About Me

My name is Renée Dunn. (I just learned how to make an é on the macbook! So much easier than a PC laptop!) I turn 28 in August. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Literally. Wal-mart- an hour away. McDonalds? an hour away. My bus ride? an hour long (and it went nowhere close to Wal-mart or McDonalds, just on a lot of back roads.) I have one sister, Rhonda, who is an entire 18 months younger than me, but she acts older than me, has two kids, and looks like she's 16 still, so it pretty well evens out.  As I'm fond of saying, I went to school in Memphis (MO not TN), I have an Arbela address, and I drive through Granger to get home, but the only nearby city most people will recognize is Kirksville. (Home of the Walmart and McDonalds.) My parents just celebrated their 29th wedding anniversary, and their names both start with R as well, so we signed Christmas presents and cards growing up as "The R's." I think that's kinda cute.

I fell in love somewhere along the way with theatre and that was my thang all through high school. Well, that and being the "smart kid." When you graduate with 69 people you have to wear several hats at once. I was also a complete and total goody-two-shoes. So I was liked and sometimes respected but not at all one of the popular kids. I was never asked on a date... never even asked to prom, I just went on my own. I like to think it was because I just never appeared interested or I intimidated the boys, but as I said I wasn't a popular kid, and honestly with only 30 some guys it's not like there were a lot of options.  Too bad, those fool boys didn't know what they were missin'.

So I graduated and went to college for Musical Theatre which promptly changed to Theatre which then changed to Speech and Theatre Ed (and then I threw in an English Ed minor just for kicks.) And in college I found myself. Well, sorta. In college I found people like me, and people who liked me for who I was. People who would go out of their way to spend time with me and to include me, which was something I missed a great deal growing up. There are many many perks to country living, but there are some definite downsides as well, and being easily forgotten over the summers is one of them. I lived in a dorm called Scholars and that place profoundly impacted my life, so much so that I lived there for my entire 5 year  collegiate stint. It was only 300 some people, and a good third of them were my kindred spirits. It is a place that will always hold a special place in my heart. I think it's where I really came into myself as a person... (what can I say, I'm a late bloomer!) It's also a place where I loosened up a good deal... I tend to think I must have been a bit insufferable in HS, but I don't really know. I met so many people who would become fixtures in my life there, including my best friend, Kara, and Nathan.

Nathan, that's another part of my story right there. I met Nathan in Scholars and along with Kara convinced him that being in the college band was not worth it. It took up a tremendous amount of time and it wasn't what he wanted to do with the rest of his life... That was the best convincing I ever did, because that later on that year Nathan and I started hanging out- a lot by the end of the year. We saw each other a couple of times over the summer and had pretty well become best friends by the beginning of the next year. And then he up and decided to visit me over Christmas break the following winter and we dated... for exactly a month before he broke up with me. And then the next July we started dating again, and then the next August he proposed and then the next July we were married... and then we had 3 wonderful years together and then September 28th of 2009 our lives changed forever with the words, "Acute Myeloid Leukemia." And I think if you've read my blog you know what happened with the rest of the story, but just in case let me sum up. Nathan responded very well to all his treatments, but had a more aggressive type of Leukemia that needed a bone marrow transplant. He had that in March of 2010, and sailed through that with flying colors... and then in October of 2010 he hurt his back lifting a computer, and we found out that he had severe osteoporosis, brought on by the steroids he had to take to combat Graft versus Host. He had multiple spinal compression fractures, and things kept getting worse and worse, until he had surgery in December. It helped a little, but not entirely and he had to use a walker to get around, and then one day in January he woke up and couldn't move his legs... and he had to go to the hospital in St. Louis, and they did a surgery to try and take the pressure off his spine, and he started to recover from that and then he came down with a pneumonia that we all carry around in our lungs all the time, but his body couldn't fight it off, with all of the immuno-suppressants that he was on and he died on January 29th, only 2 days away from his 26th birthday.

And my world fell apart, cause he was there in every aspect of who I was and what I did every day, and then... there was just a void. So I started writing regularly in this blog and I've been writing nearly every day since then. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's emo, but it helps me to deal, and it helps others to deal every now and again, or so I'm told. So I keep at it. So that's my life story thus far...but who am I? Well, I guess I can list off a few personality traits... many of which I'm sure I've mentioned somewhere on here before, but oh well. I wouldn't have, if I'd written this in the right space, rather than a year after the fact.

I am an extrovert. I mean this in the fact that I really enjoy people and I like spending time with people and I dislike being alone. However, I'm also kinda shy. I don't like to feel like I'm intruding or asking more of people than they are willing to give, so I can sometimes come across as stand-offish. Really, I just want to know that people like me and I don't trust people to act the way that they feel.. Politeness dictates actions many times, and I've noticed that it seems like the most annoying people are also the ones least aware of their annoying-ness, so I try to lean the other way and sometimes end up overcorrecting. I'm a very steady, stable person. This means that I'm extremely loyal, and also that I'm not given to wild mood swings or outbursts. Even in the midst of the grieving process, I'm much more prone to long stretches of a mood than short sudden microbursts. I'm not a touchy person (one who likes to touch others) except with my significant other or when I need comfort.

I'm witty at least some of the time and I have a ginormous family whom I love dearly. I love board games and card games and video games and computer games and pretty much any type of games, except maybe the Olympic games. I also love to read and have a tendency to pick up a book and not put it down till I'm done... even if that does happen to be 4 AM. And that's just adorable- not weird or pathetic, btw. I also love sewing, crafting, painting, sculpting and art in general, though I'm not exceptional at any of them, I'm rather an artistic jack-of-all-trades.

I'm very much a caretaker. I want to gather all the emos in the world under my wing and feed them sunshine and rainbows until they realize that things aren't quite as bad as they seem. I want to help and I really do believe that people are inherently good. Yes, they are also inherently selfish but I think that if people really do understand who and how their actions will affect others they will choose the nobler path. I know there is a spark of good somewhere inside everyone.

I'm also a Christian, and I believe in God more deeply, more fully, and more completely than I believe in anything else. I know that God has a plan, and though I desperately wish I could understand it, most times, I'm learning to accept that He "knows the plans he has in store for me." ... and that means I don't have to.

What else? Seems like there is so much more to say, but honestly I'm so tired at the moment that I can't think of anything. Perhaps this is a to-be-continued. Or, perhaps, this is enough and the rest of the blog will fill in the gaps... doesn't seem like I've really hit on who I am, but perhaps who I am can't really even be summed up in words...  Perhaps it just has to be this gut feeling that you just *know.* Perhaps I'm not making any sense anymore... well, guess I should let sleep call my name.

Goodbye for now, my dears. Hope you are sleeping well and happy.