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We are damned if we stay silent, and damned if we speak.

When I was nineteen years old, only a year into adulthood, and only hesitantly an adult, a man sexually assaulted me. We had met in our apartment complex one night, at the community pool. He was good looking, a military man, cocky and confident, and I was going through the end of my first relationship away from my small hometown. I invited him into my home. I kissed him. I let him into my bedroom. That was where my permission ended. When I told him no, he proceeded to try to shove his genitalia up the leg of my shorts, and when I began to cry and told him to stop or I would scream, he told me I was a tease. And I felt guilt. I am going to say that again- I felt GUILT. As a girl, I had been preconditioned to believe that I could feel bad for getting a guy "worked up", and I didn't kick him out. I slept on the floor next to my bed, while he slept in my bed, and I woke to him trying to do the same thing, only to my face. That time, I was done. Typing these words out makes
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Summer, summer, summertime....

There is a scent in the air tonight, and while it is a little chilly and damp, I recognize it as the smell of summer. When I was younger, my family and I lived on a lake high on a mountain top...miles from civilization. (cue the banjo from deliverance) The winters were harsh, sometimes we would be unable to drive down our road, so we would be forced to trudge through feet of snow for half a mile before getting to our house, only to realize the oil truck also couldn't get down the road, and thus we were without heat. There were several times that our cars skidded off of slick roads, and countless playdates lost because parents did NOT want to venture the roadtrip to drop off their child. As a very young kid, the toboganning and ice skating were enough to make winter bearable, as was the warmth of christmas. But as I got older, it became more and more difficult to accept the way of life the great Northeast had to offer (Hence, the trip to ASU for college) . I longed for summers, whic
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Pura Vida

I have always been a bit nervous about traveling, I suppose it's the fear of the unknown. Although, at age 18, I moved across the country to a place I had seen only twice in my life, alone, so I'm not always a scaredy cat. Having gone to Italy in February, and now Costa Rica this week, I believe the wanderlust within me has awoken. The two trips were as vastly different as they could be. In Italy, we spent a week viewing man-made treasures, art in opulent and majestic galleries. We feasted on cheese and wine and pasta, and then feasted again on the rich sights of the Vatican. We took trains to the beautiful cities of Pisa, Florence, Milan, Rome and Montecatini. The days were filled from morning till night, sometimes blending into each other like watercolors, where we had forgotten what we had seen until we could process it days later. It was a week of history, and art, and beauty and family. This week, in Guanacaste, has also been about beauty and family, but entirely differ
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