Hello! I’m a college student working on making my way to my dream career. I’m glad you found my page and if you share any passions or relate with me feel free to stick around for my future posts! 🙂
Hello, my name is Hannah Marie Armstrong, and this is my story, so far.
Childhood:
Let’s start from the beginning, I am the oldest child out of two. I have one younger brother whom I have always been close with and can always count on to have my back. My parents divorced when my brother and I were very young, I have little to no memories of them actually together. While my mom had the majority of custody and we only visited my father every other weekend, they still got along for our sake and they were both in our lives. Growing up it didn’t seem different to life with only my mom, as a child my brother and I even bragged that we got two thanksgivings and two Christmas’s. Our parents did an amazing job of not letting their divorce affect our life’s as much as possible. My mother raised us a majority of the time and to this day I’m amazed by how well she raised my brother and me without ever showing her struggles. My mother is a very strong woman who has worked for everything that she has. Looking back now I can see how little money we had growing up but my mother never let us know it. She was and still is smart with her money and she always made sure my brother and I were well fed and well dressed. We had no idea that we were living paycheck to paycheck because our mom always made our childhood amazing. My father was and still is an amazing dad whom my brother and I have always looked up to. We went on the craziest adventures and have some amazing memories. He taught us the importance of family and to trust our guts and to always know when to take the risk and when to play it safe. My father showed me how to have a great time with little to no money and how to save money for great adventures. I will forever be great full for the way I was raised by both my wonderful parents and the people they surrounded us with.
High School:
We moved schools to be closer to my father when I was in the 8th grade. I had to move to a school where everyone was already paired with their best friend and already had an established friend group. It took me a while to become used to the new environment and actually make friends, as soon as I had a good friend, she ended up moving to another country. I went through many friend groups throughout high school and lost most when I did running start at the local college (taking college classes at a local college while still in high school as well). I also lost my grandfather in high school, whom I was very close which caused me to go into a pretty depressive episode though the winter. I also moved in with my dad so that he wouldn’t be alone, as he lived with and cared for my grandfather. One girl from my friend group however stayed in contact with me and actually got me a job at the restaurant that she was working in. As soon as I started working with her, we became inseparable and began to spend most of our free time together. She was the first person I was able to open up to and helped me more than she will ever know.
First Relationship:
In my senior year of high school, I met a boy whom I quickly fell for, but it didn’t take long for him to begin manipulating me and become emotionally abusive. His actions caused my depressive episode (caused by losing my grandfather) to return and worsen as well as giving me terrible anxiety and terrible anxiety/panic attacks. I began to separate myself from my friends and family who were always most important to me. I truly lost my sense of self-worth and my independence while in the relationship. It was extremely hard for me to walk away from the relationship because from the outside everything looked perfect to everyone else and my family loved him. It took a very long time for me to start to open up about the true relationship I was in but I meet an amazing girl through work who had been through something similar and related to my situation. Having someone to go to and talk to really helped me see that I deserved better and that it would be okay to end the relationship and she would have my back. It took a year and a half, my best friend, and a new friend who understood what I was going through for me to finally find my way out of the relationship.
Finding Myself, Again:
I had taken a gap year between high school and moving to college while in the relationship, so I only had a few months left at home before I moved to college. My two best friends and I made the absolute most out of it. We did everything we could think of! We went rollerskating, watched horror movie marathons, went swimming, skinny dipping, went to concerts, state fairs rode roller coasters, spent almost every night together, drove across the state pulling my father’s trailer to spend a day at a waterpark, and ended with a week-long road trip to Oregon where we stayed on the beach, hiked, zip-lined, and spent all our money at Powell’s book store in Portland. There were a few mistakes that were made but I learned from every experience that summer. The summer went by in a flash but along with all the great memories I had also started to feel like myself again. I fell in love with my body again and was more self-confident than I ever was before. I spent time with my family and did all the things I wanted to do and felt as though I could care for myself once again. That summer showed me that I would be myself again one day and how to enjoy life again.
College:
After the best summer I had had in many years I drove across the state with my mom and close family friends to help me move into a dorm. I immediately loved my classes and meeting new people within my classes. My degree in Pre-Vet/Animal Science so my classes are almost completely about animals. Though I was having a great time, I also felt extremely isolated because I was so far away from my family for the first time in my life. I struggled with being away from my family for many weeks and still do when I miss important events, such as birthdays and family gatherings. I soon found a way to make my dorm feel more like home and ways to stay in contact with my family from afar. I created good study habits and turned my anxiety into a drive to organize my life and push myself to do better. I also made sure to practice self-care so I could keep my anxiety at a low and my happiness high.
Finding Love:
My second month in college I made the best decision in my life, I went home with a new friend for the weekend to watch a high school football game her brother played in. At this football game, I met someone who would later find out is the love of my life. We met at the game and the gathering after but didn’t really talk or get each other’s contact information until weeks after. He had convinced his friend to pass his Snapchat along through my friend to me. Once we got each other’s numbers, we started talking and have not stopped since. We became extremely close extremely fast and I always felt comfortable being myself with him. We had game nights and late-night restaurant trips with friends just to hang out. We went on our first date at the movies and even in a quiet room he still cracked jokes and made me laugh and smile the whole time (despite me being sick and feeling terrible). We have been inseparable ever since, we eat dinner together almost every night, run all our errands together, study and do homework together, and even drive home to see our families together (which is a five to six-hour drive). We have each been introduced to our families and now I feel like the size of my family has doubled.
Home:
I was able to move out of the dorm in December because I had running start credits and now, I currently live alone in my one-bedroom apartment in a college town with my dog, Dakota, and my cat, Itty-Bit. My. Family helped me furnish it and I have filled it with many plants and pictures of friends and family from home. I have a schedule for my daily schedule for my dog and a cleaning schedule to keep my space nice. My apartment has made this college town start to feel even more like home. I am currently working two jobs through the summer to pay my rent and afford groceries. The covid pandemic did affect my personal life and caused me quite a bit of financial trouble and caused me to miss an opportunity to work at a vet hospital. My first job is working out on a dairy farm. I do many cleaning chores, care for the cow’s health, and milk them. I love spending my time with the cows and it is a job I can truly say I love. I picked up a second job at a local restaurant to help with my bills and leave me with some spending money for the remainder of the summer.