Fifty Songs of Grey

in honor of the trailer release for fifty shades of grey, i created a spotify playlist (the first of many) full of songs that remind me of fifty himself. they're all over the place, from falling in love with ana to the playroom to the breakup and back together again. maybe some day i'll arrange them to tell the story of christian and ana. happy siiiiiiigh <3

https://play.spotify.com/user/stephystillframe/playlist/2T62wSzEQBt85ID3o34rL7

11.     Undisclosed Desires – Muse (literally the theme song for christian)

22.     Playing In The Shadows - Example 

33.     Crazy in Love – Beyoncé

44.     Take Over Control – Afrojack

55.     Boats and Birds – Gregory and the Hawk

66.     Whatever You Like – Anya Marina

77.     Just Can’t Get Enough – Black Eyed Peas

88.     I Miss You – Blink 182

99.     We Found Love – Boyce Avenue

110. If You Seek Amy (M.B. Remix)– Helen

111. Everytime We Touch (acoustic) – Cascada

112. The Operation – Charlotte Gainsbourg

113. The Church of Hot Addiction – Cobra Starship

114. The Scientist – Coldplay (if you don't think of christian every time you hear this song you aren't a true fifty fan)

115. Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex – CSS

116. Stolen – Dashboard Confessional

117. Turn Me On – David Guetta ft. Nicki Minaj

118. Still Fly – The Devil Wears Prada

119. Love Save The Empty – Erin McCarley

220. Almost Lover – A Fine Frenzy

221. Crave You (Adventure Club Remix) – Flight Facilities

222. Like A Virgin – Glee

223. Marry Me – Train

224. Sweet Dream – Greg Laswell

225. On My Level ft. Too $hort – Wiz Khalifa

226. Can’t Help Falling In Love – Ingrid Michaelson

227. Wicked Game – James Vincent McMorrow

228. Night Terror – Laura Marling

229. Soundtrack 2 My Life – Kid Cudi

330. Lady Grinning Soul – Lucia Micarelli

331. Wonderwall – Melissa Rebronja

332. Plastic Jungle – Miike Snow

333. Colorblind – Natalie Walker

334. Everybody Loves Me – OneRepublic

335. The Naughty Song – Oscillator X

336. Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off – Panic! At The Disco

337. The Good Left Undone – Rise Against

338. Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too – Say Anything

339. Set The Fire To The Third Bar – Snow Patrol

440. Sweet Troubled Soul – Stellatarr*

441. Innocent – Taylor Swift

442. Sweet Disposition – The Temper Trap

443. E.S.T. – White Lies

444. Only One – Yellowcard

445. River Flows In You – Yiruma

446. Intimate – Crystal Castles

447. I Just Had Sex – Akon & The Lonely Island

448. S&M – Rihanna

449. Eleventh Commandment – Collin Raye

550. Song Of The Caged Bird – Lindsey Stirling

i think i'm done talking for a while.

a year ago i woke up and found my dad four hours into a stroke, dying right in front of me, and something scary broke inside of me.

i always knew something like this would happen. i watched my mom die when i was so young. humans aren't strong and mighty. we're so fragile, so weak. the moment we're put on this earth we begin to die and nothing is going to stop that. so i always knew that i'd have to be prepared for when something else bad happened because it would probably be up to me to be the anchor. but the panic shut me down and i screamed when i called 911 and cried and cried and cried because it's easy to be strong when life is going well but it's hard not to be weak when the entire world is shattering around you.

i've always been a worrier. but i've never had an anxiety the size of a monster inside of me like i do now. sometimes i call my dad twice a day to check in and i keep my ringer on full blast when i go to bed and sleep with a ponytail on my wrist in case i have to race to the hospital at a moment's notice, even though i have a phobia of my wrists falling off from lack of circulation like a pig's tail. at school i started checking to make sure lauren was breathing every night before i went to bed and demanded that my brother check in with my dad if he sent a text with a few misplaced words for fear that he was having another stroke.

it's a strange thing to watch your life come apart and be completely helpless in stopping it. one year ago today at this very moment i was hoping for something incredible to happen. and then it all went to shit. and as the year progressed, it went to even more shit. and it just kept happening and happening and happening and there was nothing i could do to change it. i'm so tired. i'm so so so so so tired and life isn't going to get any easier. "fall down seven times, stand up eight." how about i fall down seven times and take a nap instead.

i used to want to share everything. now i want to share nothing. you can only word things so many ways before you realize that people are never going to understand. so i think for now i'm done trying to explain this ocean inside of me and why i always get sad when i'm out with my friends. i suffer from anxiety and depression and athazagoraphobia and i don't know how else to describe the way i am to people who aren't really listening.

words are the biggest weapons we own. and sometimes they're the most powerful when we take them away.

a playlist for when it's 3 am and you're really, really sad.

my words have disappeared and i don't know where to find them.


i have never loved someone - my brightest diamond

loss of a twin - brian tyler

what makes a man - city and colour

in this shirt - the irrepressibles 

hanging by a thread - jann arden

expression - helen jane long

buy the stars - marina and the diamonds

signs (saycet remix) - bloc party

the sound of silence - brooke fraser

make you feel my love - lea michele

the a team - birdy

bel air - lana del rey

jesus christ - brand new

so cold - ben cocks

all i want - kodaline

now go to thenicestplaceontheinter.net because there is nothing nicer than a stranger giving you a big comforting hug.

i know it's true, that visions are seldom all they seem.

i've always loved fairytales. i've always believed in fairytales. fairytales had magic, and i thought that if i believed hard enough, if i truly believed in the deepest parts of my heart, then i could have the magic, too. i wanted a fairytale happy ending so badly, and for some silly reason i always believed that i would get one.

i used to believe in everything. i believed in the stars and my books and the flowers that grew out of the cracks in the sidewalk. i used to believe in my dreams and in this world and in myself. life changes people, though. and the truth can be so incredibly brutal.

last thursday i went to the premiere of maleficent with lauren. the story of sleeping beauty has always been my favorite fairytale. she most certainly is my favorite princess. aurora. to me, she had the most beautiful name of them all. "the dawn." a new beginning. my favorite time of the day, when the sun kisses me and the stars goodnight and i fall into my own slumber as the rest of the world awakens. maybe that's why she's my favorite. we're alike in a lot of ways. i'm the one asleep for a hundred years, while everyone else around me is wide awake. i feel like that a lot. as if i'm walking through life in a dreamlike state, waiting for someone to come wake me up and make me feel alive again. it's like maleficent is life and the darkness is trying to pull me into an eternal slumber. but i'm not sleeping beauty. and happily ever afters are just words on a page.

as soon as i heard the first haunting notes of lana's version of once upon a dream, i fell in love. disney's version is so light. and i loved that version when i felt like life could be just like that fairytale. but life doesn't work that way. it can be so cruel and so very, very dark. maleficent. the literal meaning being "menacing and foreboding." the truest form of evil portrayed in the most wicked villain of them all. what's not to love?

and while i adored the movie, i will say i thought it could have been so much darker. i was almost disappointed; i didn't agree with some of the plot changes, but sleeping beauty will always be sleeping beauty to me. and light or dark, it will always be my favorite.

i don't know where i'm going with this whole thing. all i know is that i haven't written a post since november because the words have hidden themselves deep within my mind and they disappear before my fingers can even touch the keys. but i think it's become harder to keep everything inside than it is to fight it out of my messed up head. so this is the result. baby steps, as someone anonymously commented on one of my flickr pictures one time. but the dawn is on it's way and maizie is snuggled up on my lap, so i guess it's time for me to give up and go back to dreamland. maybe i'll meet my prince there.

i know so many last words, but i will never know hers.

"grief is like the ocean: it's deep and dark and bigger than all of us. and pain is like a thief in the night: quiet, persistent, unfair."

some people claim that grief gets easier with time, but i guess i always functioned backwards when it came to that stuff. i remember when my mom died i had no clue what was going on. for years after her death i had no clue what was going on. and then the big stuff started happening and i realized she was never coming back. 

at the hospital right before they told me to say goodbye to her one last time i lost my mind. i sat there and started listing off every single event she would miss. every first day of school. my sweet sixteen. high school graduation. college visits. volleyball games. michigan games. my wedding. my first baby. i couldn't stop making that list. i still haven't stopped. for those first few years i didn't realize what it would be like having to experience these things without her. but now i know. and for the passed nine years i have mentally checked off event after event from that list and died a little more each time i did it. 

and while i always thought that the pain would lessen with time, it's only gotten worse. i'm terrified of the day that comes when i have lived more of my life without my mom than with her. and each year as i forget more and more about her, the sadness gets deeper and deeper and i get so scared of forgetting her that i've begun to have nightmares about it. i remember watching the glee episode "the quarterback" and hearing rachel ask mr. shue if he thought she would ever forget finn's voice and the pain and sorrow that she couldn't hide as she said "because i'm afraid that one day i will" broke my heart. 

because she wasn't just talking about finn, she was talking about cory. and all i could think was that yes, yes she would forget his voice. and the way his hugs felt and the way he smelled and his favorite sayings and what his favorite songs were. because i've already started to forget the way my mom would sit in the kitchen on saturday mornings in her big fluffy robe doing a crossword puzzle and the way she saved the crispy fries for last so we could rate the crunch-factor. sometimes i forget the way she loved to listen to books on tape while making dinner and the way she would sing "i see something you don't see" during our easter egg hunts. i forget what it was like to cuddle with her by the christmas tree while she read her favorite nancy drew books to me and how excited she always was to see me after school. i can't even remember what it was like to have her tuck me in at night. 

but i'll never forget the outfit i wore to her funeral or how the day she died was the only time i have ever seen my brother cry. i'll never forget the dances i had to get ready for without her and the broken hearts i had to mend on my own. i'll never forget how happy football games in the big house made her and the way i cried when i got my university of michigan acceptance letter because that's the one moment in my entire life i would share with her if i could only share one. because she bred me to be a michigan wolverine since the moment i was born and all i've ever wanted was to make her proud.

but most of all i'll never forget that the last words i said to her were "i'll never forget you." because i am forgetting her and i feel like i'm breaking my promise to her. nine years have gone by and nine more will go by and then another nine and i'm terrified that one year i won't remember her at all.

recut horror trailers

happy halloween! in honor of this horrifying holiday that had me sleeping in my dad's room every year until i was sixteen out of terror that michael myers was going to pop up, i thought i would show you some of the best movies that have been cut into horror trailers. they're pretty legit if i do say so myself.
stay safe tonight and eat lots & lots of candy :)

The Lion King

Mean Girls

Back to the Future

Horrible Bosses

Mary Poppins

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The Sound of Music

Mrs. Doubtfire

Toy Story 3

and just in case you don't like horror movies, here's Harry Potter as a comedy

xoxo, stephy

a memoir

today the cultural club in north quad had this activity where we decorate sugar skulls in honor of the dead, which is a popular mexican tradition. the girl explaining it said they don't mourn the death of a loved one, but instead focus on celebrating their life. while i'm a firm believer that mourning is a large part of death, i decorated one anyway and wrote my mom's name on it in memory of her.
and then i started thinking about the memoirs we wrote in ap lit senior year. we could write about any memory we wanted, and i immediately thought of my favorite memory with my mom. so here's the memoir i wrote. it's called "the summer of happiness".

It is a warm summer day. The sun is shining and there is a gentle breeze in the air.

            “Stephy! Lunch is here!” I hear my mom call to me. I swim to the edge of the pool and lift myself up and out of the water. I look around at my surroundings. I see the familiar setting of the Country Club Pool, my second home in the summer. I scramble over to our seats in the shade and grab a big fluffy towel that smells of countless summer memories.

            My mom is setting out my favorite lunch as I dry off: chicken fingers, fries, extra ketchup, and a blue-raspberry slushy. We make small talk but mostly just enjoy each other’s company as we eat our scrumptious meals.

This is how I have always remembered spending my summers. Almost everyday consists of swimming at the place I consider my own. All of the lifeguards let me sit with them while on duty and the entire wait staff knows me by name. The world did not need to be bigger than that fenced in pool area; I had all of the happiness a girl could ask for right here.

I look at my mom sitting across from me as she holds her latest novel in one hand and a french fry in the other. She’s wearing a big sun hat and a protective cover up, even though we’re seated in the shade. This is one of the changes I’ve noticed in my mother lately. The sun is her worst enemy and sunscreen her best friend. She never explains to me why our new favorite section has suddenly moved to the area shaded by the big Oak tree, but I just accept the changes and don’t think much of it.

My mom looks up at me now and notices me watching her. She smiles and puts her book down She asks me how my food is, but already knows the answer.

“Yummy!” I tell her as I eat the last of the fries.

I yawn widely and realize how tired I have become. I walk over to her and sit in her lap, resting my head on her shoulder. She lies down on the pool chair and I snuggle up in her arms.

“Mommy, will you tell me a story?” I ask her, already feeling the calm tiredness coming over me.

So she begins my favorite fairytale, the one about a special little princess with beautiful long hair who meets her perfect prince and achieves all of her dreams. I drift off to sleep as her voice fills my mind and the tranquility of the moment takes over. I could lay like that forever, a daughter in her mother’s arms.

I awake on that same chair eleven years later on a dreary summer day with the same long hair, except I am no longer in my mother’s arms. It seems her darling little princess lost her protector to a demon called cancer and those magical summers disappeared. I sit up and look around. I am laying in our normal spot in the shade but there is no laughter to fills my ears and no companion by my side. I lay back down and close my eyes, desperate to see her face again, to feel her warmth, to recognize her love. But the images are gone, washed away by the sadness that fills my mind. With a heavy heart I realize that my memories are all I have left of my mother and the summers we shared can only be relived in my dreams. 

xoxo, stephy