Reality, sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be

Some day, I'll be living in this big ole city....

One of the saddest moments in life is realizing that everything that made up the dimensions of your universe is gone. Sometimes I forget I have a support system at all. I feel like there is just me, and I am all by my lonesome. The truth is that's how it is. I don't have my sister here to brush my wet hair, so I work out the snarls all by myself. I don't have a mother to walk with me and listen to me talk about my problems, so I don't talk about them. I don't have a father to eat breakfast with me, so now I just eat my muffin alone. I don't have a golden retriever to cuddle with me when I'm alone, so now I don't cuddle. I don't even have my best friends to be with, so I constantly feel like I am walking through my life having experiences that are entirely worthless because I'm alone. Of course I'm not alone, but what's the difference really if you don't feel supported or loved? All I have are these overpriced textbooks to love me, and they don't. That's the problem with putting all of your investments in one place, when it fails you are left with nothing.
I'm not scared of being alone in a big city. Most of my childhoods fears don't plague me any longer. I'm not scared of flying by myself, or talking to people on the phone. I'm comfortable arguing with adults when it is justified, and taking cabs by myself. I know how to cook basic meals, and I can successfully take care of myself. I have so much to be grateful for. I was given the privilege of being offered a wide open space to try and make a new life for myself. For this I was always grateful, until the day my parents moved the last of the furniture into the room and said it was time to go. In that moment I realized that space was highly overrated. The one lesson I have managed to grasp in Economics is the concept of opportunity cost, that with every decision you give up the next best option. The opportunity cost of going away for college was much, much, higher than I anticipated. So high that I have a feeling if I had known it would have been nearly impossible to force me to go. I suppose that is why no one tells you the truth about these things. The only thing that I really am truly afraid of anymore is never being happy. What if this is as good as it gets? What if this is the "good life?" Me standing awkwardly at clubs watching other people drink and be merry, and all the while wishing I was at home watching Downton Abbey with my parents. Obviously most people will think I'm lame. But I don't think anyone can really understand until you find yourself alone in a 12 by 12 room and realize that you live in a building of 300 eighteen year old kids who have no idea what the hell they are doing with their life, and are all making ridiculous mistakes in the process of finding out. Some nights are better than others. Sometimes I look out at the city lights of Dallas and I feel so free and liberated, like I'm living out what Taylor Swift sang in Mean-   Some day  I'll be living in a big ole city, and all you're ever going to be is mean. Now that it is fall and all the leaves are changing I find myself thinking:

Now I know why all the trees change in the fall, I know you were on my side even when I was wrong, and I love you for giving me your eyes and standing back and watching me shine.

Rain

 

           If I had to pick reoccurring symbols in my life aside from tea, fish, and hair, one of them would for sure be rain.  I’d like to think that if I were a type of weather I’d be rain. I like the way rain is multi dimensional, it is cold and wet, yet soft and sweet, and raw and refreshing. I love the way it renews the earth, and how after a good downpour life glistens in a sort of foggy dew of reaffirmed peace. I like the way the world gets really quiet while it rains, and how no matter where I am or what is going on, when it rains I feel a little more special, like that particular day is something out of a good movie. All good movies have one dramatic in the rain scene. I just like the smell of the rain, and the way it sends the wind blowing, and the big dramatic clouds roll in and make the world a little darker. I love the way flowers look when they are covered in raindrops, and I love the way it feels when I walk through the streets holding an umbrella.

            Some of my fondest childhood memories are running around in the pouring rain out on the golf course, sliding down the wet hills on bogey boards, or playing games with my sister about who could wade the furthest out in the ditch without getting pulled away in the current. I remember the time I walked the dog all the way out to the edge of the bayou and I was watching someone’s boat bob around out on the water, when all of a sudden the skies opened up and I got dumped on. I remember how within seconds I was drenched down to my underwear, and how my matted hair had snarled as I’d run home to get back to a warm dry house. I don’t like being wet, but I adore the feeling of raindrops on my face. I remember the cozy days when it would rain for weeks on end, with only a slight pause in between the storms and how I’d take residence in our formal living room  that allegedly had a ghost, with the big double doors shut, and I’d nestle in the armchair with the curtains around me as a blanket and read book after book without end. I love the way thunder sounds when I am falling asleep, like a gentle giant as I snuggle into my duvet.

Last October....

Life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around you might miss it. One of the main reasons I love my journal is that I love going back to this date a year ago in history and laughing at myself and my life problems. Or at least the ridiculous schemes I was plotting. I would like it to be known that every singe one of these issues has now been resolved, and I am still alive and breathing to tell the story of how I dropped my iPhone 4 in a concrete parking lot. So whenever you feel you can't go on, just remember- I wore a slutty cheetah costume for Halloween last year and got asked if I was wearing lingerie five times, and here I am living to see another October. (And to dress as a slutty cat for another year!)

Dear Me of the future and whoever else reads all of this,

My life and hard times or my life in the time of making the single most critical decisions I have ever been asked to make my whole life long. No one ever as sat down with me so many times and just asked me “What do you want?” “ Where do you want to be?” Maybe the truth is I couldn’t really tell you because it is all just one big giant mind block to me. I don’t know what I want and that’s about all I do know. I’ve never found an area of my life that brings me enough joy for me to have a revelation that it was exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. It could happen, but it hasn’t, and that leaves me in the awkward position of trying to force a fit for myself when it just flat out doesn’t. The part of college life that excites me is the part about living in a new place with new smells and new opinions and new faces that want to know me. I like the idea of libraries when it’s raining and the idea of decorating a dorm room in a cozy manner and having a roommate who is my best friend. I just like a lot of the finer details of college living minus the idea of not being to handle my classes or hating it or everyone there. It makes no sense to me that I’m being forced to move out of my house. I just feel like I’m way too small to be out in the real world alone. Not to mention I lack most essential skills necessary to function out in the real world, like the ability to cook, or do laundry, or balance a balance sheet. (I got a 53% on that quiz in business class.)

I also broke my phone this week, even though it’s not totally broken, I mean it still functions.... just not one of the two buttons on the phone, the lock button, meaning the phone is permanently in the "on" position. Could be an extended metaphor for the position of my brain. 

What else has been going on? The new Taylor Swift album came out, so I’ve been listening to that a lot. Then the IB Halloween party is this evening and I plan on attending that in a slutty cheetah costume…. It’s always part of a scheme I assure you. 

All that Glitters is Not Gold

 I’m beginning to realize that Kenny Chesney as a wiser man than any of us could have ever known. I say this because I find myself singing his lyrics repeatedly in my mind- “The more things change, the more they stay the same, don’t matter how old you are…” I always thought that college was just this drastic break from your life where everything in the past became entirely irrelevant. I don’t think it’s so much like that now. I think that like Kenny sings, you can’t just drop the people in the past. You can wish that it no longer mattered, and you can try your hardest to pretend this is your new beginning, but no matter how many thousands miles separate you from high school, you can never get far enough away. Maybe reality isn’t even the right word. You can never get far enough to escape the truth. You can lie every day for ten years, but finally one day, the inconceivable truth reveals itself like an underground blackhead breaking free to the surface. Then the ugly is exposed to us all.

            My point is that perception is deceptive in nature. You can think something for years, and then with one single sentence there is that paradigm shift that shows you that everything was a lie. So don’t base your life values on what you believe to be true, base your values on what you know to be certain. Often enough we judge because we feel we know the whole story. As someone told me last night, the more we find out, the less we really know.   J.R.R Tolkien was able to put what I’m saying more eloquently in words.

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

This is the end...

...of an era. This marks the end of my carefree summer and indicates the transition in my life from high school to college. I'm terrified because I don't know what my future holds for me. I couldn't tell you how anything will work out and I'm scared to find out. At the same time it's frighteningly wonderful, because I've begun to discover that some of the most beautiful moments in life are the unpredicted ones. I learned this summer that the difference between being upset and being happy is entirely perspective. It seems obvious that how I chose to view my life makes a huge impact on how I feel about it, but the application of this is incredible. The lesson is that there is always a bright light waiting for you anywhere you go. The destination is almost irrelevant in light of what you choose to make of it. My predicted path was not very accurate at all, as many of the ideas I had of who I should be were not fulfilled. Some of this was within my realm of control and some of it was definitely not. Regardless, I can sit here and say today I've become even more of the person I'm meant to be despite the disappointment a and let downs. So many of the tumultuous struggles ended up resolving themselves and led me to feel I'm embarking on a journey that's leading me to all the bigger goals in my life. I've said it before, but not getting what you want makes you just as happy as getting something you want does. It's all based off of how you take the current situation and run with it. Holding a grudge for people who accomplished your dreams is absurd, because that no longer matters. If you don't achieve your old dreams, that just means you outgrew them and need to make some new ones. We can never be more than we are. The end of high school showed me its okay if I'm not the smartest or the prettiest or the most athletic. I'm going to keep struggling with those issues in my life forever, but the more time goes on the more I can roll my eyes at my silliness. I'm a legal adult now and intend to begin attempting to act in a way that suggests I am what I want to be. I'm going to be a powerful woman and no one is going to stop me. Now to lift my invisible champagne glass and toast the past. Thank you to all the people who crossed my path and taught me humbling lessons about love, loss, and adolescent stupidity. To everyone who I have loved, I will hold them in my heart forever. And here's to this new chapter of my life on the hilltop in the Big D. Many beautiful flowers blossom from unexpected places.

Preach It

“Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.” 

― Tina Fey, Bossypants

"You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it's acid in the face- who will love them now?" 
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

"Everyone knows that you should never wreck your life for a boy, and especially not one that you meet while you're in high school. Seriously, everyone knows it. You never hear someone say, "Oh, wow, you're seventeen and you really like him? That's great, you should do whatever it takes to get him, even if it means wrecking your whole life. 
 —Lauren Barnholdt

“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.” 

― Lemony Snicket

Life Truths

1. Home is where the wifi is.
2. I always win.
3. It's always tea time.
4. Sometimes it happens.
5. Men hate women who weep.
6. Happy. Free. Confused. Lonely. At the same time.
7. Nothing lasts forever.
8. We are all Amanda Bynes.
9. Sometimes you're better off not knowing.
10. The truth sets us free.
11. There's a difference between a great love and the right love.
12. Have a little faith, and when that doesn't work, a whole lot of mimosas.
13. It's always your favorite sins that do you in.
14. You and tequila make me crazy.
15. You never know when you are seeing someone for the last time.
16.You can never love someone as much as you can miss them.
17. We only run from the things that truly scare us.
18. People change and forget to tell each other.
19. Brown doesn't offer a degree in slut.
20. There are far better things ahead than those we leave behind.

Never look for a boy's car or do something like stalk his house it's embarrassing and you'll probably have to go to therapy or journal about it like me to move past the shame

I do not know why I still look for that car. I haven’t been in that car in years, nor have I talked to the owner in months. I wouldn’t even say that I miss him anymore. I don’t stalk his whereabouts on social media, or look for him at parties, nor do I wake up from dreams where he plays my counterpart. He’s not in my life anymore, and finally it feels like this was by my choice, not by force. I don’t have to look for the white Acura anymore because I’m no longer the girl who keeps an eye out for a boy’s car all over town, wondering where he is going and what he will be doing. I suppose it was never so much about the car, although that much was always apparent. I feel it represented what I wanted him to be and what he never was.

            I cannot recall when the car stalking commenced. I would guess it began the summer before senior year when we broke up. I never knew where he was, or what he was doing, and I always wanted to know. The whole summer I just wished so desperately that when I arrived somewhere he would be there too, and that he would be sitting there and get to see me feeling content with my life without him in it. I never saw him though, and I should have realized the fact I was looking suggested I wasn’t as content as I told myself I was.

            I have empathy for every girl out there who has lost someone who they have loved. No one ever wants to hear the unpopular opinion that at some point you will move on and stop caring, but the truth is simply that you do. It takes a very long time for certain girls to move on, but eventually you just hit that place where you find yourself on the top of a mountain and you look out and you ask yourself what you are doing spending your days wishing for a boy who isn’t even there to share it with you. (The mountain part is probably region dependent.)

            For me the toughest part of letting go was my mental scenarios. I always could predict our bright future every turn of the way, envisioning summer nights spent cozied in a hot tub, and sushi date nights. The scenarios developed as our relationship progressed, and as time went on and I began to realize they would only ever be that- mental fantasies. I began to struggle with denial that the teen fiction novel vision in my mind was merely a figment of a powerful imagination. My acceptance of this was incredibly meaningful. I came to the realization that just because I would never live out my invented sequence of events didn’t mean I wouldn’t experience ones in reality that were just as thrilling. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen to me, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t going to have perfect moments with the car owner in my future. Sequentially, we did share many memorable interactions in our future, and the majority of which were even better than my fictitious versions.

            I always wondered who I would experience all those first times with, and much of those mysteries have been resolved. Now I feel settled and I only reflect on the past with disconnect that I would have never believed possible a year ago today.

           Now that I stopped looking for the car I see it everywhere. It’s at the grocery store late at night, and it’s at the red light at the corner of my block. He’s everywhere now, but not in a frustrating way. It’s almost a comforting way, like the words he told me. He keeps his eye on me.

           In the meantime, I no longer feel as though I am near death when I drive, so that's a significant step towards sanity. Word for the wise- get drunk off margaritas... not love. ;)

I Digress because I'm Sad

I think it is an interesting fact of life that it makes all of us feel so much better when someone we aren't close to tells us something compared to your best friend or your family. I guess we all believe that the people closest to us have to love us regardless of the instances where we screw up or fail, whereas a random person does not owe us anything. When a guy I don't know tells me I'm pretty it suddenly has so much more credibility, because he has no motive or anything to gain behind telling me the truth. When people we are just getting close to tell us to remember that we are amazing it just feels so much warmer. They don't have to say those things, they do it because they want to and they believe it to be true.

I know I'm in a stuck place when I can't sleep at night, because my brain pounds and not in a migraine way, just a fuzzy way. Like there is no definitions or lines drawn and there is no certainty involved. I wish I knew how to make rejection hurt less. I wish I knew how to stop feeling emotions when emotions aren't worth their weight. The truth is there are things I think that no one knows. Maybe because I know when I say them out loud it will sound silly, or fall upon deaf ears, or just enter into the vortex of things I've said that lost their meaning. That doesn't make them any less true thought does it... Sometimes I wish I could be honest free of the editing I do to spare people. I came to a conclusion the other day about why the summer I spent at Stanford was the best time of my life so far. I realized that it was because those people didn't know me, they didn't know that I was actually over emotional, or a snoopy person, I can't eat sushi with chopsticks, that I run my mouth unchecked, or that I wasn't in the top ten of my class. All they saw was a shell of me, and they really valued me for that version of myself. I felt free from the expectations that I find pressed upon me at school. There was no one that I had to stand next to and feel small beside, no one that thought I talk with double meaning or sassy undertones, and no one to say I was insignificant. Maybe I was insignificant, maybe I always have been. That month was the first time however that people thought I was the best at something. I was the one who brought my best guy friend along and could perfectly curl hair. It wasn't that I thought I was the best person ever, but I just never get to feel like that at home. When I'm here I always feel stuck in the middle, somewhere between invisible and like last season's Tory burch flats. When I look around I gaze out onto a scene of people interacting, and it isn't that I don't feel I belong, it's that I don't want to. I've never felt like anyone's minion, nor anyone's leader. I just wake up in the morning with a very defined sense of who I am and where I want to be. I know the clothes I like and which ones I don't, and I put a lot of emphasis on outward appearances remaining in a poised and composed fashion. What makes me laugh (even though it isn't laugh out loud funny) is that when I get upset, I always tell myself I'm tired of putting on the brave face and waking up the next morning and putting on the eyeliner just like everything is peachy keen. Every time though, even when I tell myself I'm really going to let everything go, I always still pull it together and fix myself some tea and put on my lipgloss. I can't find it in myself to quit. In the midst of winter I found within me an invincible summer.

While I'm on the topic of feeling small, another thing that has always bothered me is that people never remember who I am. I ask myself, do I not have a memorable face? Is it that I'm boring when I talk? Or is it about something I can't see in myself when I look at the reflection in the mirror. It makes me feel even smaller than my actual frame when my life is a constant line of being called a nickname that doesn't fit me or just not remembering my name at all. It's dumb.. I know. I've just always been curious why I didn't stick out. I know I'm just a white girl with no striking features, but I just thought my footprints left a mark where I walked instead of blowing dust to the wind.

A Rant on Tardy Behavior

Yesterday I got called out for arriving to pick someone up on time. On time. I said I would be there around 6:30, and I hadn’t been to the person’s house in a long while, so naturally because I was ready beforehand and wasn’t doing anything, I left a little bit early to ensure I wouldn’t get there super late. I know some people aren’t like that, and getting places late is of no consequence to them, but for me, it has always been one thing that greatly irked me. So said person made me wait in my car, feeling shameful for close to ten minutes while they did whatever it was they needed to in preparation for my arrival. It just set the night off on a bad note, and while we quickly laughed about it and moved on, it still offended me that I was called out for being on time. When did it become the standard to arrive everywhere at least fifteen minutes behind schedule? I know that in my life I accept this of other people, but I do not customarily do it myself. I don’t like the way it feels to be late places, and as a general principle, anyone who gets somewhere early leads a calmer and more collected life. There is no drama or fear, and no stress involved with hoping you won’t awkwardly walk into an event so late it isn’t even funny, or anything like that.

One other example that comes to mind is this time before I could drive when I asked my friend’s mom if she could take us to this meeting. Well I would cut them some slack for the dilemmas of the day, but they are late everywhere, so I don’t really think that this one time was any different than always. So the people took forever for us to leave, and I knew the place of the meeting was at least thirty minutes away, so when we left to get to the place we were going with fifteen, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. We ended up arriving at the meeting one hour late. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t even want to go in at that point, and I convinced my friend that we shouldn’t. I had never in my life missed more than half of a meeting before. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t go, but the fact I had put on nice clothes, and done my hair, and blocked out half of my day to go to this meeting, and then thanks to something not related to me, I was incredibly late. It’s just one of those instances in life that is so frustrating. 

What I Thought in the Past..

It always seems like we never remember anything more than what is right in front of us. Is it really human nature to forget, for the very essence of who we are to dissolve and dissapate from our thoughts with nothing more than the alleving powers of time? Days pass whether we count them or not, and even on the mornings where it seems questionable whether your world will continue to roll on, the sun has never failed to rise over the mountains in the east and fade again that evening over the palm trees in the west. Each day itself holds the potentail to be more than one more Monday in the earthly span of worst days of the week.

Some mornings I lie tangled in silky sheets, worry blanketing over my eyes, clawing in the dark to figure out why I should rise from my cozy cocoon of safety. Then I see it. I see it all. I see a maroon gown that swallows me up, and loosely curled hair, and antsy smiles with glossed lips nervously fidgeting with my painted fingers while waiting to hear my name. I see that moment when I rip off the matching maroon cap ladeled with honor tassles, and toss it into the May moonbeam lit night air in the unified symbol of the end, that all of the nothing was never really nothing at all. I see that day in December when I walk to the mailbox, shivering in a sweater and clutching the mail key anxiously in one hand. The moment when I twist the door to the mailbox and I see a innocuous yellow envelope, and how I will sink to the ground with triumphant tears of joy for the toil of four years of sadness. I see a future with autumn leaves, and vivid reds and yellows that remind us that losing everything can be the most beautiful part of all. I see a young lady who still goes by Miss but won't for long, squeezing hands tightly with a young man who's love dismisses all her fears.

 We hold on so tightly to whatever it is that makes us feel safe that we lose the value of the unforeseeable. High school will be over soon. No more will the same ecletic group of individuals parade the halls, no longer will the best friends laugh in the corner or the enemies bicker behind gray desks of academia. There will be no more early release pazooki eating or laughable group projects, no more Homecomings with ill fitting bodices and painful heels. There won't even be going home to a house filled with comforting yellow light and a hot plate of food served next to the side of parental love and guidance. That all will come to an end soon enough, and that's something we all have to accept. Look around and notice that the people you see do not match their image in your memory. We all change, in all the right and wrong ways. Maybe the haircuts and T-shirt choices have improved, and the teeth are all less crooked but the minds will never be the same shade of pure innocent white, unscarred by the bitterness and acidity of youth. The big issues always seemed less important than the small ones, then one day it flips beneath you and getting invited to parties and being accepted and owning the right brand of shoes gets replaced with decisions that impact the rest of your life. Maybe it makes us mad that metamorphasis transpired all around us and we never noticed until it was too late. Maybe the people and way you get used to isn't always going to be that way, but all the best parts of life are fleeting. The truth is we have to forgive each other for growing up. It's just like the leaves of fall, let them drop down around us, each leaf like a memory, whether it be success or failure. The best moment is right before we lose it all.

Breakup Babble

Nothing goes as planned, and people say goodbye in their own special way. Breaking up is hard to do, and not because we know the consequences of what awaits us on the other side of loneliness are unwanted and unpleasant. A break up symbolizes a change in the weather, a paradigm shift, an ever noticeable transformation that we all try so hard to run away from. What can really be done about it though, when on a Saturday night you sit at your house alone and think about the possibility of the end and what would become of you? Even the strongest of us have to admit defeat sometimes, that in many instances fighting is weaker than giving in and admitting there is no solution. It can be more noble to acknowledge that there is not going to be a solution to the problem. It isn't that other people will respect you more, but you might find that you yourself will have more respect for yourself as you walk away from the break up. The end is haunting and chilling and leaves all of us with the distinctive impression that life is a dark hole and that we will never see a sunny sky again. Experience will always be the only way to know that this isn't entirely true. One thing I learned this month that I think everyone should know is that not getting what you want makes you just as happy as getting what you want does.  Maybe it's a philosophical issue to be debated whether there is truth to this statement or if it is one giant falsity, but scientific proof is undeniable. As humans, when we do not get the desired result, we learn to teach ourselves to value our other options. It might seem contrite or forced, but it really does work. A breakup might truly break your heart, but some good will come of it. You will find friends you lost, other people who you forget, you will forge new relationships that are built on stronger foundations, and you grow into a new mold of yourself. When you have nothing left, you grow as a person into a much more powerful entity. None of us like to admit defeat, but there comes a time when it's time to get out and find yourself alone. How will you know if you can stand alone if you never try?

Irrelevant Truths

1. I really like Jesus music.
2. I'm not a big hand washer.
3. I get headaches multiple times a week.
4. I never forget. Ever.
5. I eavesdrop on everyone.
6. I can hear people talking when I'm asleep.
7. I only dream about being romantically involved with one guy.
8. I pick out my eyelashes.
9. I hate being alone so much.
10. I watched 345 Youtube videos last month.
11. I really enjoy dark books.
12. I love mystery.
13. I'm scared of the dark.
14. I like to text.
15. Sometimes I get acid reflux when I eat certain foods.
16. I've never thought I look pretty in a picture.
17. I talk to myself in the mirror sometimes.
18. I do not sleep with pants on.
19. I like lipstick prints.
20. I am a fruit snob.
21. I've secretly always wanted to look like Lauren Conrad.
22. I get jealous easily.
23. I still get upset about events that happened years ago.
24. I'm scared to go to college.
25. I do not like when people shorten my name.
26. I tend to be naive in my perception.
27. I see the best and worst in people at the same time.
28. I really appreciate people with clean mouths.
29. I do not like being left out of anything, even if there is no reason I would be invited.
30. I relate my life to Gossip Girl.
31. I've always wanted to go to Italy.
32. I miss people I shouldn't miss.
33. I fantasize about scenarios that aren't realistic.
34. That which I regret I pretend did not happen.
35. I do my homework at the dining room table.
36. I've been to 22 states in the United States.
37. I have never been to Hawaii. Or the Dakotas.
38. I have expensive tastes.
39. I've always been a pink girl at heart.
40. I'm a romantic.
41. I love the summer.
42. I'm a summer baby.
43. I love history.
44. I have an intense sweet tooth.
45. I'm not ashamed to not be wearing makeup.
46. I like the smell of a burning paper.
47. Armani Code triggers so many memories in my mind.
48. I go through music phases.
49. I cry until I fall asleep.
50. I use my laptop enough each day to drain the battery.

Photos I Cannot Explain but Cherish

Now is the Start

The path through the pain is forward, to a future filled with corcuscating sunsets

As much as we all like to think we control our own destinies and actions, I feel like a part of us all knows we have limited control over everything. When you do the same things for four years with slight variation as you grow and mature, it becomes hard to imagine the life we don’t know that awaits us behind the veil of misty smoke and clouds. Maybe the truth is it was never so much about the rejection letters from schools as it was that we aren't prepared to go off to college. I think we’ve always known that fact and we just do our very best to deny it. Everyone wants to go to college right? Maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t belong in a state five hours by plane away from the warmth of family and the soothing knowledge that my mother who loves me so so much will always be there to love me a little more. That Friday when I didn’t get in to what we shall refer to as *dream school*, when I held that rejection letter in my cold shaking hands and when I sobbed so hard that all the mascara just streamed down my face in a very Taylor Momson when Chuck takes her virginity way, my mom held me and it made it okay. I still cry when I think about that day, because it honestly sucked. Maybe when there is more certainty in the solution of the matterr it will stop making me cry. Or maybe it never will. 

It will always serve as a defining day in my life in which that which I had dreamed for myself came crashing down upon my shoulders. In a way, I feel like it was the nudging hand of God shaking his head at me and pointing out that all of the objects of my desires are painfully misguided. I feel like I know what I want, but at the same time sometimes I find myself realizing I’m not who I always imagined myself to be. Today in the the lululemon dressing room, there was one of those three way mirrors that allows you to see yourself from all different views, and I looked at the girl and judged her and then took a long moment to realize that girl was me. Then I just stared at her side profile and tried to imagine other people loving that shell of a body as my soul. All I really feel in touch with is my own mind, and the wavering thoughts that flicker through my brain, and I don’t really know that body. It is mine but at the same time it just allows me to function. I’ve been wrong so much this past year that I honestly believe I’m in a sort of redefinition of all the boundaries and lines I’ve drawn. 

 On a slightly different note, I've begun to consider why it is we always return to the subjects and people who cause us the most suffering. Why is there love lost between some people even when those very people are the reason for pain in our lives? Can we not let go because there is unfinished business, or is it that when you love unconditionally you don’t give up even when the object of your affections is begging you to. There is a legitimate point when someone I know pondered to me why we always return to the people who hurt us most. I thought it over and think it makes logical sense. We return to that which makes us feel alive. Maybe life with those things that hurt us is more painful, or dangerous, but no one would keep going back if they didn’t like the way that thing made them feel.