you can say it. we're cute.

28. on an epic journey to detroit, adam and i saw cold war kids in concert. THAT WAS TOTALLY UNREAL.

29. i went to the detroit zoo with my RA staff mates and i MET A LION.

meet is a relative term.
can you even see the lion?

30. i smashed open a watermelon with a baseball bat called the bitch blaster and let's be real, it was the most hoodrat shit thing i've ever done in my life.

31. at RA training, i presented about mental illness with my best friend barbara. and i shared my own story about having generalised anxiety disorder.

32. i realised that i wasn't where i needed to be with my anxiety and controlling it. so i went back to my therapist and got myself on anti anxiety medication. it was one of the bravest things i did this year.

33. i became a published poet in an online magazine. i'm a published poet.

34. i rode a camel. ya know.

35. in chorale, I SANG THE CIRCLE OF LIFE AND I CRIED BECAUSE IT'S MY FAVOURITE.

(guys my list has a video this year and you can totally find me in it wheeeee)

36. i also sang in my first ever festival of carols. that was pretty legit. and exhausting.

37. i went to a renaissance consortium. where too many kids liked beowulf.

i think this pictures sums up how weird that consortium was.

38. i became president of active minds at alma college. which was such an honour.

39. i went with my active minds executive council to washington DC!

40. WE WENT TO GEORGETOWN CUPCAKE.

BEST. CUPCAKES. EVER.

41. we did a stomp out stigma walk at the convention. i am slowly helping to stomp out the stigma surrounding mental health and mental illness.

42. i got this little guy to keep me company. his name is hamlet.

43. i danced on a stage with a bunch of drag queens. i really wish i had a picture of this.

44. I WENT TO OREGON FOR MY COUSIN'S WEDDING AND IT WAS REALLY BEAUTIFUL. and we went to crater lake and the oregon coast afterwards.

45. i reached one year pull free. and i'm still going strong. i have trichotillomania, but it does not have me.

46. my grandmother died. and i miss her. a lot.

47. i left my sorority, gamma phi beta, for personal reasons. but my sisters will always be my sisters.

48. i went to TWLOHA's heavy and light with annalise. it was a beautiful night filled with tears, laughter, poetry, and song. and when it was over, we went to lansing at one in the morning and danced on the steps of michigan's capitol.

49. and probably the greatest thing on this list, when i was in london...

i saw the lion king on broadway.

50. i lived.

this year it was a lot harder for me to do this. one of the simplest reasons is that i spent far too much time scrolling through my facebook and my twitter trying to find pictures for everything, and i didn't even get to put that i reached 20,000 tweets in here.

normally i have a hard time thinking of all the cool things that i did. i'll reach thirty-five and be like, uhhhhh is my life really this boring?

this year i actually went back, cut out some stuff and replaced it with more important things, and lumped some things together to make room for things that i had forgotten that were really important. and that means that a lot of cool things happened.

i really can't believe that last night i thought 2013 was terrible.

yes, parts of it were. i was in a two and a half year relationship and i wanted to spend the rest of my life with that person. i didn't think i could deal with him leaving me, and guess what? he left.

my grandmother died. and even though it was a long time coming and it was expected and in some respects it was almost a relief, i still miss her laugh and her smile. 

my anxiety really set me back. when i got back from england, things spiralled out of control and i'm still trying to get back to where i was. there were days where i had no emotions. there were times when i was so afraid to leave my apartment that i would vomit. there were times that i did not feel like a person and i could not function.

but everything is an experience.

yes, my two and a half year relationship ended. but i figured out why and i learned a lot about myself in the process. i became a better person. and i learned that i can move on.

i've learned so much about myself through my anxiety. what i can do, what i can't do, and what i think i can't do but actually can do. i talked myself out of a panic attack before it actually set in. i'm learning strategies. i'm becoming a better person and i'm becoming someone who won't be set back by her own mind.

and man, i wish i could describe all the cool things i did when i was in england, scotland, and wales. the pubs i visited, the churches i stepped in, the graves that i saw, the people i met, the places i went, the mountains i climbed, everything. just being able to be there for an entire month is just years of experience. 

everything is an experience.

i took a tumblr survey about 2013 the other day, and it asked me this question.

compared to this time last year, are you a) happier or sadder b) skinnier or fatter and c) richer or poorer?

and i answered it like this.

i am happier because i am understanding who i am. i am physically skinnier but spiritually fatter. i am poorer in money but richer in experience.

and that's been 2013.

(sorry this got all sentimental at the end. but 2013 really was a good year and i need to always remember that.)

LET'S BRING IT, 2014. GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT.

i said no. and it's kinda glorious.

unless you're new here, you probably know that i go to alma college in alma, michigan and i'm a senior wrapping up my fall semester.

if you're new, hi, i'm emily and i'm a senior at alma college wrapping up my fall semester.

moving on.

i could go on and on about how much i love alma college. and i do. all the time. to people that i know, to people that i don't know, to people that actually go to alma college with me. i can't shut up about alma college.

i love the campus. i love the professors. i love the classes. i love my major. i love the chapel. i love the organisations. i love the opportunities. i love my multiple jobs there.

I LOVE ALMA, OKAY?

but there is one thing that i don't like about alma college, and it's a certain mentality that a lot of students seem to have, and this mentality kinda goes like this.

student one: omg i have this paper that's due and it's sooo long
student two: dude did i tell you about my huge-ass project that's going to take me all night?
student three: bitch please i have three projects and i'm the president of an organisation.
student four: EVERYONE SIT DOWN DID I TELL YOU THAT MY RESEARCH IS ABOUT TO CURE CANCER... ON JUPITER

and i just kind of stand there like, are you furreal right now?

but i'm not going to pretend that i didn't have that mentality, because i totally did. i used to be that person that was like, "hi i'm emily and i'm taking nineteen credits and i'm on the EC of this committee and i hold this position in this club and i have a huge paper due and by the way i'm a resident assistant and did i tell you that i'm trying to study abroad and single handedly end the patriarchy?"

it's gotten really annoying.

my friend ray wrote a pretty good article about this mentality in our newspaper, the almanian. it was basically like, "HEY ALMA, CALM THE EFF DOWN, YO."

it's taken me about... three years to be able to say no. because when you come to college and when you're someone like me who was over-involved in high school and just generally likes to do everything, you join all the clubs.

but what happens when you join all the clubs is this:

pretty much.

my senior year i'm pretty much in the second stage of this progression, which is where i sit in my room and i say to myself, "holy shit i have to do all the things and i seriously cannot."

there is one word for why i seriously cannot, and that word is ANXIETY.

emily's life with generalised anxiety disorder is definitely a fun life. and the past three weeks have been kind of... well, they've been pretty shit awful.

sometimes when you have crippling anxiety, like mine sometimes is, you can't really do anything. getting out of bed is a gigantic victory. going to class is like climbing a mountain and once you're actually in class sitting with people, it's really hard to concentrate because you feel like you're drowning. going to clubs and meetings is almost out of the question when you are so exhausted from just interacting with people that you're ready to sleep for a week.

my last two weeks have been like this, and it's been super tiring. but i'm getting back from it, seeing my therapist regularly and talking things out, figuring out where my anxiety is, and what i need to be doing to remain a functioning human being in society.

but part of that is realising what exactly is triggering my anxiety and working out strategies to dealing with it.

if we avoided everything that was triggering to us, we would never come out of our rooms. which i have done. and hiding in my apartment all by myself and being afraid of everything outside is not how i want to live my life. so when the new alma cafeteria is really fucking scary, i work on strategies for going there for meals.

new cafeteria, which we call saga. it terrifies me.

where i'm really going with this post is the fact that for my own mental health and wellbeing, i made a super big decision, one of the biggest decisions that i've made in my nearly three and a half years as a college student, and that was the decision to leave something, not join something.

it's very common knowledge that i'm in a sorority called gamma phi beta. my mother was in the local version of it when she went to alma. my cousin was in it in orange county, california. and i joined it my sophomore year.

this is my brother and i about thirty seconds after i joined my sophomore year.

no. we are not twins.

on friday, i signed a very official piece of paperwork that said that i, emily hollenberg, would no longer be a part of the sorority gamma phi beta.

it was something i'd been thinking about for seven months, so since last march. it wasn't like i woke up one morning and said, "wow, i think i'll leave my sorority today." this was a long and ongoing process that began with a very strange incident involving a mojito, a viewing of mulan at the service learning off campus house, and a formal dance. (you can ask about it. i'm not going to tell you.)

over the summer, when i got back from my month-long adventure in england, my anxiety sort of took over things that i used to have control of, and i took a gigantic step backward in how i was handling my life with GAD. it made me re-evaluate a lot of different things, and not just what i was involved in at school and what triggering things were for me.

it made me think about how i am as a person, what i am capable of doing as a person, WHO i am as a person as well as how i am, what i want to do for the rest of my life, and what i need to do for myself.

saying no is very hard for me. i'm a leader and a doer. i want to do everything, i want to lead everything. it's extremely hard for me to step away from something that i feel passionately about. 

i am very good at telling other people that they have the right to say no, but i am very bad at telling myself that i have the right to say no.

coming back to campus, instead of feeling a sense of relief at my first sorority meeting surrounded by my fifty-three beautiful sisters, i felt nothing but terrifying social anxiety. i couldn't figure out exactly what was happening, just that i needed to go back to my apartment and decompress. every single meeting i felt like i was drowning. at the last business meeting i attended, i was focusing so hard on not crying out of anxious terror that i honestly don't remember what was discussed. 

when you have anxiety, you learn a few things.

1. if things make you really anxious, you should leave the situation and work on ways to go back to the situation to deal with the anxiety properly. you cannot spend your life avoiding everything that makes you anxious.

2. if things that you used to love make you really anxious, you should probably talk to someone about it.

so i went to my therapist, confused and not really sure what was happening. because my sorority should not make me anxious.

but it did. and there was no getting around the fact that everything about it made me anxious. every facebook notification in the secret group. every email. every event that i had to attend. every time i had to go to the house. every time i had to be in a large group of my sisters.

i kept seeing my therapist. we worked on strategies. and it just wasn't working.

last week i had a list of things involving my sorority that were coming up. the idea of fulfilling these obligations made me so anxious that i had a complete breakdown in my apartment and spent some time anxious vomiting. which is worse than regular vomiting, trust me on this.

it was then that i decided for my own wellbeing that i could no longer be a part of the organisation.

it's very hard, leaving fifty-three sisters that you love and support and that love and support you. but what comes with love and support is actual love and support, and when i told our president that i needed to leave for my own wellbeing, she loved me and supported my decision.

last night my chapter found out that i "dropped my letters", which is the term for leaving a greek organisation. i have not spoken to any of my former sisters directly since, but i haven't felt any animosity. i wrote them a letter explaining why i was leaving and how i needed to take care of myself, and the best way to do this was to leave. i can only hope that they'll be supportive.

i stand by my decision. it was not easy, but i stand by it.

at one of the last meetings that i attended, we received a personal bill of rights. i was unable to hang it onto my wall because it somehow ended up in the communal kitchen trashcan of my apartment, but i remember most of it. and most of what it said finally made me realise that i have the ability to take control of my mental health and wellbeing and that nobody can stop me from doing that.

my name is emily and i'm taking control of my life by saying no.

i'm learning that no is a complete sentence, and that this is something that i need to embrace. no. is. a. complete. sentence. and it does not need to be followed by an explanation.

it feels really nice being in control of my life. i kind of feel like a superhero. 

like batman.

this batman cat is for my former sisters of gamma phi beta, who are obsessed with cats, and consequently, obsessed with batman.

(but seriously. you should see the dark knight rises posters that some of these women have. holy shit.)