Today

Have you ever experienced that feeling of wanting to be a driving force, a cause for change but yet feeling crippled by your own emotions and contemplation of life and being. You try to be something that in your heart of hearts is your desire but at the same time you worry. You worry what the world might say and what might happen if you fail. You worry what happens next and you worry what happens after that. You don’t even bother to live in the present tense and jump to what’ll happen IF.

Our influences in life are derived from various sources. They cause motivation and a thought process. Sometimes that influence becomes so strong it loses its position and turns into an imitation. A movie might stimulate a thought or a feeling to change, or to modify but at the same time it may be a cause for worldly modification to be a cheap mock of a great set. Does that imply that our influences should not be considered by the mind and heart? Or does it imply that the purpose of life is to be just a mere photocopy of some ‘item’ that thirty others are trying to be?

It matters at what point you draw the line. It matters what your definition of the line is. Our thought process and what we get from those thoughts is a very important part of who we are. What our thoughts consider to be frivolous and what important and what our mind considers to be a frivolous thought or an important one.

Our lives are each so drastically different. I’m not going into the whole ‘Oh each individual is unique and beautifully different in their own way’ cliché. I’m facing the hard realities of the world for just a moment. The harsh ones that I hide from every so often out of fear and the ones that just seem to pass me by. We are all different- our upbringing, the privileges we have or don’t, where we live, what we’re exposed to- all that. Each tiny detail of out lives, every millisecond, it matters. It shapes us to be the people we become. It gives us a sense of the person we want to be. And most importantly it helps us decide if being the person we WANT to be is worth all the trouble it takes to defy norms.

Are we all pretentious? Or do we somehow just mold into these people. Bitching, fighting, a sensation of impending doom lingering over our heads versus the happiness, joy and bubbly feeling of dancing cause the sun is out suddenly or laughing in the rain. Where do we lie? What is our purpose? And why can’t we just stop and think for five minutes without being called a ‘pensive’ or ‘philosophical’ type.

And as we wake every morning to a world full of stereotypes and opinions, we not only struggle to wonder if the ones in our minds, ones that we create for ourselves are right, but at the same time hope that the ones we form in other peoples minds satisfy our perceptions of ourselves.
For just a minute if we stop speculation about the what can be and the what will happen and just look at what is, we can be forced to realize so many truths. Sometimes we need just the basic facts to live, but there are those days when you want to know what happened to you, because when you woke up that morning, something was off.

I don’t want to live my life as a ‘Made in China’ fake. Nor do I want to be the imitation of anyone- good quality or bad. I am my own person and I choose that to be my way of life. I just hope I have the strength to live through it. I’m not concerned with the promises I’ve made to people, the only guilt I feel is with promises I made to myself. I am my own fate and I need to embrace that.

I am scared. Scared of what will happen to me if I fail or if I don’t have the courage to last out my dreams. I’m not brave, I know. I run from reality, I hide from the truth. I want change and yet it really just throws me off balance. Today I try. I try with all my energy and with all my faith in me. I try to do what I want and live without wondering what happens next. I am me today, to hell with tomorrow.

I know I can’t do it alone. But I want to do it independently. I need the hands to hold me up, but I need the hands to let go when the time to jump comes. I need the voices to scream to push but I need them to stop when it comes. I need the world to fight me cause without it it’s just too easy and I want to learn from the difficulties. I want to be.

What do you want?!

Rewind and Freeze

E.E Cummings once wrote, 'To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means fighting the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting....'

As that quote echoes in my head suddenly with this adaptation I'm being forced to make, I'm trying to hold onto my content. This change that I'm forced to make with the entering of new elements, new people and a new atmosphere. The change that is making me let go of a part of me that I have known for so long, the departure of people and the loss of the security a building once held with its face of familiarity. Those halls that we cribbed about for what seemed like the longest time about, all those dreams we had about breaking free of them, all seem to be in another lifetime.

I've been looking for the inspiration to write for a while now. There was this unsettling feeling inside that was just dying to find the right words to convey something. With so much going on in my head and my heart, and of course the never ending battle between the two its hard to listen to the echo of your soul. I don't know how I suddenly find myself being able to say things. Maybe its the being an adult, maybe its the fact that I know that there are people out there who I love who care, maybe its the pre-college nervousness jitters, maybe its the feeling of wishing to go to school again or maybe its just one of those days.

I'm overcome with a sensation of something I've never felt before. I think a part of me is just laughing at some stupidity from the week before but I know the bigger part of me is happier to be that stupid and then laugh over it. I know that I'm not going to stumble so much in life, at least I'll try not to. I can feel myself growing up a little, trying to accept the next stage of life but at the same time I'm not ready to let go of the past yet.

I understand that life has its stages and there are all these lessons that are to be learnt through each of these transactions. But I'm stuck in this fight of letting life explain and defying everything in the worldly ways. I do want to hear and see what life has for me ahead of this path, but I don't want to see it in this manner. I want to be comfortable in my skin. I want the smell of the air to be familiar and the way I feel when I walk into grey buildings to be the same as it was till five months ago.

I accept that with time comes change. I accept that people walk in and out of your life. I accept that you have to give life an opportunity to work out. I even accept that being the pessimist that I am now won't get me anywhere. But I ask for simply one thing. Just to be comfortable in my heart. My mind is constantly telling me to be brace, suit up for what's ahead and I listen. My heart hears this and agrees. It tells me that I can't shut everything in my present surroundings and I must learn. But my hands tremble in the fear, the fear I haven't felt for years now. That new-ness, its far too new and far too fast.

I guess the bigger part of me is just reminiscent. Stuck in rewind while the remote tries to hit fast forward. I don't like the unfamiliarity, the sense of being lost, in more ways than one. I don't like scrolling though my phone book realizing that two of the people I want to dial aren't here. I don't like the feeling of knowing that I can't talk to my person at my will and fancy. I don't like the sensation of knowing one more will join that list in 20 days. I don't want to have to think about these things. But I'm forced to. I'm holding on. And it's probably cause I miss half my family.

Through all the battles I've faced within myself this is one I'm being forced to fight alone.

I guess in a long complicated way I'm just saying I miss you guys. I miss everything. I miss us.