I'm Alli and I like to take naps.

If you've made it to this website, odds are you're a close friend or someone that followed the link in my Instagram Bio. It doesn't matter to me how you got here. So, hello! My name is Alli, I'm 23 and I'm a proud Portland Native. I'm here to share my story, self reflect, grow, and hopefully inspire you to do the same.

On the "About" page, I touched a little bit on how heavily people (myself included) filter what others see not only on social media, but in real life as well. We're all guilty of it in one way or another. So, here we go...diving off the deep end. Are you ready?

If you know me at all, you know I wear my heart on my sleeve. If you ask me how my day is going, I usually look at you with my resting bitch face and the words "Well, I woke up this morning," come out of my mouth without a smile. And I'm being dead serious. This isn't a mechanism to push people away. It's how I'm actually feeling. I'm a true Capricorn, born in the dead of winter, approaching life with a deadpan humor and strong sense of irony. I wear a lot of black, I listen to a lot of metal, and I like to pretend that I have a jet black heart, when in reality I feel things so much more deeply than most.

I spent most of my childhood and teenage years struggling with generalized anxiety. In the last four years Panic Disorder, Depression, and ADD have come into the picture as well. I see a therapist once a week and a psychiatrist every three weeks to make sure medications are doing their jobs. My mental health (or sometimes lack thereof) has consumed seasons of my life that were meant to be carefree and lighthearted, moments that were supposed to be full of joy and bliss. On the outside looking in you saw a happy little girl that loved horses. Later you would find her at cheer practice or another YoungLife event. In college, she spent her weeknights in the library (mostly socializing) and her weekends laughing with her friends over last nights drunken mishaps. Unless I told you, you would have no idea how dark my mind could really get.

Fast forward to right now. 11:03pm on Tuesday, September 17th 2019. I'm in the most awkward season of my life to date. No one prepared me for life after college. When you're in school you can't wait to get out and travel, or meet the love of your life, or land your dream job. If you're anywhere between 16 and 22, let me be the first to tell you that life after school sucks. No one really knows what they're doing. No one has money to see the world. No one is really mature enough to get married at 22 years old (this is just my opinion, every relationship is different and you know yourself better than I do, maybe you are). People are still trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up, others are continuing school and moving in the process. Hell, I'm still living with my parents, I have no job, no boyfriend, no money, and I have NO FUCKING CLUE what I want to do with my life.

The main reason behind starting this blog is to inspire others to turn down their filters in a similar way that I am. In the process I hope to make a contribution in reducing the negative stigma around mental health, normalizing it in such a way so that people aren't afraid to seek the help they need. You will have bad days. But remember that without the bad days, the good ones wouldn't be as good.