Five Years: Plain, Raw, and Simple

My last post to this blog was April 22, 2011--almost five years ago now.  I don't know why I was suddenly possessed with the desire to start it up again after all this time, but I was.  After the "possession," it would have been easy to just start back up on that day, but somehow I knew I couldn't do that.  The past several years have been some of the hardest years of my life thus far and skipping over them seemed wrong--almost unhealthy.  In fact, I spent much of those hard years trying to cover up the fact that I was struggling.  I just put on my Happy Face and pretended everything was peachy.  Your 20's are supposed to be your BEST years, right?  Well, no more secrets.  Here is Melissa: plain, raw, and simple.  I'm not looking for sympathy.  I just want people to know me for who I am, flaws and all.

I picked four pictures for each year.  Even though I tried to pick positve pictures, what they represent will not necessarily be a positive moment in my life.  So without further ado, here is what you missed from 2011 to 2015!

(I apologize for the long post... A lot can happen in five years...)

2011

One more year gone and one more to go... The Fairwell Festival is a Florida Southern tradition to kick off the summer.  And this year's summer was extra special!

In 2011, I spent my summer in the beautiful country of Haiti.  My emotions were on a rollar coaster that summer...

Just being in Haiti was my greatest joy of 2011.  I fell in love with the country long before I ever set foot on its soil, and now I get to spend three months there?!  As an intern, I was able to help in many different areas around the campus, but one of my very favorites was the Miriam Center, a home for children with special needs.  Many children in Haiti are abandoned if they are born special needs, not because Haitians are cruel and hateful, but because they have no way of caring for a child who is different.  For Jonathan's Sake was an awesome program where parents with special children could come in several times a week and learn how to work with them.  It was beautiful to see this mom light up from pure love of her child! 

This summer was also the first time in my entire life I became homesick... and it was a crippling homesickness at that.  For whatever reason, I found that I really didn't "click" with any of the other interns.  My only real friends were Haitians, with whom I was still trying to communicate effectively.  I had never felt so alone or isolated in my life, and it was extremely difficult.

This summer was also special because it was when I first felt the strong call not just to visit Haiti, but to someday serve as a full-time missionary.  As you can imagine, that was a pretty terrifying thing to hear from God, and yet I was at peace with it.  Interestingly enough, my biggest fear was how Max would take the news... Would he come with me?  (Hint: Read on to find out!)

Most people go get shwasted on their 21st birthday, but if you haven't realized this by now: I'm not Most People.  To be honest, I don't really care for the taste of alcohol and sitting around drinking doesn't sound even remotely fun to me.  (Drinking is what I do to survive, not have fun.  It's like someone saying, "Let's go out and breathe air tonight!  Except the air is poisonous, and you'll feel really sick tomorrow!  Doesn't that sound like a blast?!")  Anyway, I decided to do 21 my own way: Paint Fight Party!  Everyone wore white and got two squeeze bottles of paint.  I also had one big gallon of paint and a bucket of paint filled water balloons.  Two rules: 1. Avoid face shots. 2. Avoid the swans... I don't need the city of Lakeland after me...  Ready, set, GO!  (I still have and wear my painted shirt from that day.)

For Christmas, my whole family took a trip to Disney World.  Now that all the siblings are "grown-up" and doing our own things, this was actually a big deal.  That's my "little" brother Nick on the teacups!

Reckless Tip of 2011: Don't be Most People.  Be You.

2012

2012 marked the ten year anniversary of my beautiful grandmother Merere's passing.  In remembrance of her, the family went to one of her favorite places in Tampa: Lowry Park Zoo.  Memere used to dress up similarly to Mother Goose and volunteer at the zoo as a storyteller.  I still miss you, Granny Annie GumDrop...

My second summer in Haiti was SO much more rewarding!  I made tons of friends that year, which helped me remember that I'm not unlikable... you just can't click with everyone.  We would go on these crazy long hikes up the Haitian mountains.  Since we were essentially following the rivers, we would see waterfall after waterfall.  So beautiful!  This was also the year I met John and Christi Barnes, who I have considered my mentors ever since.  They are full-time missionaries in Haiti, where they adopted 12 Haitian teenagers who all live in a home together as a family.  They are beautiful people, and I am so thankful we met!

For my last semester in college, I got my dream internship: teaching STEM 5th grade with one of the greatest teachers in the county (in my humble opinion).  Teaching STEM was awesome because you were allowed to stray a bit from the curriculum.  Since it was an election year, our class was put into groups to research different aspects of how American elections work.  Then they taught the other kids in the school, and we held mock elections.

And now the moment we've all been waiting for...*drumroll please*... I graduated college!  My roommate (and best friend) Jessica and I finally did it!  If you look carefully, my cap says "viv san pè" which means "live without fear" in Haitian Creole.  It was the closest translation to "reckless" that I could find.  :)

Reckless Tip of 2012: Viv san pè!

2013

Here comes the hardest year of them all... Put on your seatbelts, folks...

Max and I broke up during my internship in 2012.  Somehow "being in love" just isnt enough when one person eventually wants to pack up and move to a third-world country--and the other doesn't.  After losing my love and best friend, somehow I thought moving to Honduras for six months would be a good idea...

My first teaching job ever was at ABBA Bilingual School in Honduras where I taught three awesome fourth graders and Mr. Potato Head all subjects in English.  I loved my job and my students and even Copan Ruinas, the city where I lived.  But living in Honduras put my Haiti homesickness to shame.  I was living with the pastor's family, who seemed to hate me just because I was American even though he hired me in the first place, and many people wouldn't bother talking to me once they found out how broken my Spanish was.  I was lonely and isolated and missed Max.  Looking back, Honduras is probably where the depression started to kick in...

My first class in the States was fifth grade in Edgewater, Florida--a little town where I lived by myself in a cramped mother-in-law suite.  My only real friend in the area was my mom thirty minutes away, whom I visited almost every weekend.  I love my mom very much, but that's still pretty sad.  The depression that had started to develop in Honduras became overwhelming, and I started to take medication to try to keep it at bay so I could actually do my job.  (Spoiler Alert: The meds didn't do much besides remind me that I was depressed... A little counterproductive, if you ask me.)  Their first assignment was to create a Culture Box about your background and where you came from.  One of my favorites is above!

One of my favorite moments of 2013 had to have been the huge 50th surprise birthday party my sister and I threw for my mom.  The best part was that Nikita (my sister) had secretly flown in from Texas to be there, and my mom had no idea about any of it.  Suffice it to say that is Nikita she is hugging in that picture, not me.  :P

Not long after the birthday party, and about a year after the breakup, Max and I decided to "get the band back together," as they say.  I know that he was still a little unsure about the whole "Haiti Thing" and I was a little nervous about pressuring him, but somehow we just knew it was the right thing to do.  Pictured above is our celebratory banana split!

Reckless Tip of 2013 (brought to you by Nikita):

Take a flight to surprise someone you love!

2014

By February, I was losing my mind with lonliness.  Luckily, I had Max back, but he was living in Tampa for school, and I only saw him on select weekends when he could afford the two and a half hour drive.  In the meantime, I had Gus Gus.  My little piggie was very much not allowed in my mother-in-law suite, but if I didn't have some company, I might have gone mad, so I snuck him in...  I love my Gus!

That summer, my beautiful sister got married to a great guy she met at Baylor, and I had the distict honor of being Maid of Honor (I guess that's why they call it that, huh?).  They are now happily married in Texas and for some inexplicable reason have a cat.

As you probably guessed by now, I decided to move to Tampa for the next school year. (Max was there, of course, but I also have a ton of extended family and some other friends there as well.  I needed people!)  I survived Year One and silly me thought it would be better the next year.  "I'll have a year experience under my belt, I'll have Max and other family, My depression will disappear and everything will be rainbows and butterflies!"  Needless to say, that's not exactly how it went down.  A friend of mine helped me get a fifth grade position at a Renaissance school--98% free or reduced lunch.  The expectations at a school like that are so incredibly high that my depression was quickly coupled with severe anxiety attacks.  (Luckily, the meds actually help for that one...)

I was trying desperately to make new friends so I wouldn't have to rely on Max so much, and in my efforts, I actually did!  (I know I seem so charming and lovely, but I really do find it difficult to make friends... This was a big deal for me.)  Megan has been someone I could rely on almost since the first time we met.

Reckless Tip of 2014: Don't be afraid to make new friends.

2015

By the second half of my second year of teaching, I knew I was never coming back.  So obviously, I had to get some teacher discounts while I still could!  Thus, Max and I splurged a bit on a weekend at Disney.  We spent a day at Magic Kingdom (where we met Tiana and Naveen and I accidentally let slip I had eaten frog legs before...), a day at MGM (yes, I still call it that) for Star Wars weekend, and a day at Epcot.

I was also finally able to bring Max with me to Haiti for the first time ever.  I would love to say how magical it was and how he fell deeply in love with the country... but mostly he just fell sick... for about half our short time there.  Not exactly my plan, but he wasn't scared away entirely.  I was just glad he got to see it and meet my friends and understand a little bit more about my passion.  I'm just glad he came with me.

I started my new job officially over the summer as a children's director at a Methodist church.  I directed camps all summer long which was exhausting and stressful but also exciting and fun!  I was finally able to teach OUTSIDE the box, something I missed from two years in the school system.  My most popular camp was Christmas in July, where our service project was to bring in items to make Operation Christmas Child boxes.  It was such a success that the rest of the church joined in, and we packed at least 65 boxes!

For my birthday, I wanted to check something off my Bucket List: "See the sunrise and the sunset on the same day."  I called the mini roadtrip "Chasing the Sun" and my two best friends, Jessica and Max, came along.  We drove to Daytona (stopping to eat cake with my parents) and spent the night there.  After watching the sunrise, we spent the whole day chugging along I-4, making various stops to see or do interesting things.  One of my favorites was the Orlando Eye, which is basically a baby version of the London Eye, but still super awesome.  The day ended on Clearwater Beach where we watched the sunset.

Reckless Tip of 2015: Take a trip!  (Plane or car!)

Again, sorry this was so long!  Normal posts will begin tomorrow.  Let's see how I make it this time!  Have a reckless 2016, everyone!