Feeling a bit lost

Hey! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's. I feel awful that I fail to post on this blog even though I have about 4 posts in draft form, most of them being hauls from Black Friday and other instances. I believe I said this last year in the beginning of January that I would pay more attention to this blog, but that obviously didn't happen. Once again, I hope to get inspired and post more!

These past few months have been really difficult for me. My grandpa, my last surviving grandparent, passed away on December 4th and it's been extremely difficult for me to heal from this. He was one of the few people in my life that fully supported me in anything and he never criticized me on my decisions, which I really appreciated. I felt like he was one of the only people who ever understood me. I loved him unconditionally. It is only I who lives in his house now, along with his dog. It doesn't bother me that I'm alone. I'm an only child, so I'm kind of used to being by myself. It just feels lonely without my grandpa if that makes any sense. I'm not really sure when I'll ever recover from this loss. I feel like I won't ever recover, but I'm hoping that I'm just feeling this way because it only happened recently. I've been looking information about the grieving process, and it seems that while there is a basic cycle, it varies depending on the person. I do have major bouts of sadness that hits me multiple times a day. Usually during the evening is when the crying and the sadness hits me the hardest. To be honest, I think there has been improvement in my grieving as the pain has slightly lessened, but it is still extremely painful nevertheless. While I can't see the end to this, I hope that I can heal in this year and that the depression goes away.

I'm sorry for how depressing this post is. It's really hard to feel festive and excited about the new year when all I feel is emptiness and emotionless. But, to uplift this post a bit, I'm happy to say that I've started an Associate's degree in Fashion Merchandising through Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) online. I've really enjoyed my first two quarters so far and this coming Monday is the start of the third quarter. I had a lot of credits that I was able to transfer, thus only having to take 9 courses to complete this degree. I must say that I've only had a wonderful experience with online schooling. From the professors to my student adviser, they have been nothing but supportive and kind, which really changed my view on online classes. I thought that because you don't see people face-to-face, the teachers wouldn't be very interactive because we're only communicating via the Internet. To be honest, I've had more interaction with my teachers and student adviser than when I was taking physical classes at my home university. It feels nice knowing that the teachers get to know you and your style of learning. I actually wish I had more quarters to take!

Anyways, I hope to continue blogging and uploading the wonderful finds around Hawaii. As I'm typing out this post, I feel good getting things off of my chest, even if it's talking about different things besides the passing. I know it's common knowledge that in order to heal from a tragedy, you have to talk about it, but I feel that by talking about other things helps me to get my mind off of it. Because if talking about the tragedy is only going to continue my feelings of depression and despair, then I fear I'll never heal. But, if things like blogging about fashion and immersing myself in my interests is going to help me, then so be it.

I wish everyone a prosperous New Year and I hope to see you in the near future :)

- Lauren