no, I am not a robot.

My friend Jamie told me once after I broke down in front of her, "Gosh..it's so nice to know you're not a robot. Cause for a while there, I thought you were."

Those words hit me hard...like a big ole sucker punch to the stomach. I had been putting up a front of the perfect, good, Christian girl for years. Am I that afraid of people? Do I really care that much? Who am I? What am I doing? I asked myself these questions as I walked home from our morning run.

Rewind five years. 

My best friend of two years tells me she's moving. All the way across the country. I'm mortified. Two months later, she's gone. I'd never had many friends, and she was one of two I was close to at this point in my life.

Fast forward a year. My family and I take a trip to Washington DC, and end up staying a week with my best friend and her parents. She was an only child, not used to such chaos...and when my family and I invaded their (huge) house for a week, it stressed her out. I was 13. I was different than I had been when she left a year earlier, and even though we wrote each other over 200 letters, it was like visiting a stranger.

The week went on, and it gradually seemed like old times. Taking a drive to starbucks, getting strawberries and cream frappes, going to dance class with her. It all seemed...normal.

Then the last day of our trip, we went to the grand re-opening of the Smithsonian Museum of American History - it had been closed for a few years for remodeling, and we got to be there the day it opened. (we even ended up in the Wall Street Journal - crazy!) anyway. Maggie (my best friend) and I had never argued. We'd never bickered. Not even on our trip to L.A. did we fight. 

We were walking to the Native American museum when it finally happened. I had read a word wrong and it bugged her. She snapped at me, I snapped back, and she returned it again. I was so burnt out on that last day. I was ready to be in my own bed. I wanted to see my mountains. I wanted to smell the crisp, thin mountain air. I wanted out of the city and I wanted to be home. I apologized to her for snapping at her. She didn't accept it...and lost it. She began yelling at me, and telling me all these dreadful things. I don't remember much, other than tears streaming down my face. 

We got to the museum, and I took Jesse (who was 2 at the time) to change his diaper. Maggie's mom tried to help and I declined, but she helped me anyway. Maggie followed me into the bathroom and we had it out. I don't remember much of what was said, except I know most of it was about everything I was doing wrong in our friendship. She stormed out screaming "FINE, BE THAT WAY". My 13 year old heart was broken. I knew, deep down, that this was the end of our friendship. 

Her mom tried to mediate between the two of us. She made us both sit in the foyer of the museum and talk civilly, as if nothing was wrong. She asked her daughter to tell her side, and then asked me. She shoved everything onto my shoulders, and I had nothing to say. I was bawling. My "best friend" was telling lies about me to her mother, and her mother was believing her, and joining in on telling me I was flawed. 

The next 15 hours were hellish, to say the least, but we got through them, pretending things were fine. As we drove away the next morning, I remember hugging Maggie goodbye, and telling her I was sorry, again, and not getting a response. I cried the whole way home. From her house to the airport. On all 3 plane rides. The drive from the airport to our house. 

I wrote Maggie a year later. She returned it, and I responded again, only to be rejected once more. I haven't talked to her since. 

This story probably seems silly, but it has a point. That afternoon in that museum, I sub-consciously made a decision to hide myself from people. Obviously I wasn't good enough for my "best friend", so why would anyone else want to know the real me? I started putting up walls. I became so focused on making sure I was likable, and different. I never actually showed any real emotions to anyone. I became the dreaded "perfect Christian girl" that everyone despised, deep down. 

The point of this post is to tell you that I know (most of the time) I come off bubbly, happy go lucky, everything is just amazing today, why aren't you smiling too? a lot of the time. If you know me, you know you'll probably be greeted with a smile. You know I laugh a lot, and you know that I like to talk. You know my life goals, you know my style, and you know how much I love to "be different". My aspirations and dreams seem silly to most, and I know this. 

Recently I've been faced with the reality that I'm really hard to take seriously. I've grown up in a good, stable home. My parents don't even refer to divorce as more than a word. I've traveled a lot, been given a lot, and seem to "have it all" to a lot of people. And I understand why this would give some people reason to believe I'm oblivious...but I'm not. Most people think I'm some naive teenager who has no idea what life is really like. And you know what? They're most definitely right. BUT. What's been hitting me so hard about this reality, is that a lot of people tend to mix that with thinking that I'm going to walk away from God when life gets rough, because I've had everything up until then...and when I don't anymore, I'm going to get mad and leave my faith behind.

Can I just say, to those people, whether one of them is reading this or not...I know I'm naive. I know this world is huge, and awful, and really, quite honestly, I'm terrified of it. But please don't mistake my lack of knowledge about life for an inability to comprehend struggles. 

I have had this post on my heart for a long time...but I just didn't have the words for it. How do I verbalize something like this? I want you to know - as my blog readers, that I started this blog as a place to figure out who I am. To find myself behind all of those walls I've been building for the past four years. I don't think I'm perfect, nor do I think this world is...and I never want you to think that I'm just some robot, playing out the life of a perfect Christian girl. I am flawed, and I am not perfect. I make mistakes. I say the wrong thing sometimes. It is my prayer that you see all of this - so you can see what the Lord is doing in my life, changing me little by little to be more like Him.