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.

living

Sometimes I am astonished by the pain that people carry around. Their histories and stories that lie hidden beneath the surface.

I am awed by the pain that people feel and experience.

I am saddened by it too.

Shocked.

I am impressed by people's ability to survive.

To function.

To live.

I am constantly shocked by people's stories, because it is so easy to judge and make assumptions about someone based on their outward appearances. But really, I should know better than most that what is on the outside is almost certainly not the whole story.

I am impressed by people's ability to see and find the good.

To see the beauty and take the time away from the pain to capture the beauty.

I need to be reminded that to be human and to truly live means to feel. To feel the euphoria and the excruciating.

Both are equally important.

Both make us human.

this crazy world

The truth of our world is that there is a lot of bad. There are unexplainable, bad, sad, evil, awful things that happen.

I feel like they've been piling up a little bit lately.

It is so incredibly to let them bury me.

To get caught up in the news of the bad.

All the negative reporting, the focus on the tragedies.

The deaths that happen around me. Some expected, some not.

Both ways, they still leave an impact.

For me, it's a matter of balancing the bad with the good.

It's a matter of living with my eyes open and allowing myself to feel pain and sadness. It's also a matter of finding the good. The in spite ofs.

The fact that in spite of all this, this awfulness, there is good.

There is joy.

There is love. 

Home, Part 2

Last time when I wrote about home, there was a very clear delineation in my mind.

I had my first home, the home where I grew up.

It's the place where my parents are. Where my kitty lives. Where I know everything and everyone. I have my routines and things are comfortable.

I had my new home.

My college home.

The place I was still figuring out, where I was constantly meeting new people and learning new things.

In the past two months, those lines have been blurred. Those lines between one home and the other are no longer quite so clear.

I now have friends here. Close friends, real friends. They're my people. The ones I laugh with and cry with. Ones I know I can lean on when the times get tough. It took the times getting tough for those bonds to form.

We live together and share so much. We learn and we grow and we whine and complain.

This is my home.

Yet, I still want to go home.

I want to go to my house, I want to see my parents. When I think of that home, I think of being wrapped up in the biggest hug. It's my comfort place.

I know that I will miss this place too.

I'm all confuzzled.

I guess I can have two homes. If that's what works for me, then it's perfect.

I've also really learned that it's the people that make a place what it is. It's the people I love and miss, no matter where I am.

home[s]

People laugh when I say "home" in reference to my dorm room. They think it's funny that I call it that, when everyone else says "dorm" or "room". But to me, that just sounds awkward.

And it's true, it has become my home.

Not just my room, but the whole place.

The campus, the people, the community that I have become a part of.

Feeling like I fit in a place, that's what makes it home to me.

That's not to say that my other home, the one I inhabited for almost 18 years, is any less of a home.

It's just....different.

In ways that I can't describe, that I wasn't really even aware of, until I got here.

Home.

This too, is my home.

This place where I fit and I know the routines and ways of existing.

I know this community as well.

It's been interesting, these few days of figuring this all out.

This fact that I now have two homes.

Two equally important places, but so completely different.

I also think that part of the difference stems from me.

I hadn't really thought I'd changed at school, not that I'd given it much thought.

I was still me.

Yet being here, I can feel the differences. The parts of me that don't quite fit with how I used to exist in this space.

I'm different.

And now it's a matter of reconciling the two different me's, within the two different homes.

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. 

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.

the difference between what is right, and what is easy

this is what runs through my head as I walk back.

as I leave the party before everyone else.

when I'm going back to my room, not out to the next party.

when I'm not dressing up for the 80s theme.

when I say no, I can't.

or no, I'm tired, and people don't get it.

they make fun of me for being lame.

or nerdy.

it's the feeling that I know I will appreciate this action I'm taking in the future, but right now, it sucks.

right now, I'm the only one walking back, not heading out.

the only one in my PJs, getting ready for bed.

at least it feels that way.

but I am doing what is right for me.

it's not always the fun thing, the cool thing, but it's what will allow me to keep this up.

I am making the right choice.

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. 

Disibility

I have never thought of myself as someone with a disability.

I have always referred to it as, well, "it" or "getting sick" or "my illness".

Just not a disability.

I didn't really like that word, actually.

It made it sound like this was something I was going to have for the rest of my life. Something that was going to negatively impact things I wanted to do.

I guess I just thought of it as my own version of my furry little problem.

(A thousand bonus points if you get that reference.)

But now, here, I'm a student with disability. That's just the terminology the college uses. And somehow I'm okay with that. It just is. It's one word of many that can be used to describe whatever it is I have.

It might not be my first choice, but it's what works. It's also helping me see that yes, in some respects I do have a disability. There are people I need to meet with and paperwork I need to have in place to protect my right to an education.

Without those meetings and papers, my illness could and would stop me from getting the education I am not only paying for, but deserve. So yes, I guess that does make it a disability.

I Know It, and Yet Clearly I Don't

I sit at the long table, coffee cup in one hand, pen in the other. My bag is by my tapping feet. Occasionally I lean forward to jot an important point down. I love how smoothly the ink runs out. It makes my handwriting look nicer than it actually is.

I listen to the staff and to the students. They talk about accessibility and being your own advocate and communicating with professors.

I listen and nod and silently think that I know this stuff. I know how to be assertive. I've been doing it for the past four years.

I know how to talk to professors; I should, I've grown up with one.

I know there are things to learn. There will always be things to learn.

The only piece that strikes a cord with me is when one student talks about stigma and bringing up your disability with peers.

And then another student talks about educating people about what your disability is. Making sure they understand.

This is all I can think about. The making people understand. It feels like a huge weight has just appeared and set up camp squarely on my shoulders.

Because yes, I've been doing this for a while. I know I need to be up front with people and not pretend like it's going to magically go away now that I'm at college.

It's thinking about the people who don't believe me that scares me.

I can handle educating people. Most people need it, because they have no idea what half the words I'm spewing out mean.

What I don't handle is people not believing me. Whether they think I'm making it up, or that it's all in my head, or that I don't look sick, so therefore I'm not.

No amount of explaining complex medical terms can truly educate someone as to what it is like to live with this. To live in my body.

I'm scared that if I don't address it with people, they'll think I'm just reclusive and sleep a lot.

And that if I do address it, they won't understand, even after I've done my best to explain.

That my illness (I don't personally consider it a disability, but that's something else entirely) will come between me and other people.

I've dealt with these questions before; again, none of this is really new.

But it's not like I know it all, because I did somehow assume, or at least forget, that I will have to deal with this.

I am meeting a huge number of new people, who, once I start to spend time with, will notice something is different. Then I have to have the not overly comfortable talk. And hope that they not only believe me, but see past it. Add my illness to the end of a long list of things they know about me. And then keep on adding to that list.

a cardboard sign

I sit at the light, sipping my coffee, my blinker impatiently reminding me that it's time to go.

There is a man to my right. Standing on the curb, holding a cardboard sign. Saying that he is a homeless vet. Asking for kindness. Asking me, WWJD?

I sit in my air-conditioned car, headed for home. Groceries to stock my fridge. A $2 dollar coffee in hand.

I don't know this man's story.

I don't know where he comes from or if he truly has nothing to go to.

I hate that when we were traveling, mostly in India and South Africa, we were told to never look beggars in the eye. Because this would encourage them.

Practical advice? Yes. Heartbreaking? Yes.

By not looking people in the eye, I am taking away their humanity. I am denying them the right to be recognized and their worth as human beings.

I hate that whenever I see someone standing on the corner, this advice flashes through my mind.

And that sometimes I heed it.

I don't want to acknowledge harsh truths, to literally look them in the eye.

It's much easier to continue my easy, comfortable, sure lifestyle in ignorance.

I don't want to be ignorant. 

I don't have the solution.

I just know I don't want to walk through this world with blinders on.

how to deal

I woke up this morning with my Facebook feed once again filled with thoughts and prayers and horror over what just happened in our beautiful state (the last time being the fire).

And there it is, splashed across the front page of every news site.

I couldn't stop saying "ohmygod ohmygod". Because really, what else is there to say?

And it's eery because the rest of the posts on Facebook were about friends going to see the movie. Different theater, different town. But still, too close for comfort. Way too close.

So I'm sitting here asking myself what I do now.

My life can't, won't, stop. That's not how it works.

And I am fortunate enough to not personally know any of the families affected. But that doesn't mean they aren't in shock and pain.

My life won't stop. Even though it feels like it should. The world keeps going.

As I see it, I have two choices.

Try to make the world stop. Hole up at home and obsessively read the news. Refuse to go anywhere. Talk about it ceaselessly. Mourn the loss of 12 wonderful human beings.

Or I can go out and return that dress. I can drive with the windows open and play the radio a little louder than usual. I can keep going with my life. But in the quiet moments, in-between songs, I'll stop. Stop to remember the ones who are no longer living this life. And stop to send a wish for comfort, for peace, for something, to all the families and people affected.

I can live my life; what else is there to do?

Fire

I was blissfully unaware, sleeping until 1:30, curled up in my own little bubble.

It wasn't until my neighbor called, wanting to know about the fire, that I knew something was different.

And then that bubble popped.

Even though I couldn't smell the smoke, I imagined I could.

Imagined it wafting ahead of the flames.

My parents drove home from their weekend away.

As much as I love my time just to myself, I was so incredibly relieved to have them home.

To no longer be the only person responsible for myself, the cat, our belongings, and our home.

I actually slept, although I know people who didn't, because they had gotten that call, and were packing up their cars and families and heading out.

I have had time to walk through the house, to consider each piece.

Everything holds a memory.

Every little thing makes up my home, my safe place.

Yet I realized yesterday when I was madly dashing around, trying to grab it all, that I didn't need to grab it all.

I need myself and the cat.

End of story.

I would miss it all, but all I really need are my parents and my cat.

Of course there are things I would grab; that I have grabbed.

Of course I'm terrified of this being the last time I'll see all my things.

But at this moment I am safe and so are my family and friends.

And that is all I need.

Two Ways to See

It took a long day of travel to get where we were going. Driving and flying and taxiing. Only to arrive at the hotel and find that our room wouldn't work because....and it just sort of went on and on.

Or at least that's how it felt.

I was exhausted. I wanted to curl up and sleep. But I was also hungry. So we went out to eat.

This tiny little Indian place that was long and very very skinny. With very excellent food.

All through dinner I had been staring at the beautiful lights that didn't match the intricate Indian lanterns. The fun, bright wall colors. The simplicity of plates and glasses and napkins, just waiting to be used.

So when our ice cream arrived, I just had to get out my camera.

And even though they're horrible pictures, dark and grainy and very orange-y, I don't care.

They're perfect.

Because they're what grounded me. Made me feel like I had really arrived.

Suddenly I was dancing down the streets, irritated by my slow parents and the necessity of stopping for cars.

Photography is what I needed to really be present.

***

After just a few short days in the city, I was tired. I was ready to leave.

As amazing as it was, it was constant movement and stimulation.

All I wanted, and needed, was to curl up with a book and just be still.

It was really perfect timing because the next day we took the train out to Long Island.

A beautiful place that reminded me of where my grandparents used to live.

Small towns and strawberry festivals.

It smelled clean.

And as beautiful and photogenic as it was, I didn't take out my camera once. Not once.

I had been with it, behind it, almost constantly during our time in the city.

I needed a break.

I love to be behind the lens. It helps me to see the world in a different way and to see things I never would otherwise.

Yet sometimes I need to leave it behind and let my own eyes take it in. The beauty in my surroundings.

I am so incredibly glad I brought my camera to capture memories and to center my brain. I am so incredibly glad I let it sit in it's bag for the last three days to let my brain calm down, and to let the memories seep into my pores.

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.

Let It Go

I think many times, the best thing one can do is to let it go. Whatever "it" happens to be. Because most of the time we won't get closure or a nice pretty bow with an "I'm sorry". So you have to find a way to deal with it and move on. Otherwise it will fester and grow and mutate and generally make things pretty miserable.

Trust me.

So you gotta let it go.

Which, yes, is much easier said than done.

Trust me.

And it is also the worst possible thing you could ever possibly say to anyone. Ever. If they're telling you all about their problems and you're sitting there thinking they should just get over it, resist the urge to say that.

Say nice, comforting things.

Just don't tell them to get over it.

I think that might be even worse than telling them to let it go.

You can only really let go once you've stopped thinking those three words over and over. Only once it's no longer a conscious action, the letting go.

Only after time. Lots and lots of time. And backward progress. Ups and downs.

Then maybe, one day, you'll realize that by letting go of making yourself let it go, you truly did let it go.

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.

Melancholy

I am feeling slightly melancholy.

I have no real reason to, I know this. At least intellectually.

It's Spring Break. The house is quiet and mine for a few blissful hours. The sun is shining. I slept in as long as I wanted to. There is beautiful music coming from my computer.

Yet still.

My emotions don't always have to make sense. They don't exist to be justified. They just exist. They are. And while sometimes I think I do need to snap out of it and move on, I also think that feeling and really just sitting with your emotions is important. Not wallowing. Just learning to be.

Just like how I usually don't (can't) fall asleep without music, but last night, it was perfectly quiet. And that was exactly what I needed. I went straight to sleep.

Melancholy because last night was my last time being in the Emergency Department. After only seven weeks, I had found a place where I felt comfortable. A place where I felt I fit. Because of the people and the environment and the newness and the sameness and learning and talking and being bored and flying high on new experiences. All of it. I just fit. That's the only way I know how to say it.

And then, I had to say goodbye.

Knowing perfectly well that I will probably never see any of those people (patients and employees) again. The jokes and the pain. The experience and newbies.

Those memories will start to fade. Already, they're blurring. Despite my writing and recording in that little notebook.

I just hope that while the specifics will fade, the important things will stay. Most notably, the way I felt while there. In the midst of it all. Belonging.

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.