There's This Kid Named Kaden

To the one who won't give my heart back,

"I don't want to run anymore," the words that echoed in my head over and over again as I watched you talk to the  man in the Aggie polo. The long nights of tears never leave my mind when I see you run on the track. When  you sat at the Footlocker finish line to watch me finish, with no spikes on your feet.

There are very few people in this world that can consider themselves "lucky" in this world, and I am happy to say that I am one of them. All those adults who say that high school relationships don't know what true love is about, their right. To me, it's not about finding a man that I fall in love with, but the man that has so much about him to love. But you know what? Love doesn't compare to happiness and I know what its like to be happy, I know what it's like to find so much happiness in one person that you can't get enough of them. Those adults are right, because you can fall in love with someone and not be happy.While walking the halls of Fremont High with my best friend at my side, I have gotten the same question asked three times "Are you two brother and sister?" Trying to back a giggle, I reply with a "No, this is my boyfriend." You may ask why this is? Apparently we don't walk the halls hand in hand, we don't kiss at school, and a he only gets one hug before he goes home. An occasional punch in the arm and a "don't be late to class" is our way of communication.I don't need kissing, hand-holding, and hugging to be happy, because HE makes me happy. The way the coaches kids come and tap him on the shoulder. The smile he brings my sister when she sees she has a new text from him.I always told everyone I knew that I was never going to get married til I was forty, I told them I wasn't having kids. I told them kissing was disgusting. But now I tell them, "There's this kid named Kaden."

There's this kid named Kaden, and he looked at me at practice today and my heart rate increased rapidly. I think it was an accident but I still looked right back at him.

There's this kid named Kaden and he gave me a high five after city county. I didn't even think he noticed me?

There's this kid named Kaden and he just started texting me, but I don't know what to think of him.

"There's this kid named Kaden, mom, and I want to hang out with him. Can he come over this Saturday?"

There's this kid named Kaden and he ran the warm-up with me today, and that was the fastest warm-up  I have ever ran.

There's this kid named Kaden, and he's going to Footlocker with me.

There's this kid named Kaden, and he just asked me to Prom.

There's this kid named Kaden, and he has cheered for me every race now, and it makes me run faster.

There's this kid named Kaden, and he just took seventh at state.

There's this kid named Kaden, and he just signed with UtahState, and he's going to run on there college team.

There's this kid named Kaden, and he is my happiness.

Saying that I am going to miss the kid named Kaden when he goes to college would be an understatement. I will have to look a little harder to find happiness. But I remind myself that I am the "lucky one" that his legacy will never fade. I have to remind myself that I will still live if I run the warm up without him.

Logan is gaining one great kid, treat him well, keep the girls away from him. Make sure to stretch his legs after practice or he will be sore the next day. Make sure he takes a shower, or you won't be able to breathe the next day. Make sure that he wears his seat belt. Make sure his room is clean. And make sure that he doesn't forget there's a girl at home, that loves him.


"And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong."

"Don't Be Late To Class Kaden" (:

pərfikt

When getting out of bed to face the next day, is a struggle. When you feel as if the head your trying to hold higher keeps getting heavier. When your anchored down in the middle of the ocean with no life jacket.

I have learned lately that there are time periods in our life, when we feel as if we can't be more miserable. We keep reminding ourselves how much we hate someone, and how they are the reason why we are upset.

We weren't given this life for everything to be handed to us, for everything to turn out the way we want it and dissapointment only lasts as long as we decide it to. Even though there are times my life seems miserable, I am grateful for for the majority of it that is perfect.

I am grateful for my mom, and her ways of reaching out to those who need it. I am grateful for my dad, who never forgets to remind me to just smile and live in the moment. I am grateful for Ethan, who taught me that appearance doesn't determine your strength. I am greatful for Hannah for teaching me that little acts of kindness mean more. I am greatful for Katie, for teaching me that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. For Kaden, who taught me what it's like to turn my trials into determination for the next mountain to climb.

I am thankful that my dad is still here. That God allowed me to keep my brother here. That my life isn't perfect, but there are so many perfect details in it. There are moments that I wouldn't trade for the world. That I am happy.

That I wouldn't trade my life for anyone elses, because of the happiness it brings me. That the negatives will never add up to my positives. There is so much to find happiness in.

I love life, and I am never looking back and I am never looking forward, because it is perfect right now. I am happy. That everyday is an adventure and I am buckling down for the ride. That even though I might get scared going down, I should just throw both hands up and embrace the moment, because I am grateful I got to ride. That even though I didn't get the time I wanted, I still got two legs. That we are never far from happiness, unless we tell ourselves reasons we have to be unhappy.

Essays

I believe when we are born, we begin essays. Like those essays you write in your 11th grade English class every week, but a lot longer. Of course when a baby is born, it is of greater importance than a typed paper. But they begin and end in the same format.

When we begin to write our essay the only thing we are sure of is our name and what "class" we are in, along with who our "teachers" are.  As soon as you take your first breath, facts show that you know who your mom and your dad are the second you hear their voice, and at that time they give you the only identification you have, your name. Then comes that time period where your not sure how to begin your essay yet and you start to develop ideas as you begin brainstorming.

You gain a thesis statement as you get bigger, although this sometimes changes as you gain more evidence. When you get out of the newborn stage your parents start to see a personality in you, whether your laid back, you like to scream when you want something, or even that your stomach doesn't hold much down. As we continue to grow, we gain more and more research about ourselves. We find better ways of wording things, and we gain a better vocabulary.

After major time periods in our lives we gain a paragraphs. We have a paragraph for when we get married, for our high school stories, and for our first child. There are also times when our paragraphs don't fit in our story resulting in  them being removed from your essay. Like that boyfriend you had that you thought you were going to marry, that turned out to be a jerk in the end. We have time periods in our life when we try so hard to cut out a paragraph, but it's shaped the paper somehow, so we keep it in anyways. When you lose the people you love the most, you have to keep in paragraphs because they made you who you are, even when you wanted to move on.

If we take out one of these paragraphs, we realize that our story wouldn't be the same without them. They shape us in incomparable ways. We go through reviewing our story every time we add in new paragraphs. We look back on the old paragraphs and find happiness in them, even though we aren't still writing them. In the end, we come to a conclusion. The part of the essay that no one enjoys writing. Most writers throw all their past paragraphs into a summary, and that's how they conclude their story. They take what they learned about the essay, and make it their last sentence.

And when your teacher reads over your paper, when all is said and done, they don't remember just your conclusion. They remember the paragraphs leading up to it. They remember the strong details that compelled them.The sentences that brought smiles to their faces, and the parts that they had to read again for extra emphasis.

Write your essay in a way that your teacher would give you an A+.

I believe that the twins were a paragraph in my life, that Ryan and Kennedy's deaths were a paragraph, and Grandpa was one. I am typing the Kaden and Cross Country paragraph right now.


Some Details in My Current Paragraph:

Dear Grandpa Jim

I know your probably up there in heaven having a good old time with your mom and your sister, but down here we sure are missing you.

I want to thank you...for all that you have given me. For my amazing Grandma and Grandma Nessa, for a great aunt and uncle, and last but not least a mother that means the world to me. I believe that there is a lesson for all of us on why things happen when they do. I know that I want to be able to tell you "I love you" one last time, I wanted to go steal some Oreos from your fridge one last time, I wanted to ask you to fill up my bike tire one last time, even steal a coke for Grandma Nessa from the machine. A lot of times lately, I think our family has constantly asked, "Why does this happen to us?" Why did we get all these hardships thrown at us all at once?
I know there is a God,  and he loves each and every one of us with unconditional love. Part of this love sometimes are experiences we never want to go through. These experiences define us, and make us grow. Even though you leaving was by no means a positive experience, I believe it was meant to bring our family closer than I ever thought we could be. And in the end, each and everyone of us will get to be with you again someday.
There is a lot of time I spend in my life thinking about God. Everyone's trying to tell me that they think their religion is the only way that we can be together in heaven. I beg to disagree to all religions that say this. I believe that God would be proud of all the pathways we have found to get closer to him, whether you wear beautiful dresses to church, you wear Levi's, or even a turban on your head. Whether you read the bible three times a day, or three times a year. We have different ways of expressing our love to God. And your way was through the people you loved.
You've taught me a lesson Grandpa, we don't have to go to church every Sunday or read the scriptures to go to heaven, because I know your their now. Every day you put smiles on the seven kids that loved you most. You brought in a part of family that I don't think I could live without. You gave me childhood friendships that I still have
from birth to this day. You gave me three more aunts that I couldn't love more. In this process you kept us together as a family.
I know you've probably met God up there, and he is proud of you for being such a great man to the people that mean most to you. You left a place in my heart that will never fade. I will never ever get sick of "Grandma Nessa's House." When our fridge breaks down, I am going to remember you. Running across the catwalk will still be an adventure, and when we make the semi's honk their horns, I know that you will hear them from up there.

Thanks for bringing me here Grandpa, I Love You, and hope to see ya later.

Love your, Oreo Lovin',Bike Ridin',Top Ramen Eatin' Grandaughter

Race to the Finish

     This week and most of last week I have experienced and helped out (he knows who he is) with some pretty rough situations. I think there are always times in our life that force us to look up to the sky and ask "why me". Mentally, this has been something I have often wondered lately. "Why would God put us on this earth to struggle, why does he make life so hard on us sometimes when life is supposed to be a gift?" This thought surges throughout minds everyday, because there is always someone on this planet who is struggling to find a meaning in life.
      Our meaning in life is to finish our races and begin new ones.
     There is always that someone in that race that forgets to tie their shoe and feels the burn from their small mistake as they fall to the ground. Even some of the most advanced runners still forget that they can't wear their  brand new shoes to race the next day, as they  suffer the consequences of painful blisters along their toes. That Mexican food that your mom made last night, that doesn't sit well trying to finish a race. And there's always that jerk at the starting line that thinks he owns the road and tries to prod people out of his way, which can cause a domino effect of racers crumbling to the asphalt.
      It's how these incidents are dealt with that determines how we finish our race. Some fall at the beginning of the race, some at the middle, some fall right before the finish line. But it's not about how hard we fall, nor is it about "who saw us fall", it doesn't even matter where we fall. What determines our standing is how we recover. How much faster can you get up, and chase down the person in front of you. At times we fall, we break down in tears, we tell ourselves we can't do it. All this time we spend on the ground, do we realize the clock is still running?
     I ran a race today, and as I was coming up on my second mile, I watched one of my opponents step in a hole. It was a pretty decent sized hole, causing her ankle to roll one way, then roll again the other, resulting in a pretty painful injury. Her facial expressions went straight to pain, she tensed up, and she looked like she was about to cry. But one thing didn't change about the girl after she stepped in the hole, was she was still moving.
     Her steps became smaller and smaller as I began to catch up, but she didn't stop. Even if she slowed down to walking speed, she didn't stop. With every step we take, may it be a small step or a leap, we are moving forward. Moving forward is more beneficial than sitting still. With each step our finish line becomes closer it may take us longer to get there, but we will get there eventually if we keep taking steps. When we reach trials in our life, it's so easy to say "I am done, I wanna go home, I don't want to do this, why is this happening." Every time we fall, we get up stronger than we were before. God only puts these trials here to make us strong. He knows what we can endure, so he puts us to the test. A test no one wants to fail. When we fall, we can sit on the ground pouting and stewing about how much we hate life. Or we can stand up fast, shake it off and get that adrenaline pumping again.
   

We are not perfect, everyone falls sometime in their life, but don't be the person that stays down, be the one that stands up stronger and finishes the race.

Because our team got third the other day, it was a happy day for this chick.

Positives and Negatives

Today I have realized how much it means to have a positive attitude, not just for the people around you, but for yourself. The pursuit of happiness can never be accomplished when you can't keep a positive attitude. I believe that money by no means can but happiness. Like the car I got for my sixteenth birthday, that car means nothing if I don't have the people around me to share it with. Positive attitude goes farther back than just simply staying happy in the toughest of times, but finding ways to cancel out the negatives, by finding more positives. Its like a magnet that has electrons on one side, and neutrons on the other. When a positive charged side of the magnet touches a negative side, they cancel each other out and bind together. I have a very high belief that if your magnet is constantly flipped to its negative side and is only looking for the negative portions of problems, you will result in never finding happiness in your life. We spend all this time screaming and fighting with each other, but deep down do we remember that our only goal in this world is to be happy? At times our magnets become unbalanced, we think we are lifting heavier burdens than others. We tell ourselves we are unhappy lifting others weight, but the only person that determines that unhappiness is ourself. We may even be giving more positives than recieving, but its our minds that determine this. There is no manual on how to live your life, but if there was, what would be in it? Believe it or not, there are people on this planet who have more negative than you and I, but are still happier than both of us combined. The only thing logical that would be in that manual was happiness. Just to simply be happy. On the other hand, some people are constantly fixated on how they can have they least amount of negatives. Why aren't they more focused on how many positives they can produce to get rid of those negatives? Using this way of thinking, no one is perfect, everyone has negatives, but its what we do with those negatives that defines us. Are we going to try to perfect ourselves or just find more positive ways to make they.situation better?

Shoes

Mom,

I hate writing letters. I don’t want you to think that everything that I write in this letter is something I can’t say to your face, but I can tell you right now that’s not true.  So I have been thinking about some clever way to make this letter somewhat entertaining. But as you have mostly likely figured out by now, running has been on my on my mind quite frequently.  When I was running today, I was trying to find ways to compare running to life, and I had a thought. I know my thoughts are crazy, and sometimes extremely irrelevant, but bear with me with this one. I was trail running when I thought of this so, I am comparing it to trail running.

 As we are running on the trail of life, sometimes we come to a fork in the road, which causes us to choose one path or the other.  Most of the time while I am running on a trail, one of these paths will be harder or more uphill then the other. This can become a very complex decision for me and my two companions running with me. Because when you think about it, if we take that uphill trail, we will become stronger but it will be more of a challenge. But if we take the easier path, we won’t get stronger, but it will be easier. I think that sometimes in life we take the easier path because we are scared that we would fail on the other path or we are too tired to push harder. There have been times where my buddies and I took the way we thought was easiest, and we came to an extremely steep slope. At times running up hills like this got so hard; we would stop and take a breath. Sometimes our trials in life come when we think we are on the easiest path. And while we are on our easy path in life and we come to unexpected points where we have to stop to breathe, that’s when we notice the view from above and how grateful we are to have it.

Now comes your role in this, I compare my mom in my life as my shoes.  Shoes come in all shapes and sizes, and you use them for different purposes, just like moms. Our shoes protect our feet from the trail we call life. When you’re wearing your shoes, they don’t decide which path you take them on, instead, they tag along with you no matter what.  My shoes sometimes get caught on the rocks causing me to fall and gain more bruises to my legs. But every time I fell, it made me open my eyes and realize that I needed to pay attention to my path. It also becomes challenge when your shoes become untied, even more so during a race. But every time that my shoes became untied, I tied them a little tighter each time.

But what would running be without its shoes? What would my life be without you? Sometimes I want to say I hate you because you might give me some blisters along the way. But through every blister, bruise, and hard fall, I came out stronger than before. I know that sometimes I can be so mad at you, but how would I finish my race without you. When runners finish their race in first place no one says “It’s because of their cool shoes.” You don’t get enough recognition for what you do for me.  I need to remind myself more often of how grateful I should be to have you. Some runners on the other side of the world don’t have shoes. Some even have multiple pairs, but I am grateful for the pair I have today.

My pair of shoes is strong, they are durable, and make me stronger each step I take. They are fit just for me. And without them I don’t know where I would be. My shoes give me support no matter what path I decide to take.

I love you mom, I have loved you from day one. You are the best support system I have. You helped me not only follow my dreams, but chase them down. Sometimes our shoe laces become untied, and in some cases we trip and fall. But with every fight or disagreement we have, I take something new from it, we tighten our laces tighter than we have ever had them and move on. I know that there will come a day when I will go my separate ways. But I want you to know that I will never get rid of my running shoes, I will carry a piece of them in my heart forever. They will get older as I get older but I will always remember the memories I had with them, and the places they took me. You will always be in my heart, and don’t you ever forget how much I love you.

“Give a girl the right pair of shoes and she can conquer the world.” – Marilyn Monroe