Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Internet Friends

Before I begin, here are two little notes:

  • If you are one of my Internet friends and I didn't mention you I STILL LOVE YOU SO MUCH I SWEAR YOU ARE THE BEE'S KNEES AND YOU ARE PERFECT. I just decided to not write about God knows how many (40? 80? the world may never know) friends I've made over social media.
  • If you're someone I know in real life, surprise! You can make friends over the Internet that don't end up being 55-year-old creepy white men. How cool! :-)

So here are some of my friends the first time I ever met up with them.


Look how lovely they are. They just make my heart smile. Okay so now I'm going to quickly talk about 5 beautiful friends I have.

1.) Daleeya - Daleeya is a ball of joy. She's easy to talk to and she is my concert buddy. Daleeya has taught me that it's okay to go to a ridiculous amount of concerts if I want to. She's made me realize that it is completely fine for concerts to be my happy place. And that's so cool! Next week, I'm going to a concert for a band called Against The Current here in Seattle. Unfortunately, I was the only one among my friends who got a VIP ticket. This VIP ticket means I'll be showing up early, meeting the band, getting early access to merch, watching an acoustic show, etc. Now Daleeya and our other friend will both be there for the regular concert, but I will be alone for the VIP portion... And if it wasn't for Daleeya, I don't think I'd be brave enough to do it by myself. Yes, I'm going to be alone but I'm going to go meet an amazing band and it'll be great. Plus, I get to chill with Daleeya during the real concert. YAY.

Daleeya and me heading to the store to warm up for a little 
while our friends were saving our spots in line for the Bad Suns concert.

2.) Bailey - I created the account that connected me to all of these people during the first week of November 2014. It's only March now but one thing that I have gained phenomenally fast is confidence. Self-love. Not hating myself. Bailey is the person who- not even knowingly- helped me the most with this. Bailey is a beautiful person who holds herself really well. When I first met her, I was intimidated because of this. My thought process was kind of like: "Okay this girl is beautiful. She's funny. She must have some true talent to make the wings of her eyeliner look that good... But she knows she's beautiful. And that's weird. Nobody knows they're beautiful." And at that point in my life, I believed that to be true. It is so rare for me to come across someone who loves him/herself... which, now, is really hard for me to think about. And the people that do love themselves aren't cocky or selfish or full of themselves... They're just them. And they know there's nothing wrong with them. And now it seems silly to ever think otherwise. I'm beautiful and pretty good at putting makeup on others and I'm good at writing and I'm caring and I'm all these awesome adjectives; however, previous to November, had someone asked what I liked about myself, I could not have responded. It's weird how one person that I don't even know that well changed every thought I had about myself. The Internet is weird. But Bailey rocks.

The only picture Bailey and I have taken together (which is weird to think about).
She's the one directly to my left!

3.) Melisa - I could go on for hours about how much this girl inspires me.  Although Melisa is younger than I am, I absolutely look up to her.  She really taught me how important it is to take care of myself.  It's okay to take a day off if you're too depressed to get out of bed.  It's okay to put yourself before others- and to not feel guilty about it.  When I went to her house for her birthday party, Melisa actually supported me when I told her I really needed to go home and be alone.  She's the type of friend I hope everyone has. She's so intelligent and, even now, after all this time of knowing her, her wisdom shocks me constantly. It is so great having a friend that I can talk to about feminism and equal rights and the acceptance of mental illnesses.  I could talk to Melisa for years and never get bored or angry.  I aim to be more like her every day. (Also, just gonna throw it out there that when Melisa's eyes are in the sunlight and they're all glittery and sparkly... It's the prettiest sight of all time.)

Melisa and me in front of the fountain at Key Arena at our last
big meetup which was actually for her birthday!





4.) Logan - Logan has taught me that it's okay to love celebrities.  It sounds silly but I adore her for teaching me this.  People like Ed Sheeran, 5 Seconds of Summer, One Direction, etc. have made such an impact on my life and I do genuinely love them.  They give me reasons to smile and laugh and be into music. Adults often laugh at fangirls and fanboys for loving artists and spending money on them when it's considered normal for grown men and women to spend endless amounts of money on tickets to sporting events and jerseys with the names of people they'll never meet on them. Logan has showed me that, yeah, I love Michael Clifford and Harry Styles. And that's awesome. Because music is actually what brought ALL of my Internet friends and me together. We wouldn't even know each other otherwise. I love these artists not only for giving me amazing music to listen to but also because they've created all these new friendships. So yes, I love them. And it's not embarrassing. It's rad. (Thank you, Logan.)

Logan (the blond directly to my right) and me the first time we met
featuring a happy Grace :)


5.) Leilee - Lastly, Leilee. Where do I even start? Leilee was my first friend that I made on a social media site other than YouTube (quick shout out to Lexi and Summer and my YouTube pals). We started talking immediately about stuff that wasn't super on-the-surface and that's how I knew I liked her. We just get along so well and she makes me so happy. I picture Leilee being one of my bridesmaids if I ever get married. She's the type of person that I could talk to all day, every day and not get bored, but she's also the person that if I don't talk to for awhile, then when we start talking again, we pick up right where we left off. I adore her. Leilee is kind and beautiful and hilarious and genuine and the best friend I could've ever asked for. I'm so lucky to know her and to have her in my life. Meeting her was one of the best days of my life and the only reason I forced back tears was because there were way too many pictures being taken that day for my eye makeup to be ruined (not even joking ok this was a big day).

Moments after Leilee and I first met when she showed up for the Bad Suns concert.
I love this picture so much because look how great she looks and how happy I look even
though like half my face is squished.

Just gonna throw this out here real quick... If you want to see Leilee and me meeting for the first time, here's a cute little Vine that will allow you to do so: https://vine.co/v/Ot1vg9E0Zlh

So that's that, I suppose. Moral of the story: Internet friends are cool. They are not all psychotic, elderly men. So that's good news.

The reason that I even thought up this blog was because we all know I've struggled with depression for a very long time and this week has just been pretty rough for me. But I tried thinking of things I'm grateful for and these people came to mind.

Look at all these reasons to keep on living:

:)


-Jordan xx

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Jordan_Winans
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/jordanashleywinans
Vlogging YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/jordanwinansvlogs
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Instagram: @wtvr.jordan

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