Friends – Page 2 – Being Berrak

October 23, 2013Berrak 11 Comments

Confession: You Probably Won’t Like Me

There’s one thing you should know about me: You probably won’t like me.

The odds are, when we meet, your first impression of me will be that I’m either obnoxious (because I like to laugh and I get chatty when I’m nervous) or a bitch (because I get shy and quiet when I’m nervous). Once we make it past the first impression, you’ll give me a shot because I am a nice person.

If we meet over social media, you might find me too chatty because I use my networks to pass on information. If you don’t find me too chatty, you may be offended by my random jokes because I like to laugh. I also like to cheer up the people around me so maybe I’m just trying to brighten up your day.

You probably won’t like me because you’ll think I’m fake. The thing about me is that I don’t always have a filter so if I have been thinking about you, I’ll send you an email just to let you know that. Just because you crossed my mind. Maybe I read a blog of yours that really stood out to me. Maybe we don’t talk all the time but I’ll still let you know that you touched me in some way. The chances are you’ll find me overly nice and assume that I’m being fake. “No one can be that nice.”

When we become friends, you might not like me because I can be a tad flaky when it comes to replying to e-mails. I let the world overwhelm me and want to be there for everyone so I spread myself too thin and then let everyone down. (I’m working on this, I promise.)

When you read this blog, you might not like me because I do my best to stay positive despite life dragging me on my face at times. You may not like me because I try to see the silver lining.

You might not like me because I’m not the typical girl. My best friends are scattered all over the country so I don’t have the luxury of being able to have a girl’s night on a short notice. I don’t have weekly traditions. I don’t gush over the same things and most of the time, my tolerance for the unnecessary is low. I don’t judge but I can’t participate. I have tried. There are days it gets me down and I might be depressed for a day or 7. You definitely won’t like me then.

I’m pretty sure you don’t like me right now because when I do blog, I tend to get a little wordy.

Once you realize and accept the fact that you probably won’t like me, it’s up to you to stick to it. There are a lot of people who don’t like me, but the ones who do? They’re the ones who deserve my time so if you don’t like me, do us both a favor.

Don’t bother faking and move on. (But if you do like me, have we connected on Facebook yet?)

“You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realize that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.” –Dustin Hoffman

December 4, 2012Berrak 5 Comments

If We Keep This Up, We’ll Feel Guilty for Being Alive

I want to talk to you about this thing we do.

We all do it. I’ve been doing it an awful lot lately, and I think that over the last few years, it’s really had an impact on how I approach life.

So, this thing that we do – the way we feel guilty about feeling happy because there are shitty things happening to people in our lives. It’s not that we’re going around bragging and that’s why we feel guilty.

We have guilt for feeling happy. We feel guilty because something good has happened in our life, and in that exact moment, something negative happens to be happening in the lives of many people that we love.

A few months ago, a good friend of mine called me. This friend is one of the few people whose call I actually take even though I hate talking on the phone. She called me to tell me something but she didn’t want to make me feel upset.

I knew what the news was. I knew exactly why she called.

“He proposed?” I asked, with a huge smile on my face.

You may be wondering why she thought the news might make me upset. Because she’d spent a good part of the last year being my support for my own relationship coming to an end.

I’m glad she called me. I was flattered that she called me, because in this day and age, there are only a handful of people we call and tell individually before announcing to the world that we’re engaged with a relationship update on Facebook or an Instagram of our ring.

Her happiness gave me hope. Her happiness made me happy.

This is one of the scenarios when it was OK. She wasn’t bragging. She wanted to share her happiness, and guys, that’s a good thing. We shouldn’t feel guilty for being happy. We shouldn’t feel guilty that something is going right in our lives. We shouldn’t feel guilty for the little things that make us happy.

Should we share every single tiny thing that makes us happy with the world ALL THE TIME? Probably not. Especially if you’re me and are easily entertained by little things.

We should cherish and appreciate the good.

On the flip side…

Can we stop feeling guilty for being upset because something went wrong in our lives because we somehow feel the need to compare it to something that may seem worse in another life?

Shit happens. People in our lives get hurt. Our loved ones hurt. Our loved ones lose their loved ones unexpectedly.

World keeps turning.

Your world doesn’t stop turning because someone you love is having something really awful in his/her life. We sympathize. We empathize. We let them know we are there but sometimes, there isn’t anything else we can do.

In the meantime, your life keeps moving forward.

You know what happens during your day? Good things, bad things and sometimes, unfortunately shitty things.

We have a tendency to feel guilt because we’re upset about something that happened in our lives. Why? Because if you compare it to something that is relatively worse in a friend/loved one’s life, we really shouldn’t complain because it could be worse.

As long as you are breathing, it could always be worse.

I’m not saying complain about every little thing, but if you are upset because an event you were looking forward to got canceled, you shouldn’t feel guilty. Maybe that event was the one good thing you were looking forward to for weeks.

If we continue to constantly compare our feelings to everyone’s else, how are we supposed to feel? How are we supposed to process happiness, sadness, anger, and fear if we experience guilt for simply feeling? How can we process guilt as a pure emotion if we are constantly plagued by it due to this never ending comparison?

You guys, if we keep this up, pretty soon, we’re all going to start feeling guilty for being alive.

If we keep this up, we'll feel guilty for being alive

***

November 3, 2012Berrak 3 Comments

On Making Friends in Your 20s (In a Round-About Way)

I can’t explain how I’m feeling right now. It’s a combination of fulfillment, anxiety, freaking out, happiness, sadness, nostalgia all wrapped up in a blanket of anticipation.

2 weeks until I hit the road. Literally. To drive to Seattle with everything that I can fit in a car (That I have yet to acquire).

That is 14 days until I leave the only city I’ve known for the past 17 years and make my way to a brand new coast.

I am ready.

I’ve been ready. Mentally.

Emotionally? Ha. I don’t even know where to begin with that one.

Up until roughly 18 months ago, I felt that I could leave D.C. without worrying about leaving friendships behind. I was feeling lonely, and that’s around the time I started making as many trips as possible to see my friends across the country. A lot happened in my life that left me feeling jaded about this city in general. Maybe it was my industry and the people I hung out with or it was just timing, but I felt alone. I felt no connection to the city except for the fact that it was home and I had so many memories.

Today, however, I am surrounded by amazing friends who are not happy with me moving away. They are making me feel loved, accepted, and like I have ties to this city besides just childhood memories and a lot of mistakes that helped me become the woman I am today. I belong. Unconditionally.

It’s the first time in my life that I feel that in this city, and not just with friends scattered across the country.

Right as I am leaving.

Naturally.

Because that’s how life works, doesn’t it? Because this is how we grow as people. We stop making excuses, and stop getting stuck in our comfort zone if it feels like a rut (Which it does for me). This doesn’t diminish the importance of the friends in my life in this city. I am only leaving them behind physically.

Sure, we won’t be able to grab coffee Saturday mornings or grab a drink after a long day at work or have brunch & movie dates.

But I genuinely believe that the ones I hold the closest to my heart will be there for the long run. They say it’s difficult to make friends once you’re in your late 20s. I didn’t make any new friends AT college, but I made them while I was in college. Yes, it’s harder and sometimes, the way you get hurt sucks incredibly worse than it did when we were teenagers. It is, however, possible.

Oh and those friends you made in high school and college that you carry into your 20s? It’s quite possible that you will be sitting on a porch with them 40 years from now, drinking iced tea and gossiping about the other women in the nursing home. More than likely, however, as you grow up, you will grow apart. It’s a fact of life. It doesn’t diminish your memories – at all. They’ll be bittersweet but they’ll be yours. Your inside jokes will still be there but you’ll miss the only other person who understood why your random reference to “And I heard it, and I came out” is hilarious. The beauty of life and new friendships is that it’s an opportunity to create new memories and inside jokes. Because that’s life.

I can count the number of people I trust to tell me about myself unconditionally and still have my best interest at heart on one hand – those are my soul sisters. The number of great life-long friends I’ve made, however, are in the double-digits.

Don’t close yourself up to the possibility of letting new people enter your life, no matter what your age. The people who are closest to your heart, who know your deepest secrets, will be there. I’m an open book, so sometimes the new people in my life know way more about me than they’d like (Sorry I’m not sorry). This doesn’t mean, however, I trust them unconditionally right off the bat. It’s a hard balance, especially as we grow older and have more at stake. The plus side to making friends when you’re older is that you will have learned to trust your gut. You will have principles that you have built through years of experience and broken relationships.

(Oh, and there will be a couple more blogs about my move to Seattle and leaving the east coast. Probably rambly and full of all the feelings. You’ve been warned.)

September 21, 2012Berrak 1 Comment

Internet Should Come with Airline Miles

[Note: Rosie & I met through blogging around 7 years ago and have been best friends since.]

Me: Stupid United States being so big

Rosie: Dude. I have to drive 8 hours + to even get out of my state.

Me: Stupid internet allowing us to make stupid friends

Rosie: Seriously. I mean, if it’s going to let us meet and get all close and ish, it should at least let us visit more easily

Me: RIGHT? Or it should come with airline miles. For every best friend you make, you get 10000

Rosie: YES

So, someone get on that.

April 2, 2012Berrak 2 Comments

The One With All The Birthday Shenanigans

I’m not big on birthdays, or making big birthday plans because people tend to flake. Especially after last year’s plans where about 90% of the people who said they would come out didn’t show up without even a message, I was worried about this year’s shenanigans.

Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to have really good friends who are local enter in to my life. Despite my issues, they’ve been there and when I was planning my birthday dinner, I knew that they would be the ones who would actually show up.

They didn’t disappoint.

This past weekend was full of lots of booze, amazing food, and of course, lots of laughter. Because my friends are the best.

March 27, 2012Berrak 9 Comments

On Turning 27

My birthday kind of sneaked up on me this year.

Last year, I crowd-sourced my birthday blog.

26 has been kind of a crazy year for me with a lot of ups and downs. I traveled a lot, made lots of crazy leaps in my life as a whole, and settled on starting my own business.

Oh, and I became a cat lady.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t think I’d get to this point in my life. When I was in my early 20s, I thought that I would be stuck there, living at home with my parents, forever. When I moved out a couple of months after my 24th birthday, I was a mess.

A complete mess.

Then I grew up. A little.

Even as recent as the past few months, I’ve been a wreck but I’m more in control of my life so it’s been easier to recover. I finally started to put myself first when it comes to life decisions because I have a tendency to think about everyone else. (Even this past week, as I’m planning my birthday dinner, my brain is in overload because I’m thinking about every single person in the group).

I don’t have some huge insight about my life or who I am right now. Things are messy. I don’t do resolutions. I don’t even try to plan things because I get easily disappointed.

The one great thing about my life now is that I’ve been able to weed out the people who are flakes, backstabbers, and just plain old fakes. I’ve been more introverted lately, trying to figure out what makes me tick before I get so worried about what other people think. I’ve made some decisions about my life, my business, and the direction my life is going in. I’ve decided to stop trying to see myself the other people see me (or want to see me).

I just want to be.

The world (and sometimes DC) makes me want to crawl inside my own skin and never come out at times but I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few people who have become great, true friends. With my best friend in Seattle, and some of my closest friends plane rides away, it’s been a lonely couple of years after I lost a few local friends. It was harder for me to really trust but a couple of good eggs broke through the walls.

That’s who I’ll be celebrating my birthday with this year. Not a huge group of people, but a small group that I would trust to invite into my home.

I don’t think 27 will be too different. I’m still obsessed with penguins, coffee, and traveling as much as possible. I’ll still watch stupid shows, laugh over the stupidest things and be as random as ever. I’ll be taking random pictures, most of it won’t ever make it to my Etsy shop but that’s OK.

I’ll just always be an April Fool.

Oh, and I love you guys.

A lot.

I’ll do the same thing I did last year:

Your mission, should you choose to accept is as follows:

In (at most) 3 sentences, describe me to someone who’s never met me AND who’s never been on the internets. So no references to anything blog/social media related.

March 19, 2012Berrak 13 Comments

Draw Something? Do Doodles Count?

I cannot draw a straight line with a ruler.

I wish I was kidding. Pictionary? Not my game.

I tried taking art classes because my dad is a brilliant artist, and naturally, I got my mom’s skills when it comes to anything even remotely close to art. When I was in 4th grade, we had to do a drawing to illustrate the parts of an ear. I couldn’t even trace it properly. As in, the picture was there, in great detail in my book and I couldn’t trace it to save my life.

So my dad saved my grade by ~~doing it~~ helping me.

In 8th grade, we were reading the Hobbit and we had an assignment to illustrate a scene. Excuse me, but isn’t this English class? Can’t I just write about it? No, I have to draw something? OK, sure.

Superdad to the rescue!

Of course, because my dad worked on the drawing late at night, with a cigarette permanently attached to his lips, my notebooks smelled like smoke. The next day, when I opened my backpack in English class, my teacher approaced me and asked me if I was smoking cigarettes.

*cue horror*

“N–no. My parents smoke and, and, my dad borrowed my notebook.”

So now there’s this game that everyone is playing. The premise is to draw something and have your friends guess what the word is.

Hahahahahahahahahaha

*breath*

ahahahahahahahahahahaha

No. I will play Words with Friends until I’m dreaming about it (May or may not have happened) but any game that requires me to actually draw and do it on my tiny iPod screen?

Hell no.

I have enough confidence issues. The last thing I need is a game that is designed to make me feel like a failure.

No, you guys go on and get your drawings on. Also, don’t invite me to any game nights that consist purely of games that require me to draw and/or mold something out of clay.

Uh-uh.

You know what I’ll do if I’m at a game night with Pictionary as the main game?

I’ll take pictures. (Yes, this is a shameless plug for my Etsy shop, which is now back up and will have new pictures added.)

That’s the extent of my artistic ability because if my hand happens to shake, or I get a crooked picture, I might still be able to make something of it.

February 8, 2012Berrak 13 Comments

Bucket List: Cross-Country Road Trip

In 2011, I traveled a lot more than I had before, seeing parts of the U.S. I hadn’t yet seen, and falling in love with travel more and more (minus the part where I got stranded at airports for hours at end).

In 2012, I intend to continue this tradition of travel since I’m now fully location-independent, both work and school wise since UMUC stopped requiring proctored exams (YAY!).

I’m kicking off this year with a trip to Ann Arbor, MI at the end of this month for a birthday weekend of one of my dearest friends. I’ve never been to Michigan so I’m super excited, though I’m not sure if I’ll do a lot of exploring this time around.

At the end of May, I’m going back to NY for a weekend trip (or possibly a week) because I can never get enough of New York. (And then back to NY in August for BlogHer ’12. I’m still looking for a roomie!)

But the biggest trip of this year?

That’ll happen in June/July. I was planning on taking a cross-country road trip this summer, ending in Seattle for a camping trip with my best friend and her family. Nicole, who has become one of my best friends in DC (we get a little lost if we don’t see each other once a week), jumped in and said she’d join me.

“Really?” I asked, because these things get thrown out, plans get made in the middle of mimosa-filled brunches and they never actually happen.

“Really,” she said, whipping out her phone so we could take a look at the calendar and plan when she can take time off from work.

So, I’m 90% sure this is happening. We’re planning on taking the southern route, making a couple of stops in Texas, Cali and everything in between, ending up in Seattle.

So, 2012 will be the year I go on my first cross-country road trip. It will also likely be the year I drive back to DC by myself since Nicole will have to fly back for work.

This is huge and it couldn’t have happened at a better time in my life. It’s that kind of year when I need to take a step back, get away and really take the time to figure out the direction of my path.

Who knows? Maybe 2013 will be the year I start traveling around the world more.

PS: Don’t forget there’s a giveaway happening on my blog right now! Details are here.

January 24, 2012Berrak 2 Comments

The Dangerous Thing About Complacency

in·de·pend·ence

noun

2. freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like,of others.

free·dom

noun

2. exemption from external control, interference, regulation,etc.

3. the power to determine action without restraint.

These are words we’re all familiar with and love to flaunt around whenever we get the chance. For some people, independence is the first time they get a job, or when they get their license, because that leads to freedom. For others, it’s when they move out to go to college, etc etc. You get the point. We know the definitions and how these words apply to us and some of us think that because we’re finally grown-ups, we’re exempt from influence (mostly from our parents).

What I’ve come to discover in the last few months is that complacency and the need for a comfort zone can chip away at that independence below the surface. While we go on making our decisions, thinking that we’re making them freely and damn it, “it’s my life,” we don’t pay attention to the subtle hints that our decisions are actually being influenced. [I promise I won’t get too philosophical on you.]

Mostly, this influence is harmless for harmless decisions.

It gets dangerous when you work hard for your independence only to find yourself burrowed in a ‘safe, comfortable situation’ that’s keeping you from pushing your limits too far.

I found myself having to make difficult decisions lately. I had to actually pause and face the decision head-on. A decision I’ve been avoiding because I considered everyone’s feelings but my own. I went into protective mode when the person who was really hurting was me.

Whenever I start completely ignoring my own feelings and worries, Andrew always reminds me of the airplane crash scenario.

You must put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help the person next to you.

Me?

I hold my breath and wait until every single person has their masks on. Next thing I know, there’s no air left for me.

So I’ve been suffocating.

My close friends have been waiting for me to finally realize I was out of oxygen. They listened to me whenever I vented without any action. I made excuses. I weighed every decision, except for the one I needed to make.

The kicker was when multiple friends who are in different circles (some who haven’t even met each other) and have been in my life for as little as a year and as long as 7 years told me the same thing:

“I’ve been waiting for you to make this decision for a while.”

The one thing you can’t forget is that you are not alone. You have people who love you. The ones who see the real you through the bullshit walls that you sometimes put up. When you lose faith in yourself or you forget how strong you are, let them remind you.

You’ll probably push them away. They’ll push back. You won’t be ready to let them in immediately but that’s why they’re there.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
– Unknown

They’re patient. They’ll wait until you’re ready – until you look up and say “Alright. I’m ready and I’m scared beyond belief. I want the truth. Let me have it.”

And they will.

You know what ‘freedom from influence‘ really means?

That moment you stop making excuses, strip away the ‘what ifs’ and actually put yourself first.

It means faith and trust in the unknown. Because your ass will go into uncharted territory and sometimes, that means you go into it with just your gut feelings and the decision to find what you really want in life.

You know what?

Sometimes, that just plain sucks but I promise, you’ll pull through

One day at a time.

November 2, 2011Berrak 3 Comments

Why I Love My Friends

They suggest coloring books when I tell them I just need to clear my head.

They sit with me until 1 AM at a bar on a Tuesday night because I just can’t stop word vomiting all over the place.

They approve of my hiccup-burp-snort-cry moments.

They don’t let up until I tell them what the f*ck is wrong even if it’s 2 am after a day of packing.

They love me unconditionally, despite the fact that I am a hot mess.

They tell me stories about their dogs licking their butt to cheer me up.

They send me cards just because and it fills my heart with love on days when I’m feeling alone.

They don’t judge me even when I tell them things that make me a less than stellar person.

They wipe away my tears.

I’m at a point in my life where a lot is changing, and I am so overwhelmed that I don’t know what to do with myself most of the time. The support that I’ve gotten from the people in my life has been amazing, but at the end of day, I’ve had to make sense of my own thoughts and figure out the next steps.

I am really lucky to be surrounded by such love, even from friends who have only been in my life for the past few months but have connected with me on deeper levels.

Hopefully, I’ll be back in regularly blogging mode soon too.

♥