My name is Marissa, and you have somehow discovered this little web-nugget of Americana. Well done.
My life can be summarized pretty easily: I was born in Long Island, New York, and lived there for a little while. My parents thought we’d have a better life further north, so we moved to the Hudson Valley, where I lived until I was 14. I had the best childhood – which is pretty accurately summarized here. I can’t think of a single thing I would have changed.
Then my parents moved our family to Switzerland, where I lived for two years. That experience obviously changed my life because it moved me halfway around the world, but more importantly it change me – it catapulted who I was into the depths of who I am. It completely shifted the direction of my development at a very sensitive time in a person’s life, and what I learned about myself from moving there, living there, and leaving there continues to have a pretty significant impact on my life.
I then moved back to New York when I was 16, and I attended school with the same people I had before I moved. To put it simply: I changed, they did not, and neither of us expected that to be the case, so that year sucked. If there was ever a time in my life that I doubted the status of my own mental health, it would be during that year. I can remember standing up in the middle of class and walking to the bathroom, wanting nothing more than to run and scream, but just crying because I couldn’t do either of those things. I don’t fare well with a combination of confined spaces and authority.
I semi-skipped my senior year of high school and took one class at my local public high school and the rest at a local college, and it was one of my best decisions. I learned how to work like a college student, I had a part-time job, and I did everything on my own terms. I decided every what, when, where, how, and why, and if I ever needed to leave class to go to the library or the riverfront and study on my own, no one was going to stop me. I definitely calmed down a lot, started running more, and it was glorious.
I finally graduated high school and moved to Minneapolis, where I learned a lot about who I am not.
I got 2 tattoos, 3 more piercings, cut off my hair, dyed it 4 times, and then decided to embrace Pinterest and yoga and be a little less rebellious and a little more of a hippy, drink a lot more tea and a little less whiskey, and eat a lot less cheese and a little more veggies. I’m kind of still in that stage.
I can tie SO many different knots, I’ve been to 17 countries, I can draw pretty well, I regularly practice yoga, I try to run just as often, I can transcribe speech into IPA like a boss, I take way too many webcam selfies, I’m a pretty good dancer, I’m a terrible driver, I am a Hudson Valley native, and this blog contains the story of my life from 2007 – present.
Through 