Fight or Flight

Ever since I can remember, I have always a scaredy cat. I have never been the type of person to do anything that could put myself in danger. I have never liked amusement parks, rope swings, water slides, four wheelers, cruises, roller coasters, airplanes, or anything you can think of that I could possibly get hurt while doing or putting my life into someone else's hands. My sister and I are polar opposites. She loves to try new things and be a dare devil type. Well to me she seems like a dare devil type but in reality she's just like everyone else. Anyways, I am always the "party pooper" that no one likes to be around. I'd rather stay safe then possibly getting hurt. I'm the 19 year old who doesn't like to go in the ocean for many reasons like not being able to see what's around me, drowning, getting eaten by a shark, and lots of others. I will not ride the Tower of Terror if someone paid me one million dollars. I don't like the feeling that roller coasters give you in your stomach and when you can't breathe. I've always had fears but when I was a Sophomore in high school the fears were turning into what seemed to be real.

Social Media has always been my worst enemy. I would read things on Twitter, Facebook, and on Google that would make me so anxious. Starting at some point my Sophomore year, I had awful anxiety. Not just occasional worries and fears, but full on panic attacks. To me, it came out of no where. My mind was constantly tricking me and had me so gullible. Whenever the sun set, my anxiety would click in like clock work. 5 years later, and I still don't know what caused this to happen. I was 15 years old and was like a baby during a thunder storm. Every Tuesday night, Dad and I would go pick up my sister from CSI where she had tumbling practice. I remember on the way home, EVERY week at the same time I would start having a panic attack. 


I was addicted to being with my mother. I never wanted to be away from her side. If anyone has the seen the episode of Full House, where they have an earthquake and Danny wasn't home with the rest of the family. Stephanie freaked out and never wanted to leave his side after that in case it happened again because she was so scared that something happened to him. Well, that was me. I couldn't stand being away from my mom. This was very difficult since I had to go to school and she had to go to work. It got to the point where I had basically kicked my dad out of his own bed, to where he was sleeping on the couch, and I was sleeping with my mom every night. My panic attacks had gotten to a nightly thing where I would be up all hours of the night and also keeping my momma up too.

Side note: Have I mentioned how awesome my parents are? I know in my last post I talked about how my dad was so patient with sharing a bathroom with 5 girls at the beach, but its so much more than that. My dad is always putting himself before others and especially for his girls. He is always going above and beyond for my sister and me. For MONTHS, he gave up his bed to me when I needed to be by my momma. (well forced out ;) ) And my mom, my mom has been SO patient with me, no matter how much I drive her insane with my anxiety, and she always has the right words to say to me. 

When I would go to school, after a few class periods I would start to feel sick and go to the nurse to call mom and I wanted to be checked out. At that point, I didn't know that this was my brain tricking me and I actually thought I was sick. After lots of conversation and brainstorming, my parents decided that I needed to go see someone for my anxiety. The doctors suggested that I start taking medicine for my anxiety. My parents were very hesitant about putting me on medicine at 15 years old. So they put it off for a few months but once it started to get worse they decided that we would try it because I was miserable and we were all exhausted. After a few months of my anxiety getting more extreme, I started to have patterns in my panic attacks. We didn't recognize these patterns at the time, but now we know about them. Whenever I would walk upstairs, something would trigger my anxiety. When I would feel out of breath from the stairs, I would start to panic because I thought I was going to pass out. (side note: one of my biggest fears is hospitals and ambulances. I had started to make the connection that usually when people pass out at school, they would call the ambulance. So in my brain, passing out = ambulance = hospital= I die.) I know that sounds crazy, but that is what I had decided happens when someone passes out, and then people die in hospitals so I figured I would die too, which is another fear I have. And somehow that all led to passing out. Then passing out led to stairs and stairs led to school. So I got to the point where I was afraid of school, because school had stairs, stairs means passing out, passing out means ambulance, ambulance means hospital, and hospital means dying. Thats basically how my mind set was and still is. 

After my mind started making all those connections, my anxiety would start kicking in, in the classes before I would have to walk up stairs. Like I said before, at that time we didn't make the connections of why this was happening but now we know. So at that time, it still was just like I was constantly having panic attacks. I wasn't sleeping and I was missing lots of time in class because I would go to the bathroom when I was having a panic attack. 

This was such a rough time in my life and I am so glad that, to an extent, it is over. I am still currently dealing with a lot of anxiety that I will write about in my next post!!

Thank you for reading!!

Paradise With My Toes In The Sand

Family Dinner at Desoto's
Left to Right: Mom, Dada, Drew, Hannah, Maggie, Bo (Kim), Anna, Dad, Me, Nana

This past week I went to Orange Beach with my family. Every year we take a family (intermediate family) trip to the beach. Usually we go with our family friends, The Burdicks, but this year we were going to take a family trip with my grandparents, aunt, and cousins. Every year that we go, we always stick to the same schedule, same places to eat, and same activities. Because they are rituals, and dad is all about rituals. ;) Every day we wake up early, or attempt to, but every day gets later and later. We head down to the beach/pool for a few hours till lunch then we go up, on our own time, and eat sandwiches on the balcony of our condo. My parents, my sister, her friend, my cousin, and I all stayed in a Condo while my grandparents, aunt, and cousin all stayed in the camper at the campground. After lunch, we would head back down to the beach/pool or a few more hours, then slowly one by one head up to shower and get ready for dinner. Getting ready this year was very interesting, we had 6 people to 1 bathroom, 5 of which were girls. Poor dad, had last shower almost

every day and still had to wait about 30 minutes for all of us girls to get ready. He was a trooper though :) Every year we head to the beach with a list of restaurants that we just HAVE to go to! Usually, I bring my friend, Taylor, to the beach with us every year but I wasn't able to this year. I felt so lost without her, I didn't know what to do with myself! I was laying in bed watching Netflix by 10 pm, when usually we would be out looking for crabs, swimming, or just hanging out with Ian and Will! It was a nice week just to lay back and relax, which I really needed since I've been working a lot more than I usually do. It'll be nice to go back to work today though, I've missed those kids! 

On our first full day, one of my best friends and her family were actually down in Gulf Shores too, but that was their last day. So I met up with Alaina and her family and got to spend the afternoon with her family! It was great just hanging out in the ocean with her and getting to catch up. Her sister, Alaina, and I found about 7 hermit crabs that afternoon! We played with them and tried feeding them some Ritz Crackers, while also feeding Sea Gulls since they caught us feeding the hermit crabs and decided to join in. One of the hermit crabs loved crawling on the cracker and holding on to it, it was so cool! 



My sister and I decided to reenact a picture that we found of ourselves when we were younger!! 

 



Even though it's not perfect, we tried!! And I still thinks its really funny! It's crazy how not so little my little sister is :'(

We had a great vacation but it's nice to be home again! I missed my friends and Charlie :)

Where I left part of my heart pt 3

A year ago today, I was in Guatemala!! 

When our teams got split up, I was apart of the team A and the team that had to move locations. We drove for awhile to our new location. We ended up in this little area that was fenced off with just land. We were going to be building two houses. One of the houses was for the grandmother of the family, and the other house would be for her daughter and granddaughter. We worked really hard for the next two days to get the houses finished and to make lifelong relationships with this family. The houses we built were very interesting. They were made with just wood and tin.We were led by, Samuel (Sam-Well), a Guatemalan who helped mission teams build these houses. He was hilarious because he was such a perfectionist and it was hard for us to understand sometimes what he wanted because of the language barrier. He would just look at things and shake his head and say "aye yi yi." When I was making post holes, he walked over and looked in my hole and said "aye yi yi, theres China!!" We finished the two houses in two days. The picture above is the kids that were on our site. I got really close with the girl on the right. When we were leaving they were screaming adios and waving. Telling them bye before that was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. While trying to keep my composure in front of them, it was time to get in the vans. Right when I looked at them from the van, I lost it. As my friends were comforting me, the girl ran up to my window and gave me her bracelet and gave me a huge hug. As you can imagine, I really lost it at that point. It meant the world to me that she wanted to share something of hers with me. 

 

Where I left part of my heart.. pt 2

Once we arrived at the mission house, things started to feel real. I had always dreamed of coming to Guatemala and I was finally there! I couldn't wait to see what the next week held for my team and me. That next day, we drove to a little village (either Parramos or Chimaltenago) to build houses. The drives to and from the work sites were probably one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. My friends Alaina, Haley, and I all sat in the back seat of out wan, I say next to the windows and had them open. To every person that we drove past I would shout "¡Hola!" Everyone was so sweet and would wave back and shout it back to me. It was so interesting to just sit back and watch how Guatemalans lived their lives. I never realized just how blessed I am. These mothers worked so hard day in and day out for their families by cooking and cleaning, and the fathers were up before sunrise to go to the land and work just to make ends meet and for their family to have food. Even if they didn't enjoy their job, they still did it without complaining. One thing that really stood out to me were the dogs. In Guatenala, dogs are not treated the same as in America. They are not considered pets. They roam around the street and just eat whatever they can find. As a dog lover it broke my heart, I wanted to love on all these puppies but I couldn't get near them because of possible rabies. 

When we arrived at our site, we unloaded all of our equipment and wanted up a huge side of a hill. The view was incredible. Actually, the picture from the top of the post is the view from our worksite those next two days of the active volcano, yes active. This first day was very eye opening, keep in mind I'm a huge germaphobe. The owners of the land that we were working on showed us through the home and lead us to where we would be working on a new room for the family. We walked through a very tiny walkway that had sheets hanging up in place of walls in between rooms. There were mattresses on the floor with no sheets and kids everywhere. They were peeping through the sheets to look at us and when we would make eye contact with them they would hide. We started to try and make conversation with them with the very little English we knew from Spanish class we took in highschool. 

Katie and I played hide and go seek with the kids and tickled them while we waited for instructions. Before we really got to get to know this little girl, Rose, she walked up and gave Katie and I flowers. It warmed my heart, I started to cry. I only knew this beautiful girl for less than an hour and I already loved her so much. She had inspired me, the joy that she had, and the smile that she always had on her face will be with me forever. Once we got our instructions, we broke up into two teams, which then ended up being guys on one team doing the building and then girls on the other team playing and loving on the kids. I was ecstatic!!! They were tons of kids to run around and play with. We played lots and lots of fútbol as you can imagine. That's all they do up there. We played duck duck goose (pato pato ganso), played with bubbles, and also pained their nails!! 

It was such a great day, I didn't get to spend as much time with them as others. Half of us got split to another site to work at. I'll write about that on the next post. Thank you so much for reading!!

Where I left part of my heart

Around this time last year, I was starting to pack up my things. In a few days, I would be heading to the beautiful country of Guatemala. For my senior trip at my church, they took all of the seniors to Guatemala. When I was in 8th grade, I gave my heart to missions. I did not know much about Guatemala at this time but I felt God was calling my heart to this country. When I found out that Guatemala was where our senior trip was, I broke down into tears. It was always my dream to go there because for all these years this country, that I had never been to, had such a special place in my heart. Bright and early on the morning of July 4, 2013, I was headed to the airport with all of my closest friends, my youth pastor, my mentor, and also my daddy! I was so excited but also very very nervous. I had never been on a mission trip before that was outside of the country. This was a moment where I was totally trusting God and going out of my comfort zone. As an extreme germaphobe, this was going to be an experience where I would be totally out of my element where I would be doing, smelling, touching, and seeing things that I would not normally experience. Thankfully, both our flights were great. We didn't run into any trouble. Once we arrived into Guatemala City,everything started to change. Everything was different. All the signs were in Spanish and we stuck

out like a sore thumb. Everyone was staring at us as we tried to find out way around an unfamiliar airport with sign and people that spoke a different language. Finally, we found someone (I'm not positive who this person was, but he was who we were suppose to find and he helped a lot) and he helped us with all of our luggage but it was very difficult because of the language barrier. We went and stood outside for what seemed like hours. We were waiting for our translators to come pick us up. While we were waiting, I was really really confused.. I felt like we were still in America. These Guatemalans were dressed just like people in America. I didn't want to ask someone about it because everyone seemed to be really stressed out so I just stood there, kept my mouth shut, and just examined everything. Our translators, Alfrado and Maricio, picked us up in the coolest cars. We drove for what seemed like the longest time. I could never drive in Guatemala City, they have no lines and everyone is just on their own and if you make it out alive then you did good. The further that we drove out of Guatemala City, that's when things began to change. We were starting to make it into the villages. There became less and less cars and more and more people walking like the woman above in my picture. After we drove for awhile, we ended up in Chimaltenango, Guatemala where we stayed in a beautiful mission house.

A glimpse of the mission house

The view from the roof of the mission house

Come back tomorrow for part 2 :)

If I had a dollar for every time I have been asked......

Everyone is always asking "So how's the college life going?". I can't tell you how many times I have been asked that this past year, and my answer is always the same. "It's really different.. a lot different than high school", and it's the complete honest truth. College is so much different than high school or any other schooling I have ever had. College is difficult, exciting, stressful, trying, life changing and any other adjective you can think of. This year has been so exhausting but life changing at the same time. In the fall, I started school at the University of Memphis. I was not excited to be going to school there.. All my life, I always told myself that I would not go to school at Memphis because I grew up hating the Memphis Tigers. Might I add that, the only reason I hated them was because my daddy did and I like, hate, and do everything daddy does. Then we became Vols fans so i hated the Tigers even more.. but after attending Frosh Camp (f you are a future Memphis student attend Frosh Camp!!!) I slowly started to believe that I had made the right decision in going to Memphis. It challenged me in learning to have school spirit. Even though I'm not the most school spirited fan, who still bleeds orange btw, I'm learning to love my school. This past year I lived in Richardson Towers.. yes Richardson Towers, the one and only Ratchetson. You probably have heard awful things about this place and yes they are all true. Ratch is one of a kind but there is no other place I would of wanted to spend my first year at. I roomed with my life long best friend, Taylor. I was so excited to be rooming with my best friend because it was going to be just like a sleepover 24/7!!! Even though that was the case, sometimes it is really hard sharing such a small place with someone when you are use to having a whole house. Times where one of us was up all night studying with the lights on, or waking up early for 8 am classes (which are the WORST) were harder than the times where we would just stay up late talking and laughing and also our late night Gibson's and Mcdonalds runs.

We got really lucky in the suit mates we had this year, these are the 2 girls that we shared a bathroom with. We shared a bathroom with the 2 most caring, sweet, crazy, adventurous, active girls. Our suit mates, Lindsay and Sabrina, are from Obion County. I got so close to these girls and i'm so happy that God put them in my life. Through all the laughter and tears, I wouldn't of been able to make it through senior year. Sabrina is the sweetest most caring girl and always puts herself before others and this is why her nickname became "Mommy Sabrina". Mommy Sabrina was always there when you needed someone to talk to, go to the doctor with you, to calm you down during a panic attack, and also to have a shoulder to cry on. I was really worried about my transition from living at home to living on campus because I would be away from my family, but with Mommy Sabrina as one of my best friends, the transition was much easier. Lindsay is the most witty down-to-earth person you will ever meet. She is always making you laugh. Lindsay was great to have to help with school work because she is so smart! She helped me learn to branch out and to do/eat things I've never done before!!

Roomie Pic :)

The first semester of college is one I will never forget. I was dealing with so much change (and i HATE change btw) which is really hard for me to do. I started taking 19 hours my first semester for some odd reason, it was way too many hours for me to handle!! I also had to learn to be able to wake myself up and go to class. I didn't have my parents there to say "Stephanie wake up, the bus will be here in 10 minutes!!" And also didn't have Shelby County Schools calling my parents if i wasn't at school. It was hard to get use to especially with 8 am classes every day. During my senior year, I found out that I have Dysuatanomia. This is a malfunction in my autonomic system. Your autonomic system if very important. It controls your heart rate, digestion, blood pressure, tempature control, and many others. My adrenal gland is always in overdrive, whenever I'm sitting down my adrenal gland is sending out adrenalin like it would be if I was running a marathon. Nevertheless, I get exhausted very easily. During the first semester of college, we were still trying to figure out the kinks to my dysuatanomia. Working with different types of medicines and figuring out what I need to do to help myself feel better. Not until the end of the semester, we realized that i can not function without 8 hours of sleep, even though I work best with 10-12 hours of sleep 8 is the very lowest I can function with. It helped a lot knowing this because for the past few months I was having all nighters or going to bed around 3-4 am. It got so bad that I would be in such a deep sleep that I would sleep through all of my 5-6 alarms that I had set and even turn them off in my sleep, which meant I had missed all of my classes.. This was really difficult to deal with since I wasn't at home to have someone wake me up and make sure I was awake. The second semester was much easier and better than the first :) I have met so many new friends this year and have experienced so many amazing things. Last but not least, I love being a Memphis Tiger!!!

For more information about Dysuatanomia, check out these webpages.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/76785.php

http://www.dysautonomiainternational.org/page.php?ID=34

Sabrina and Lindsay wrote a song for me before we left for Christmas break 

Frosh Camp

Lower Lodge