And Sometimes Your Life is Like a Beatles' Song...

" I get by with a little help from my friends."

Heard that.

Sometimes when I'm with my friends, it could appear from an outside perspective that we are hitting some pretty heavy narcotics. Truly, we get real weird and pretty loud and make strange body gestures. 

*Side story: This is real life, I promise. During my senior year of high school , I participated on the basketball team. I choose the word "participated" because I literally had no idea what I was ever doing. I just ran around a lot and jumped and stuff. Anyway, I was probably on the team for more of a social aspect. Ok, ok to the story… In the locker room I decided it would be completely brilliant to attack two of my greatest friends (shout out to Becca and Haley), while they were already laughing. Long story short, after a few blows to the stomach and continuing to be absolutely ridiculous, I succeeded in making them both urinate their pants with their uniforms already on. It's safe to say that the next day, each of us were called into the coach's office to be questioned about the use of drugs. I promise, this is so true, it's insane. So hilarious. I digress, but that story is too funny not share. 

But despite that, I assure you, I have not and will not ever "get high with a little help from my friends". Regardless of this popular line from the famous Beatles' song, I do find truth with a majority of the rest of George, Ringo, Paul and John's transcendent words. 

Last week, I enjoyed wallowing in my own self pity. I admit that life got the better of me. It's as simple as that. I was full of exhaustion, stressed with 14 billion pages of studying for physiology (yay, dietetics), suffering from the winter blues, blah blah blah… Upon all of this, I thought it would be super cool to just deal with everything by my self-righteous (more like naive), independent self (again, naive), you know, because that's what I do. My genius game plan: keep everything in my head and walk around like a creepy depressed zombie. Not the best idea, that's for sure. Well, using some type of weird telepathic powers, Jenna and Maria sensed my selfish, baby-like sadness all the way from Indy. 

So last Sunday, as I sat in Panera sipping my fourth gallon of coffee, I was blown away by the best surprise of my entire life (except for the time, at the age of 17, my dad told me that I was going to have a sister, Brooklyn. Oh, and then again, two years later, when he told me that I was going to have a baby brother, Beckett. Woah, babies. Everywhere.) Whatever, back to the point, IT WAS THE GREATEST SITE OF MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE. Although at first I was completely overwhelmed with a sense of immense confusion and more confusion on top of that, I finally realized that standing before me were my two best friends. The other 2/3's of HJM (aka Maria and Jenna for those of you who can't put together context clues). Instead of crying or screaming, I think I kind of blacked out. Not really, I seriously just can't remember what my initial reaction was, but I'm sure it was just enough to disrupt a once innocent place of dining. Yeah, you could say that I was pretty freakin' excited. 

This video is actually a decently realistic representation of how I usually act in surprise situations. Let's just say that they're my favorite and that I can maybe, sometimes resemble the horrifying qualities of a good Kristen Wiig impression, except I'm likely to be worse dressed, obvi. DAT SWEATER.



Jenna just doing what ever it is
that she does.

Basically, for the next three hours, I ditched the books and had some much needed time with my favorite people. Although we were in a crowded restaurant, it was like time stood abnormally still for a while. Just enough of a break for me, myself and I to catch a breath from the stressful week before. I cried, they listened. I laughed, they laughed along with me. Let's be honest, there was so much obnoxious laughing. I vented, they supported. I sweated (which I tend to do, a lot), they stared in disgust. I was broken, and they mended my defected heart slowly back together. People, friendship is a beautiful thing. It is the force that picks us up when we have fallen and the push to keep us moving right along down the path we call life.

Looking back at the events that occurred last Sunday, it's hard to define the emotions that streamed through my scatter-brained skull. I honestly believe that I do not have the emotional capacity, nor the in-depth vocabulary, for that matter, to describe exactly what it was that I felt. Simply no words to justify my intense feeling of overwhelmingness, my great appreciation, the wonderful blessings in the form of friends, or the outpour of love. It was (insert every best adjective here).

All I can really say is that my life is good and my friends are the best. I am forever so very grateful, not to mentioned blessed beyond measure. Hardships and stress will come and go, but the relationships that I form along the way are solid. Hard as rock, forever, indefinitely, completely solid.  I am constantly, CONSTANTLY reminded that life is not some independent test and it's not supposed to be taken on alone. So thanks for that reminder, Jenna motha Henna and Young Mar Mar, you guys are the bestie mcbest.

Last Sunday, I was so unbelievably amazed by the personification of friendship portrayed so bluntly in front of me. I was humbled to an incredible extent.  I'm not too cool, too strong, or too capable to reach out to my support team, my friends, my family. Maybe someday I'll decide to take my own advice and learn. But until then, I figure that I will continue to be consistently reminded. Ladies and gentleman, God does not put such unique and special people in your life to be overlooked, but to be valued and pursued in times of brokeness. So, yes, last week was tough. But guess what? I survived. And I'm still here today, writing this testimony. How? Perhaps the Beatles' had it right, you do "get by with a little help from your friends." 

So, what do I want you to take away from my experience, other than the best story about locker room urination ever? The next time you're feeling a little down, in a slump, or a attempting to overcome one of the crazy obstacles that life throws at you, seek. Seek your friends, seek your family, seek your spirituality, SEEK HOPE. You will make it through, I promise. It's all about the perseverance, my friends. Just keep on keepin' on.

--Haley 

Probably the most normal picture you will
likely ever see of us. So, enjoy that.

Anyways, here's what happened last Sunday. All 3 of us were actually in the same place. At the same time. And it was literally the best day ever. 

The Surprise.
So we (aka Jenna and Maria) decided to surprise Haley. But here's the thing... We literally had no plan. Haley is usually the one who plans and organizes these excursions, so this was a really difficult task for us to take on. We contacted Haley's roommate, Lindsay (she's the cutest, best person), to try and organize the whole thing and she helped us determine where Haley would be when we arrived in West Lafayette... That was as far as we got. So we're driving to Purdue last Sunday with no plan and no idea how we were going to surprise her, but we knew that it was going to be epic because Haley has the best/weirdest reactions to things, especially surprises. 

Haley was at a Panera studying when we arrived in West Lafayette, so we parked the car and began walking up to the door. This was when we realized we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. During our road trip we kept discussing "So how should we surprise her?", but we never got further than "I don't know". But it was a good thing that we didn't plan anything, because as soon as we walked in the door Haley and Maria made eye contact. It was extremely awkward because she was just staring at Maria like she was the most horrifying human being she had ever seen. Then, in typical Haley-fashion, Haley yells (seriously she yelled) "WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING HERE?" and began power walking towards us. The look on her face was a mixture of confusion, nausea, and joy. Then we hugged and she was still really confused so we stood in the middle of Panera awkwardly for a few minutes. And the rest is history. Like true history because we recorded it. On this very blog.

The Highlights.
We feel like the only possible way for you, the reader, to understand the exact chaos and ridiculousness that each encounter involving the three of us entails, is through a fews pictures. Prepare yourself.


                                                                                             

You could say we're pretty weird...but that would be the understatement of the century. So now we're going to leave  you with our favorite quote from our reunion last Sunday. This quote happens to come from our very own, the one, the only, the supremely lovely, Jenna Payne. "Guys, you know how my New Years Resolution was to workout more? Well, I've been trying to run more frequently, and I haven't really ran consistent distances since high school cross country. When I run, my legs rub together and it's really painful ("chafing", we've all been there) Like so painful. And it has been bleeding. Every time I run the skin that has gotten scabbed over starts bleeding again. I don't know what to do." Eruption of laughter. Upon more and more laughter until the point of tears. So horrifyingly hilarious. Thus the day Jenna learned about chafing and the ability to prevent it by wearing running tights. Success. 

Until next time folks, HJM