here

I know I haven't been around much.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Not all bad. Not all good. 

Mostly just a lot of what Michelle likes to call unbloggable.

I know that’s irritating and vague, but that’s how it works.

Sometimes, right-now-times, I need my life to just be mine, away from the vast interwebs. The vast interwebs that I love dearly.

I am here. Shoot me an email.

Drop me a non-spamy comment.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be around here, at least for a while.

But I’m still here.

I’m still good.

I’m still living life. 

it's still going

Before I start, let me just make it very clear that this is me needing to vent. I am aware of this. I am aware that things almost always look better with distance and time.

But right now time isn't moving fast enough and I'm feeling a little trapped.

***

I feel like I just finished something and before I can even start to breathe, there's something else I was supposed to have already begun.

It just doesn't stop.

I just want some time to appreciate the quiet.

Just a little bit.

And okay, while I'm talking in these big, broad terms, it's not all my classes. It's not everything.

It's a few (okay, one) classes that not only do I not enjoy, I feel like I'm constantly behind. And seeing as a lot of that is due to the teacher, there's nothing I can do about it.

See? It always comes back to me needing to let it go.

I need to go talk to the people who might be able to make a difference and then I need to move on.

Accept that it's out of my control.

Ha. I'm not very good at that.

The whole being chill thing isn't inherent in my personality.

***

Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go make Valentine's.

going

I am exhausted.

Sitting here, at my desk, I realize that all I want (need?) to do is sleep.

To curl up under the covers and hide from the world for a while.

This world that is so busy and crazy and complicated. If someone wanted to come and keep me company, that would be okay too. Just no thinking allowed.

I have been going going going since I got back from break and haven't really taken a second to stop.

....

Just be.

This amazing campus with activities and people and classes just goes. Constantly. We don't know how to stop and breathe.

How to sit without obsessively checking our email (or maybe that's just me).

So I got up this morning and finished my Spanish homework and wrote a letter to a boy who needs it (write one!) and talked with a professor and went to class and tried to not let my nose freeze and ate lunch and went to class and talked to a professor. And there were friends in there and long treks through the snow. A hole discovered in my rainboots. But mostly, the point is, I didn't stop.

There was always another and.

And here I was thinking I was doing well not working constantly.

I guess I have a lot to learn.

catching up

I have changed.

So much.

I feel it deep within me. And I love it.

When I'm here, with my friends, talking about the present, I don't notice it. It's just who I am. It's who I've always been to them.

It's when I talk to people back home. That's when I notice it.

Because they haven't seen me change. For them, it hasn't been a gradual process. It's sudden and huge. And to me, they're still the same people that I left. In my head, I'm the one who left, so that means I'm the only one who's changed.

I notice it when I try to catch them up.

When I think about all they don't know about me, about my life.

Trying to describe it all, trying to put it into a nice little package, that's hard.

There is no way to do it. I don't fit into a nice little box.

I don't even know where to start.

the vast world of the interwebs

There are so many places I am on the internet.

I exist on Facebook and here and another shared blog and school websites and professional websites.

They are all me, yes, but sometimes I get sort of confused as to which me I am embodying at the moment.

There are so many different facets of me, of my personality, and not all of them are pieces that I choose to share in every place. Either because of personal choice or merely the audience.

Sometimes, when I flip from one to the other and back again, from anonymity to full name and birthdate, I get confused. I get lost as to who I am supposed to be when and where.

I understand that part of this comes with the territory.

In many ways it is no different than keeping my personal and professional life different. Switching from class to interview to friends. All those people see me, but they don't see everything about me.

I think it just feels different online because there are so many different places and it is so easy to flip back and forth between them all.

It can start to feel like I'm getting a little lost in amongst all the descriptions of me.

That somewhere in all those adjectives and adverbs and long sentences, my true essence gets lost, because I am so preoccupied trying to figure out which true essence I'm supposed to be displaying.

on optimism

In general, I think I'd say I land somewhere between an optimist and pessimist.

Mostly because I think an optimist has to be someone who smiles constantly and is irritating in their constant happiness and positivity.

I am all for positivity, I just don't think it needs to be constant. We're all allowed to be negative and feel bad. That's part of life. Part of the balance.

However, I do choose to see the good in people.

I see the good in situations.

I really firmly believe that it will work out in the end.

One of my favorite quotes is Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. 

I love this.

I'm finding that here, though, it's not necessarily the cool or expected thing to be an optimist.

Just like you shouldn't talk about it if you don't have much homework.

You're expected to always be swamped, and always talk about how swamped you are.

I get that.

I need that sometimes. Desperately.

I also get really sick of it.

We all need, and deserve, a break.

A place to be happy or positive or optimistic or without homework.

An environment in which I feel like I can talk about my good day, without glares or the need for apologizing.

Make It a Priority

I am a firm believer in choice.

(I'm not talking in the political way, I don't really want to get into that here.)

I mean in the way that we go through our life making choices.

Big ones, small ones, ones we don't notice, ones that consume us.

All these choices come together to form a whole.

Our choices cannot be denied or pushed off onto others, because they are wholly and completely ours.

Now to some this may seem a daunting concept.

The idea that we must take responsibility for every little thing we do throughout the day.

I agree.

That's terrifying.

It's also incredibly liberating.

It means that I have the choice to say no.

I have the choice, it is all mine, what I do when.

I got this very simple, but amazing idea, from a nurse at the hospital.

She was talking to a patient, who had come in for something small, but actually had much bigger, chronic medical problems going on.

These were problems he was choosing to ignore.

She took his hand and told him he needed to make his health a priority.

That "make it a priority" is what I love.

It is what reminds me that I choose what is important and what is not.

And that if something is truly important, I will find a way to make it happen. 

Because that is my choice. 

18

Eighteen.

Adult.

Legal.

I can do a lot of things I couldn't before.

Many of them I have no interest in doing.

But that's beside the point.

I can.

In the eyes of the law, I am now old enough to be a part of this society.

I get to help make decisions, and I'm also responsible for my own decisions.

I'm legal.

It's all on the record now.

This feels like a big one.

Some are just another year.

A good reason to celebrate.

This one, though, this one feels different.

Maybe that's just because I'm told it should be different.

No, but it is.

And that's about all I know.

I know I am so ridiculously happy for it to be my 18th birthday.

And really, what more do I need to know than that?

change

Things have changed around here because I've changed.

This started even before I got to college.

I don't know how much it came through here, but I certainly felt it.

I had all these huge life changes and a busy life and amazing things and hard things.

But somehow it seemed like I didn't know how to put them into words.

Or if I even wanted to.

I didn't have the desire to share every detail here.

Well, I did, but it would have just been a laundry list of what I'd been doing. There's no point to that. No one cares. It's the stories behind the things that matter.

My theory (just because I haven't been here doesn't mean I've stopped psycho-analyzing myself) is that I started experiencing, instead of watching.

My senior year I feel like I reentered the world.

I became an active person who could participate and truly live.

I started to find my own people, ones who I saw every day.

And that led to me not being here as much.

This blog started as a way for me to express myself and feel like I was connecting and interacting with the world in some way.

I'm not saying you or this space are no longer important, I'm just saying I've changed.

And I'm still trying to figure out what that change means for this space.

again

Can I just say this again?

Because it's still true.

Except this time it's the biggest party of the year.

Trust me, I'm not just "tired."

I just don't have a better word to describe it.

And also some other stuff.

Less bloggable stuff.

Because you know, they are actual people, these people who are taking up so much of my head space.

And, you know, I would like to one day be employed.

Sigh.

Good night.

Today

Today I left my room smiling.

Today I feel beautiful.

Today I read two letters at breakfast, letters that wrapped me up in a big hug.

Today I have things to do, places to go, pictures to find, homework to finish, essays to start.

Today I will take time for me.

Today I will take time to let the smile spread from my face through my whole being.

Today I am happy.

Today is better than yesterday.

sustainability

Yesterday I was asking myself if this was sustainable.

This=everything.

The living this far away from home.

The being utterly responsible for my health.

The homework and expectations.

The workload.

The social aspect.

The responsibility for my life.

The everything.

Is it? Really?

Last night I wasn't sure.

Last night I knew that all I could do was stop. Continuing to stare at the page wasn't helping, neither was the pretending to work while reading blogs and Facebook and email.

Last night I made popcorn and sat in bed and watched Grey's Anatomy.

Yes I did.

And just now, when I asked myself the same question, it still didn't really have an answer. And I thought how nice it would be to have something to look back on and say "Yes! This will work! Because I survived that."

And then I thought to myself, well, I do have that. Not years or months, but I do have something. I have yesterday. And the day before. I've had good days and bad days. In-between days. But I've survived. 

That gives me hope for today, and tomorrow, and the next day. 

one sentence paragraphs, among other things

I don't know when I started changing how I wrote.

But at some point I made the unconscious decison that I liked to write in short paragraphs. As in paragraphs that are one sentence long. That's how my brain works; I think every little thought deserves to be special and get its own paragraph. But I also like how it reads because then it makes each thought, each sentence, important.

However, this is not the college style of writing.

Nor was it the high school style of writing.

And I managed to display this lovely skill of mine on the first college homework assignment.

Awesome.

***

In other news, I'm slightly, okay, a lot, afraid of my Bio class now. After one class.

Again, awesome.

There was just so much. 

So much material, so many pictures that don't fit nicely into my notes, so many new procedures, so much responsibility, so much "figure it out yourself". I always have liked that style much more than the "let me spoon feed you" approach, but right at this moment? My mind is spinning. I'm scared and overwhelmed.

Also, did I mention the classes are three hours long?

If you weren't aware, that's a really, really long time.

***

It really is enjoyable to write with terrible grammar and syntax and whatever-it's-called and not care and be able to call it artistic expression.

Here

I'm here!

And not only here as in still alive, but here as in here at college.

As in I am soon to be spending the night in my room for the third night.

As in all the upper classmen arrive tomorrow and it's a little scary.

Because I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of things, and then tomorrow, everything's going to change. Again.

And classes haven't even started.

That's a whole new ballgame, I know.

As was registering for them.

I sit here typing this, at my desk that is next to my dresser, both of which are tucked under my bed. My desk is messy. Or at least messy in my book. I know that doesn't always translate to messy in other people's worlds.

My light is on, hurting my eyes a little bit.

The room is quiet, except for some people coming and going out in the hall. Not in a loud obnoxious way, but in a other people live here sort of way.

My alarm is set late, all things considered, for tomorrow morning.

I will try to sleep, even though I will probably sacrifice breakfast in the process.

And then I will fill the hours until 2, or whenever that one meeting that that one paper said I needed to go to.

Then I will ask directions to this new building, because as much as I feel like an experienced college student walking across campus to the dining hall, I know I'm not.

After all, I'm just a first year. And it's just my third day.

the hospital

I'm not sure how to put this into words.

I will try.

I was sick.

Sick sick sick.

Hardly left the house, except to see doctors.

Then I went to the hospital.

For the first time, I was not a patient, but a caregiver.

This in and of itself was huge.

I felt like I was doing something important. That I was contributing to a greater whole.

I became part of a team.

The people on that floor took me in and gave me a place where I belonged.

I can't really describe what it's like or why I love it so much.

Which is hard, but at the same time, it makes it feel like my special place. One that's just for me.

These people gave me an education about what it is to work in a hospital, to work and have a family, to take care of other people,

They taught me the more tangible things as well.

The medical jargon that I now speak relatively fluently.

The procedures and surgeries and hourly checks. The IVs and wheelchairs and shots and blood.

All I can tell you is that I love it and will miss it more than I can possibly imagine.

Crisis of Blogging

I guess you could call it a crisis of blogging, this thing I'm having.

I don't want to write just for the sake of writing. I don't want this place to become some place I have to come and have to write for.

I also feel an obligation to my readers. The amazing people who have supported me and written to me and encouraged me. The ones who, even though we've never met in person, I have included in my extended family.

I have ideas. I have things I want to say.

I just have no drive or desire to come here to share them.

I came up with this theory the other day. After getting home from a trip and wanting to come here and share where I'd been and what I'd done and all the pictures I'd taken. I wondered if this was something I did to reassure myself, or to work things out (I know this is true. I only said a hundred times.) and that now I go out and live and work it out as I go.

I have more people in my life, physically, day to day. I work things out with them. They have become my sounding board.

Except I'm realizing as I write this that I still have stuff to work out. Obviously.

And I'm still pretty fond of psychoanalyzing myself.

I don't know where I'm going with this.

Just wanted to let you know what's going on.

Except I didn't really say anything, did I.

Last Night

I so needed that.

A friend with whom I can laugh and beat at Monopoly and share secrets and feel completely comfortable.

Utterly me.

It is so refreshing to be me, without any reservations.

It was a time of comfortable silences.

Of honesty and not looking away.

Of discussing in great detail things that don't matter.

But they do.

I keep saying this, but it's the little things.

Sometimes there are big things, but all the big things are made up of little things.

And I just crossed the line from being vague and poetic (or maybe it just sounded poetic in my head) to completely confusing and ridiculous.

But please keep in mind here that I'm going on three hours of sleep.

Probably the most restful three hours of sleep I've ever had.

Although my hip hurts and back aches and I did something funny to my knee (when did I get old?), my mind is fresh and clear and my heart is full and happy.

I am content. At peace. 

All Alright, We Are Young, and all the other song titles that relate to me at this moment

Tonight is prom. My senior prom. And I keep wondering how I got here.

I was here the whole time, but somehow I wasn't. I was too busy focused on me and getting better and sometimes just getting through the day to notice that the world was still going on around me.

That I kept accruing credits, enough to graduate, in fact.

Just because my world stopped didn't mean that the whole world halted.

I've been listening to Fun. (the band) a lot. All Alright, Carry On. It's the kind of music that makes me want to dance and sing and shout from the rooftops that yes, it is all alright.

So. Prom.

I have the dress. Nails are drying. A friend is coming over to do my hair and makeup. Going out to dinner. Taking pictures. And then....I don't really know what happens after that.

Whatever happens, happens.

I have no clue what that will be. I sure hope it'll be good.

But I'll be here, part of the crazy world, to experience it.

The Good

So I came home from school. About half an hour ago. And no, it wasn't a particularly good day.

First day back after Spring Break. A whole glorious week of sleeping in, no homework, friends, movies, lemonade, spur of the moment.

Early morning doctor's appointment. I'm fine; it was just really early. 

Lots of sitting around. I would have thought that having less to do would have improved things, been a good way to ease back in. But there's a difference between having an easy day and being bored. Having nothing to do.

Ex-best friend. I keep thinking I've moved on. And I'm starting to think there's really no such thing.

Okay, so I swear I didn't sit down to write this post to complain about my life. I could go on.

But, what I sat down to write about was the good.

Somewhere, in-between all that bad, some real, true good has come shining through.

All because of this little blog.

The people I've met are just amazing.

And it has always been a place for me to come to clear my head and work things out. And I've gotten some truly amazing comments about that side of things.

I never considered that maybe, just maybe, I could have an impact on other people. That, somehow, by writing honestly and truly, other people would find something in there helpful. Or useful. Or something. I'm not really sure. This is all so new.

But that little glimpse of something new, something bigger than myself, that was exactly what I needed.

Complexities

I listen to the thudding of my heart for several minutes, marveling at my body's complexities.

I work to clear my mind, focusing solely on the blood pumping from my heart and on the air entering my lungs.

I work to push away the guilt, the fatigue, the aches.

The in and out slows.

I have control over my body.

Or sometimes I think I do. 

The blood pumping through my vessels, the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide taking place at a rate and scale I cannot comprehend.

Despite my relative ignorance, I work to control what I can.

I empty my mind, which in turn slows my breathing and heart rate.

At its roots, it is all connected.

The neurons and blood cells, the heart muscle and diaphragm.

I am in awe of its complexity.

My life, which I am fond of calling complicated, pales in comparison.

No matter how much I complain about it, my body is much more in sync, in control, aware of its purpose, than I will ever realize.