Day one

Personally I don’t do new years resolutions. I don’t do the “new year new me” thing. If you do more power to you. I do believe that everyday is a new chance to make a difference. In yourself, in the world. It’s a chance to make a difference in someone else’s life. 

Everytime you wake up and open your eyes is a chance to do something different. You have to embrace each day no matter what happened the day before. 

Each day is a chance to forgive and a chance to move on from the things of the past. So I don’t do new year, new me but I believe in new day new chance. So use this day. Day one of 365 to start embracing the days. To start taking chances and making moves. It’s page one of chapter one. 

Have an amazing new year and keep searching for Fireflies.

Reggie.

365 days.

A lot has changed in such a short amount of time. At the beginning of this year I thought I had lost my best friend in the entire world. Yet on the final day of 2017 I sit on her couch after spending the day running errands and spending time together before both of our S.O.s join us. 

I’ve lost people and gained people this year and in hindsight I realize what a blessing each gain and even each loss was. It’s not been an easy year but it’s been a year of change and a year of growth. 

365 days of growth. Growth as a person. Growth as a future wife. Growth as a friend. Growth as a daughter. Growth as a Christian. 

I never thought that I would be here when this year started. I never thought that my life would be like this. No I am not saying it’s perfect, I mean my anxiety and depression still show their mean faces and send me into downward spiral but it’s easier to get back up then it was at the beginning of the year. 

I’m just saying I don’t want to give up as often. I’m saying I haven’t given up on the fireflies. 
In the next 365 days I’m not making any promises but I do want to try to write at least once a week. Honestly I want to do a post every day but I don’t have that much faith in myself. We will see what happens though.

Keep searching for Fireflies ❤

Reggie

A letter to the girl in the corner.

I am you. Trying to stay out of the light. Trying to get by without being noticed. Trying to avoid whatever it is that sent you into this corner to begin with.

I’m usually trying to avoid anything that will send me into yet another anxiety attack. Trying to avoid the stuttering and of beat breathing and the inability to form coherent thoughts in a normal response time.
Sometimes I stay in that corner long enough to just catch my breath. Other times I’m there so long I should change my address. I’m there long enough to feel like “Ok, you can face the world again” and then I step out of the corner that me safe. And in those moments I feel like me.
You know those moments, the ones where your smile is real and genuine and you can laugh without it being forced. Oh how I live for& love those moments, how I love those moments. The moments where I see a brief flash of the Reggie I was before anxiety and depression started to rule my life.
Oh but how few and far between those moments are. It feels like I blink and poof I am scurrying back to that corner. Back to so called safety. It isn’t though, it isn’t safe. The darkness of that corner is where the anxiety and depression live, it’s where they wait for me. I hate that corner. I hate that it loves me and seems so inviting from the middle of the room.
I’m tired of that corner. I’m tired of the battle with these monsters. Its a losing battle it feels like. And I’m tired of losing. My only choice in this battle I’m tired of fighting are to win or give up and I want to win, I will win. It will take time I know, and lots of prayer. I can do this.

Keep searching for Fireflies. 

Reggie

An open letter to the uncle that disappeared,

I called you my hero. Not just because your job as a fireman made you one but because I looked up to you. You didn’t let any obstacles in life stop you from achieving your dreams. I mean maybe you still don’t. I wouldn’t know though. 

I remember one of the last times I talked to you. I was lying in a hospital bed and scared out of my mind. I was barely 16 and almost dying. You were telling me you’d studied what my problem was and knew a man who had seen one up close. That the insides looked like butter and cheese. You were trying to make me laugh. I had just finished a project on you for a class. A project on heros. 

When you cut off contact it hurt the most. M&E didn’t hurt me like you did. M had told me for years I didn’t have to call her aunt and E was barely older than me. 

I grieved your loss as of you had died though. You had died and there was no funeral. No closure. So I’m writing this to try and get some closure. Isn’t that what your therapist told you to do? Isn’t that why you sent that heartbreaking email to mom? The woman who had basically raised you? 

You’ll never read this though. You’ve probably forgotten I exist, you didn’t know “Reggie” anyways so if you do stumble upon this it will hold no meaning. I’m mad at you. I have been for years. 

I forgive you though. For hurting me. For forgetting where you came from. For crushing the heart of a girl who thought you hung the moon and stars in the sky. 

I hope you’re safe. I hope your rescue family has your back. I hope your wife and little boy are happy and healthy. I hope one day you remember your family and when you do you smile. 

I hope you watch for fireflies and even if you don’t understand why I hope the light up your heart. 
I love you. 
Reggie. 

Today’s firefly.

Before the relationship I’m in now I never had a serious relationship. Not one where the guy said “I know we’ve been dating a while but I want to perfect moment to actually ask you to be mine”. Not one where he stops at the gas station on his way to see me and asks if I want something while knowing exactly what I want and Getting it anyway. 

I know these are simple and little things but sometimes it’s those things that make you feel in love. He goes out of his way to make sure he is there for me in my stressful moments. He understands when date night gets cut short because I’m tired and stressed. He tries everything he can think of when he catches me mid panic attack. 

He knows my favorite wine and my favorite food. He lets me pick the Netflix show and watches scary movies even though he hates them, just because I ask. 

I never thought I’d find my prince charming but I think I’ve come pretty close. I never thought I’d get a happy ending but I can see it in the works every time I look in his eyes. 

I’m so blessed to have this man and I can thank God enough for him. 

That’s today’s firefly for me. 

Keep searching for Fireflies. 

Reggie.

P.s. 

Still accepting Q&A question. 

That feeling

Have you ever gone somewhere that at one point felt like home and we’re surrounded by people you used to consider family and felt like an outsider. Felt like you didn’t belong. 

I mean a place you had gone for YEARS. Then you miss like a month of meetings there and all of a sudden you are an outsider looking in. It’s the weirdest feeling. Suddenly these people you’ve known since you were four are completely strangers. This place you once considered safe is a different planet. 

I don’t get how that happens and in such a small amount of time. You’re still you and they are still them but nothing is the same. And when you struggle with anxiety and depression you feel like it’s your fault when most of the time you’ve done nothing to intiate a change. 

So when the change does happen your anxiety feeds off of it and you start to feeling like the walls are closing in. 

I just needed to express that feeling tonight. I don’t know what I expected to get from this post or what I expected anyone else to get. Maybe it will help you to know you’re not alone. 
Keep looking for Fireflies.
Reggie.

P.s.

I don’t even know if anyone is reading this but if you are I would like to do a “get to know your blogger”/Q&A post for one of these blogtobers so if you have anything you want to know feel free to email me or comments here. 

Email: searching4firefliesblog@gmail.com

Thanks

Reggie

Withdraw

My anxiety has been bad lately. That’s probably why I haven’t been updating a lot recently. I was withdrawing from life again. From everything. I’m trying hard to stay afloat but it’s so hard. 

I spend most days fighting tears and nausea. I keep it to myself and keep putting in an act. That one I’ve mastered over the years. The smiles and the laughs that don’t quitr breach the surface. 

I don’t want to be that Reggie. The empty shell of who I am. I want to be genuinely happy about things. So I’m going to try harder. I’m going to reach out more. It will be slow and I probably won’t be able to do it alone and that will be hard. I want to be me though and I want to believe in myself. So I’m going to try my best. 

Keep searching for Fireflies.

Reggie.

Blogtober

Hey y’all. So it’s the first day of Halloween  October. Which means BLOGTOBER. So I’m going to TRY and do a post everyday. I attempted this in my old blog… And FAILED twice. This year I am determined though.

I don’t know what I will write about each day yet but it will be something. I am counting this for day one’s post, kinda cheating but hey it’s my blog my rules. I’d have given a real one today but it’s been hectic. Not only is it the first day of blogtober but it’s the first day if planning month for NaNoWriMo and I can officially start wedding planning because I finally set a date.

I hope tomorrow’s will be a more REAL post but no promises yet.

 

Much love to my followers and readers.

 

 

Keep searching for Fireflies.

 

 

 

Reggie

Five year question .

When I was 18 I was asked where I saw myself in five years. I’m sure you’ve probably been asked that before it’s  the usual question of the “adults” in your life. It was a question  I HATED getting asked because at 18 mkst days i wanted to be dead. Today on my 23rd birthday I am in a place that is completely different then where I wanted to be at 18. 

When I was 18 I was sure that if I hadn’t given up by  23 I would be an RN, married and maybe even have a kid. Sometime I wish I was where 18 year old me wanted me to be. I’ve come to realize though that maybe that’s not where God wanted me but where I wanted me. I wanted to be a young wife and mom, and yes I know ” you still have time for that Reggie, 23 isn’t old”. Yeah yeah yeah. I’ve heard it a million times. where I’m at wasn’t my five year plan though. 

Where I’m at is working in a daycare with amazing children I get to watch grow and learn and become small humans. Where I am is engaged to an amazing man who I will call my husband before year six starts a year from now. A man who I’ll be able.tp call the father of my children hopefully by year seven. Where I am is content and happy with the life i see unfolding before, the life that seems to be more of what God has planned, or at least I hope so. 

Where I am is 23, alive and not thinking about giving up. 

So during this 23rd year of life I will keep my eyes looking for fireflies and on God more than I did in the 22nd.
Keep searching for Fireflies.

Reggie.

A year ago.

An entire year has passed since i had to say goodbye to a place I called home for almost 12 years. It was a hard goodbye. It was a insane battle of packing up a house that had been lived in by four people suffering from depression and another three dealing with it in the best way they could. 

None of us really wanted to leave. It was not buy choice that we were packing up our lives. The stress of it all even put one of us in the hospital. Everyone was at the end of their rope and trying not to lose it on each other. It was a rough time.

I feel that it was for the best though that if we hadn’t have left when we did we would have been consumed but the depression that place was growing. I’m not saying the move fixed us all completely but I think it did start a healing process. We had been fighting for so long to keep that place because it’s all any of us really knew anymore. 

It was the close of a chapter that at the time we thought was the close of a book. It was the start of changes that none of us saw coming. This place was a fresh start and even though it wasn’t perfect it’s what we needed. I don’t even know the people we were last year anymore. Moving here was a big step in faith. 

Faith that God was in the move. Faith that we wouldn’t lose my dad to his alcohol problem anymore that we already had. Faith that it wasn’t a huge mistake. It was iffy at first but today, a year later my dad is eager to go to church and eager to talk to God. Last night I watched him walk into an alter for the first time in almost two years. I saw him let people pray for him. I saw him reach for God and all I could do was thank God. 

No it wasn’t easy and no I wasn’t super excited about it in the beginning but now looking back I’m glad we moved here. I’m glad this is where we were led. I’m thankful for the fireflies. 

So keep searching for Fireflies Guys. 

Reggie.