nashbashwithshells-blog

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

God, people can suck. Like really suck.

When I look back at the beginning of that relationship, I see this 20-year-old girl lost in the midst of college. Moving into my first apartment, trying to figure out what I wanted my life to look like and probably developing some questionable drinking habits. I was young, never been in a “real” relationship, naive, and definitely a people-pleaser. On top of that, I had this very college-girl mindset that I had to be an adult and prepare for life after graduation and find a guy and find a job and get married, the whole nine yards. Looking back on it now, it’s like shit. Everything really was set up so perfectly for him.

The beginning of the relationship wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. In fact, I would say it was pretty great. We started dating right before the summer between our junior and senior year. I remember how excited I was when he asked me to be his girlfriend. I could barely contain myself. I spent at least every other weekend out at his house in Holly, Michigan through that first summer. We went to the Detroit Zoo, we went to cute little diners for dates, we took walks together, we went on day trips to Frankfurt, Michigan, and when we couldn’t see each other, we’d talk on the phone for hours and send each other stupid gifs back and forth all day. It was like it was out of a storybook and yea, I was pretty happy.

But when we moved back to college for our senior year, it was like things slowly, slowly started to change. The first sign of an abusive relationship is isolation. The abusive partner starts to isolate the other to keep them from confiding in friends and family about the abuse. I mean, it’s not like he woke up on day and said “Alright, so this is the part of the relationship where I isolate you from your family and friends so I’m gonna need you to cut off all contact with anyone other than me and my friends.” Instead, it was a very gradual process over the course of time. In fact, it happened so slowly that I didn’t even notice it was happening right before my eyes. It started with me spending almost every single night at his house instead of my apartment. This then started to affect my relationship with my roommate, who I now never saw. Next, it became my friends. Each friend he had a perfectly orchestrated reason or lie as to why I could no longer hang out with them. Sometimes it was “She’s not your real friend if she doesn’t approve of me.” Other times it was “I heard her say she doesn’t want to hang out with you anymore in class today.” Each one, I believed. Why wouldn’t I believe him? He had never betrayed my trust before. This was the same guy that wrote those thoughtful cards on my birthday and on Valentine’s day and the same guy that surprised me with a cute dinner date after my midterm exam. He was just looking out for me, right? The funny thing about this part of the relationship was that I was 100% allowed to spend time with his friends and the people in his friend group. He had already tricked them into thinking that he was this charming, loving friend of theirs and he knew that if I ever spoke up to one of them, they likely wouldn’t believe me (which I later found to be true). Even when he would yell at me in his bedroom while our friends were downstairs or he would publicly degrade me and belittle me in front of his friends, they would brush it off as just “Josh being Josh.”

This is also kind of when things started to get messy in bed too. This guy wanted to have sex almost every night. I mean, at least four nights a week. Let me be clear here: he never brutally raped or used physical force in bed with me. But he also made it very clear to me that it was not okay for me to say “no.” This is when I first started to see the aggressive side of him that I became so painfully familiar with in the following months. If I said no to sex, he became furious and would spend the remainder of the night accusing me not finding him attractive and blamed me for his insecurities and degrade me in front of his friends for saying no to him. He would go on for days if he had to until I would finally give in. The message became crystal clear to me. If I said no to him, I would pay for it and so I quickly learned that this just wasn’t an option. Or sometimes if I said no to him as he tried to start things with me or even right before we were about to have sex, he would pretend he didn’t hear me or just completely disregard the comment. When I look back on this, I just feel this intense level of discomfort take over my entire body. I can feel it in my toes, in my chest, in my thighs, in my stomach. God, it just sucks. So anyways, back to the isolation part.

Then, it came my family. This one was definitely the hardest for him and this is where a lot of the controlling part of this relationship comes into play too, so buckle up. My grandpa died in February so the beginning of our second semester of senior year. Talk about poor timing, right? You see, my grandma had made it very clear that she didn’t want any of the grandchildren’s significant other’s to attend my grandpa’s funeral and we were all pretty much in agreement to this. None of them had even met my grandpa, so why would they drive all the way out to St. Clair, MI to attend his funeral? Well, Josh certainly didn’t agree with this. He completely twisted it around that my family didn’t want him in their lives and they weren’t welcoming him into the family. Josh very quickly made it known that I wasn’t allowed to see my family unless he told me I could. From here on out, he always had a say in when I saw my family and for how long I saw my family. I even remember one instance about a month or two after my grandpa’s funeral that he told me I couldn’t go home to see my family. My family and I had planned a fun weekend together filled with going out to dinner, going to the movies, spending time together, and even going to a basketball game. It was going to be the first time together as a family since my grandpa’s funeral and likely one of the last time together before I made the move to Nashville after graduation. The point is, this weekend meant a lot to me and he knew that. So naturally, he took it away. I remember sitting on his bed in tears as he yelled at me for wanting to leave him all alone at college while I went home and that it was horrible for me to not invite him and that I wasn’t enjoying my last few weeks at college like I should. Somehow, I always ended up being the one apologizing. I remember sitting in his bed and calling my mom in front of him to tell her I couldn’t come home because he “didn’t trust me enough” to call her later on my own. This is definitely one of the more heartbreaking phone calls I’ve had to make. It was like with each and every day, he drove a bigger and bigger wedge between me and my family. Sometimes I feel like moving to Nashville was just all apart of this plan. 

So. May finally comes and off we go to Nashville. If I could go back and tell myself that this was going to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life, I would. But even if there was a massive billboard outside my apartment that read “Don’t Move to Tennessee” I still would’ve gone. I was so blindsided by the glory of graduating and moving to Nashville and moving in with my boyfriend. Little did I know that the hardest eight months of my life lied ahead of me. My new norm became not being able to spend time with friends I had made at work, not being able to call my mom when I was around him, not being able to talk to any of the guys at work, not being able to go home and see my family. I remember when he would come home from a long day at work, he would find something, just something to get mad at me for. And every time, I believed him and I apologized and I genuinely felt guilty for ever doing something to make him this mad. I had never felt like such a shit human being in my entire life. He made me feel like I did absolutely everything wrong and I was so lucky to have him and often found myself wondering why he put up with me all the time. Looking back at this truly makes me feel sick to my stomach. How did I ever let it get this far? I remember one night locking myself in the bathroom in our apartment as he yelled at me (for God knows what). I still to this day have never felt so genuinely scared of another human being. I mean, he was a big guy, he grew up on a farm and I was just this 140-something-pound girl that has zero way of defending herself. 

I don’t know what it was that final day that made me leave him. It’s not like there was an massive argument going on or anything. Just something in my brain clicked. Still to this day, I don’t know what it was that made me wake up that day and say “I’m breaking up with him” but God, am I glad I did. From that day on, I’ve truly never looked back with regret or guilt and that’s something I’m incredibly grateful for. I’ve never once thought about going back and I never will. But I gotta say, those first few months out of the relationship were far from easy and my fight was far from over. It’s not like I just ended the relationship and all my problems were gone. In a lot of ways, a lot of my problems were just beginning. Those two months I had to live with him after we broke up were just plain shit. I slept at my friend’s apartments and when that wasn’t an option, I’d sleep in my car in the Walmart parking lot (which is still something I’ve never really told anyone, oops). I remember dreading leaving work because it meant having to find somewhere else to go. I’d work from 6:15 in the morning and stay until 5:00 at night because I just truly didn’t have anywhere to go. With that being said, I was still paying rent and I did still shower in my apartment before Josh would return home from work and all of my clothes were still in that apartment. But the thought of having to face Josh truly terrified me. In those two months, when I would be around him, he never actually hit me. He’d grab me, throw things at me, yell me at me and threaten to hit me but he never actually hit me. If I didn’t sleep on my friend’s couches or I didn’t sleep in my car, I think that would’ve been a very different story. I remember some nights when I would see him (mostly in the few days right after the break-up), I never knew which Josh to expect to walk in the door. I could get a furious Josh that had veins popping out of his forehead and got noise complaints called on us from his yelling OR I could get the Josh that would cry and promise change if I came back and even swore he would kill himself if he had to be without me. I still don’t know which one was worse. 

Once I finally moved back to Ann Arbor, I was hopeful. I thought “Ok, now all of my problems have ended.” But again, most of my problems were just beginning. At this time, I was still (yes, STILL), in denial of the fact that I had been in an abusive relationship. (I know, I know.) There’s still so much of it that I’m working through but I’m making progress nonetheless. After a year and a half of being blamed for everything and for being the root of all the problems in a relationship, it’s hard to go back and unpack everything and make the realization that maybe it wasn’t all my fault. Let me rephrase that, it’s hard as hell. Going to a therapist in Ann Arbor has been one of the better decisions I’ve made for myself since moving back here. There’s so many things from that relationship that I just truly don’t want to tell anyone in my life. My friends and family are just so much better off not knowing or maybe just knowing the very surface level stuff. Seeing a therapist has helped me keep all of it from getting bottled up in my head. I’ve felt so many emotions unpacking that relationship. I’ve felt anger, regret, sadness, anger, depression, anger. Did I mention anger?

I feel like I’m getting there though. I’m getting through to the other side of this shit show. I’m finally starting to feel like I can see the light on the other end of this miserable, fucked up part of my life, which is definitely something to be grateful for. Sometimes I think about what life would have been like if I didn’t wake up that one day in October and decide to break up with him but I’m damn grateful that I’ll never know.

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

So today I did something I hadn’t actually done before. I went back (waaay back) to my first post (not really way back actually). I went through and read every single post. It was kind of an interesting experience to look back at where I was when I started this thing out. My first few posts are a rollercoaster of me trying to figure out my life. Like for instance my first post:

“You see, I love my new job, I love my perfect apartment, I love Nashville, I love living with my boyfriend for the first time ever, and I just love my life.“

OH, how full of shit you are, Michelle. It’s funny, I remember telling myself things like this. Part of me actually believed myself and believed that I was truly happy but the other part was like a little kid screaming and banging on the closet door to get out. I put up such a fake persona of my life; to my friends, to my family, to social media, to everyone. But in reality, I was pretty fucking miserable and I think I kind of start to see that in the next few posts.

“The options I have for my Master’s in Nashville aren’t exactly what I want. So with or without Josh, I’m moving. (Hopefully with).“

God, I remember this time like it was yesterday. I kept telling myself that - “with or without Josh.” Like HELLO! The fact that I was so willing (and even excited) to move elsewhere “with or without Josh” should have been a major red flag but I digress.

“My boyfriend and I are breaking up and I’m moving back to Michigan.”

Sigh. Finally. The beginning of the end. It’s so crazy that at the time I was so wrapped up in where I was moving, where am I going to work, what people would think of me, and I hadn’t even really dove into the nitty and gritty that I eventually get wrapped up in in this page. Hell, I even made a pros and cons list on the next page. Even after that relationship had ended, I still hadn’t fully realized that I was in an abusive relationship. 

I gotta say, I’m starting to feel real again. I still really wish I could go see my counselor again because I felt like we were making so much progress and there’s still so many things I feel like I haven’t worked through but either way, I’m feeling good about things. Believe it or not, I got lunch with my brother and Michael today and I feel like it couldn’t have gone better. They like really got along and everything just went so well. I feel like this is the first time I’ve felt like I’ve had my life together in a while.

On another note, WTF Eastern. I still haven’t heard diddly squat from them and it’s eating me alive. If I don’t hear by Wednesday (it’s a Sunday) I’m supposed to email them again and yea, it’s killing me. The vision of opening my parent’s mailbox is getting a little tiresome.

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

Yes, I’m using the same photo twice because this is my blog and no one will ever lay eyes on this page so I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Okay so, Michael.

Michael.

Michael.

Michael.

God, I don’t know what to do about Michael.

So we met about a month ago on Bumble (because Tinder is trashy and Bumble is classy) and fuck, I really like him. I’ve never been one for dating apps and if I’m being completely honest, I really just downloaded Bumble in the beginning because I was bored as hell. I downloaded a pool game app when I downloaded Bumble too. I wasn’t necessarily looking for anything, I didn’t think I was in the right state of mind or anything quite honestly. Buuut then I met Michael. He’s cute, he’s charming, he’s caring, he’s a professor, and he has a dog and brings me weed brownies. I like him, I like him a lot. But GOD, I just can not let me guard down. I’m so completely confident in my head that he’s gonna start yelling at me or manipulating me or controlling what I do that it’s like I’ve already made up my mind that this just isn’t going to work out. I’m not letting him get close to me at all because I’m so scared I’m gonna fuck up again. Every time I’m with him instead of just enjoying our time together, in my head I’m looking out for red flags like a hawk. After every time we hang out, I practically go through every moment and search for red flags that he’s gonna turn around and start being an asshole. 

Emotionally abusive relationships are so fucking horrible. They leave you in a complete pit of despair. I second guess just about everything I do now. There are some things from that relationship that I don’t think I’ll ever truly tell anyone. This person I was with was so, so horrible to me and I was so blind to it at the time. I brushed off so many things and told myself it wasn’t a big deal or that I was over reacting. He fucked with my head so much to the point that I didn’t even see breaking up with him as an option for me. It felt like even that was out of my control. Even moving to Nashville was really out of my control. I never told him no because I knew he would blow up at me. I remember one time specifically that I mentioned the possibility of me moving to Nashville with him temporarily and then moving elsewhere to get my Master’s when the time came and even that made him lose his mind. 

He never hit me. He would threaten to hit me but he never actually did hit me. Towards the end, I was pretty scared of him actually trying to hurt me though. Hence why I stayed with friends for a while. I truly do think that if we had gotten into some heated argument towards the end, he could’ve like lost his mind and ended up hurting me. I remember how I could see it in him that he was trying so hard to hold back from hitting me. It still one of those images that just haunts me. I could just see the rage building up in him and that was usually when he would threaten to hit me. He’d always follow it with “if you say something else, I’m gonna hit you” or “I swear to god I could just hit you right now.”

God, I just want to find a guy who treats me well.

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

Before.

Before, I was confident, I had a good head on my shoulders, I felt hopeful and excited for my future, I had big plans and was ready to accomplish them, I rarely second guessed myself and took on challenges.

Before, I had a big group of friends who I spent an obnoxious amount of time with, I had movie nights with my roommates, I never had to ask permission to spend time with certain people or to go to certain places.

Before, I was innocent and naive, I thought I knew what love looked like or felt like and I thought I would find that perfect someone before graduation and move to some far off place to settle down and fall in love.

During.

During, you manipulated me. You told me that I was wrong, you yelled at me that I was selfish, you reminded me that I was stupid until I believed you. You made me second guess my own thoughts and emotions.

During, you isolated me. You made sure I couldn’t see that one friend anymore and that I wouldn’t be able to show up for movie night and that I wasn’t allowed to go to that bar anymore and that I couldn’t go on that road trip.

During, you made me feel like it was love. When it ended, you would apologize and tell me you’d change. You would remind me of the “fun” times and you would promise you’d make it up to me.

After.

After, I’m lost. I can’t trust anyone, I second guess everything I do, I lack confidence in myself and my ability to do things. I’m constantly walking on eggshells waiting for him to start yelling at me.

After, I’m lonely. You made me stop talking to her and unfollow him and block that one friend on snapchat. You took all my friends and turned them against me and even though I’m out now, what you did still impacts me.

After, I don’t know what love is. I’m constantly on the look out for red flags and I can’t seem to just let things be, I have to be on high alert and question whether the people around me truly do love me. 

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Sometimes when I look at my past relationship all I can think about is how terrible it was. How did I let it get to the that point? How did I let all of that go on for as long as it did? Why did I stay with him for so long? I wasted so much time with this absolute scum bag. I let him ruin and manipulate my life in so many ways and I let so many horrible things happen. Listen, he never hit me or threw things at me but he did just about everything else. He isolated me, humiliated me in front of friends and family, made me question my own thoughts and decisions, threatened me, even made me do so many things in bed I had very explicitly stated many times I did not want to do. He messed with my thoughts and with my head so much to the point that it took me so long to figure out that I had the ability and the power to leave that relationship. Now that I’m going on dates with a guy I met on this dating app, Bumble, I finally seeing what a real man should do in a relationship. I mean I’ve only been on a couple dates with this dating app guy so of course he’s going to be charming but just seeing that has made me realize how stupid I was for letting someone treat me like trash. I notice myself using words like that a lot but he really did treat me like garbage and trash on this Earth. He made me feel like I was nothing. The worst part is, I should’ve known. I should’ve known that’s not how men should treat women and not how a relationship should be. I’ve seen so many happy and successful relationships all my life, it’s not like my parents were divorced or my brother was in a bad relationship, I knew what a happy and healthy relationship looked like but still stuck with this horrible, toxic relationship. Seeing this new guy, my mind has been playing so many games with me. I honestly just keep expecting it to go up in flames. I keep waiting for him to completely ghost me. It’s almost like I don’t think I deserve this type of person like there’s this fucking thought in my head that makes me think I will never do better than my last boyfriend. I have a hard time convincing myself that one day I will find someone who loves and cares for me just like I love and care for them. 

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Alright, fuck it. I’ve done it. I’m going to therapy.

After going out for dinner with my family and then bawling in my car in the middle of a downtown parking lot, I realized I was at a pretty all time low in my life. Nothing really happened at dinner. If I were in a normal mental state, it probably would’ve been a great night. We went to my favorite restaurant and it was just me, my brother, and my parents, which we hadn’t done in a long time. But for some reason, I wound up crying the entire way home. I think it was the realization that even when I’m with my favorite people at one of my favorite places, I’m still in a complete pit of misery. I kept thinking, I should be happy and I want to be happy but I just couldn’t be. My mom definitely noticed I was being quiet and different and she kept asking and I kept saying things like I was just cold, I was just tired, and so on. I hate that I’ve become this person. I have so much going for me right now but I’m just so fucking depressed. I’m seeing a therapist (ironically no more than a mile away from my apartment) and I’m really, really hoping I can figure this out. I’m glad I’m doing this. Therapy has seemed to help me when I went a couple times in the past. Plus with my family going out of town for five weeks, I’m gonna need someone to vent to. UGH! 

Life sucks major ass sometimes.

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Wow, another long emotional post in less than a week. Maybe it’s because my period is coming up? Maybe I’m just getting settled in to this new life and realizing what it’s going to be like? Either way, I gotta admit, I am so terribly, terribly alone right now. I mean I literally have no one. I mean if we’re being real here I can break it down:

a. I have my roommate, Jory, who is amazing and great and I just want to be best friends with him but I’m getting a feeling it’s not mutual. We haven’t had the most stellar past in terms of friendship and I’ve been getting some subtle vibes that maybe he doesn’t necessarily see us being friends, maybe just strictly roommates. I really fucking hope I’m over analyzing things and I hope I’m wrong but at the same time, I could understand why he wouldn’t want to be friends with him because I wasn’t always the best friend to him and it’s hard to gain trust like that again. I’m gonna continue to try to make up for a lot of lost time. I mean after all, we live together so he can’t dislike me thaaaat much.

b. I have a girl from college who I’m still friends-ish with. I’ve been getting vibes that she may not have a ton of friends either and has been trying to befriend me, which I am SO totally down for because this girl is awesome but there’s two things that keep getting in the way. First of all, 130 miles. She still lives in Mt. Pleasant (where I went to college) because she’s in education and that degree takes fucking forever annnd she was a year below me anyways. We met up in Lansing about a week or two ago and that was awesome and it was sooo fucking nice to see a familiar face. It’s been one of the highlights of the past month tbh. And I’m meeting up with her again tomorrow and that brings me to the second barrier in our friendship. She’s been on/off dating my ex boyfriend’s best friend. I knoooow that they probably talk about me when they’re together and I just feel like I’m under a spotlight when I’m with her, which truly isn’t her fault. I just can’t get that thought out of my head that she might go on and tell this all to that guy and then he’ll of course relay all that information to my ex boyfriend. Also, being around her always makes me think of my ex and it kills me. The last thing I want to fucking think about right now is him. And tomorrow she’s bringing one of the other girls I used to hang out with who probably still talks to my ex and ugh. I don’t want to create any drama or problems but it’s also one of the situations that like, how do you not? You’re getting lunch with your ex boyfriend’s friends, ya know? 

So until I find someone (literally anyone with a pulse) to be friends with, I’m going to continue to aggressively swipe on Tinder into a deep pit of despair. 

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

OKAY

So I feel like a lot has happened recently that I need to catch up with. First off, I’m living in Ann Arbor (pics of new apartment likely to come in the next few weeks) and I’m starting my job at a nearby daycare soon. My roommate is amazing and his dog is my new favorite animal on this planet. Everything is going pretty alright but I must admit I’m still struggling a lot with my past relationship. I feel so much anger towards myself about how I put up with so much shit for so long. I let someone take complete advantage of me and manipulate me in so many ways. I let him push the limits on SO many things and I let him create such a horrible environment that I was genuinely afraid of sleeping in the same area as him. I was so caught up in the idea of a “picture perfect” couple that I forced myself to stay with him. I was so afraid of disappointing the people around me and in a sense “failing.” Facing other people’s judgment about this whole situation has been so fucking terrible. This person I dated was so incredibly toxic and abusive and I let him do that to many for not just a few months but a year and a half. That’s eighteen months of my life that I’m never going to get back. I’m trying to wrap my brain around the idea of “starting over” but I wish I didn’t have to start over. I wish I never went on that first fucking date with him. I wish I never let him treat me the way I did. Now I’m just trying to create this new normal for myself. I feel so out of place and just stuck. 

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There’s something so pure about the curiosity of kids that I’ve always admired. The other day I was just sitting in my classroom holding an adorable little blondie named Davis and just took a moment to admire this little human that carries so much innocence and curiosity. It’s something us adults can’t truly understand. They’re in such a different world. Though we may try to know what it’s truly like to be a kid again and we may try to know what’s going on in their heads and what the world is like through their eyes, it’s something we can never fully grasp like they can. It’s almost like we aren’t even the same species. Us adults get wrapped up in drama and day-to-day struggles but children don’t (or shouldn’t). Just being able to look at a little human and admire the way they see the world is always something that will keep my heart full.

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It’s funny, when I first started this page I had an idea of how it would be a documentation of this journey towards my “dream job,” whatever that may be. Yet so much has happened since then. Writing on here has turned therapeutic for me. Anyways so, I need to address 2 things at the moment. 1) Why I’m breaking up with Josh so if I ever have doubts about why I DID break up with him, I can look back at this and 2) Literally what the fuck I’m going to do with my life. So...

1) Part of me wishes I stopped dating Josh a long time ago. I wouldn’t have a dog with him or have signed a lease with him or moved all the way to Tennessee with him. I could be off pursuing my own dreams somewhere else. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. So reason numero uno: he has a serious weight and eating problem. I gained like twenty pounds since I started dating him, which for me is a pretty big deal. I tried and tried and tried to help him diet and exercise and actually eat healthy meals but it never worked and it started to affect our relationship and how I viewed him. Secondly, he started to be kind of an asshole to me. It took me a while to come to terms with this. It truly wasn’t until like a week ago (and one week after breaking things off with him) that it came to me. I started thinking back on all the things he had said to me in the past. Ever since that hit me, I’ve had a pretty easy time focusing on my future and not dwelling in the past. Side note: he’s also a very emotional person, which isn’t a bad thing but I think it caused some problems at times, especially considering I’m not a very emotional person.

2) SO, now what? I’m 22-years-old, I live in Nashville, TN with my ex boyfriend. Right now my two options seem to be either Lansing, Michigan or Ann Arbor, Michigan (my hometown). Some days I lean more towards Ann Arbor, some days I lean more towards Lansing. To organize my thoughts a bit, I made a pros and cons list:

Lansing:

Pros

- Nice apartments

- Michigan State

- Jobs

- Further away from fam

Cons

- Don’t know anyone

- Further away from fam

Ann Arbor:

Pros

- Roommate

- I know some people

- Jobs

- Eastern Michigan

- Close to fam

Cons

- Close to fam

I don’t know what to do about that - I’m just gonna keep applying to jobs and looking at apartments and hopefully that takes me somewhere.

Also I need to address the picture along with this post. It’s something I’m going to try to live by. With Josh, I think we rushed things. I need to wait longer before I make the decision to move in with someone. We had only dated for a year and figuring out this lease thing has been a pain in the ass. I’m NOT going to move anywhere for anyone ever again. I need to be selfish and focus on myself and not get wrapped up in some relationship or some boy. OK that’s all I have. Peace out, girl scout.

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So much has changed in the past few weeks. My boyfriend and I are breaking up and I’m moving back to Michigan (Lansing to be exact) around Christmas. I’m probably giving Penny up to Josh’s parents when I move. I have an interview at a Head Start and a elementary school Pre-K position. I honestly feel like such a failure. I moved down to Nashville to live with Josh and to pursue my dreams. I loved being seen as the girl that was going big, moving to a big city with her boyfriend. I had it all together. I feel like I’ve completely and utterly fucked up. I haven’t even lived in Nashville for six months and I’m already turning around and leaving. I’m already having a hard time explaining that to employers. I just can’t imagine what other people are thinking of me and my decision right now. I have yet to tell my sister but I get a feeling she’s going to be a bit judgmental about it. I just feel so insanely embarrassed that all of this is happening. It’s all unfolded so quickly. I wish there was a way that I could just break up with Josh, move to Lansing and not have to really tell anyone about what’s going on. But that’s not really possible. I’m also hella nervous about being single again. I don’t even remember how to date? I don’t think I ever really knew what I was doing. Maybe that’s just it - I never really knew what I was doing with any of this. Moving to Nashville, living with my boyfriend. This is gonna be such a weird journey to go on and I’m definitely not ready for it. 

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

So a lot has happened. Where do I begin? First of all, I’m moving to Cleveland. Okay, not like right now but in June 2019. The options I have for my Master’s in Nashville aren’t exactly what I want. So with or without Josh, I’m moving. (Hopefully with). Right now, I’m looking at University of Akron (They have a branch near Cleveland where I can pursue my Master’s) pretty seriously. Another positive to moving to Cleveland is the cost of living is SOOO much better than in Nashville. I love, love, love Nashville but it’s super $$$$$$ here. For some reason, there seems to be a lot of opportunity in Cleveland career-wise too. It’s also closer to my family (5 hours closer to be exact), which is super important to me. When I first moved to Nashville, I didn’t think I would miss my family as much as I do but I can definitely say I’m excited to be able to drive home for a weekend. So if all goes as planned, I’ll be in Cleveland and working towards my Master’s a year from now. Fingers crossed!

[nashbashwithshells-blog]

If I know one thing that’s true, it’s that I love working with children.

So here’s the question at hand: What do I want to do with my career? I’m a recent college graduate living in Nashville with my boyfriend and working at a preschool just outside the city. You see, I love my new job, I love my perfect apartment, I love Nashville, I love living with my boyfriend for the first time ever, and I just love my life. BUT I know I don’t want to do daycare for the rest of my life. Toddlers are fun-loving, curious, amazing little human beings. I’ve worked with them since I was thirteen and love them more and more each day. With that being said, I don’t want to work with toddlers in daycare for the rest of my life. I want to work in a more social work/family focused field. For the longest time, I’ve had my eyes set on Child Life (counseling children in hospitals through play interventions) but with all the crazy requirements to get certified, I’m feeling deterred. Now I’m leaning more towards a school counselor or sorts? (Question mark is to show the lack of direction in my career atm). Either way, I know one thing for sure, I’m going to a local university (Belmont, Middle Tennessee, Tennessee Tech, or something along those lines) to get my Master’s in SOMETHING (Hopefully next fall)! If there’s one thing I’ve learned since graduating in May, it’s that a Bachelor’s in Child Development won’t get you very far.

Jeez, I need some sort of direction in my life. Pray for me. 🙏🏻