What I should be doing

I have my third polysci test tomorrow for my summer class. There are only 4 tests. I should be studying. I should be reviewing and memorizing and copying notes. But what am I doing instead? I'm sitting here thinking about how strange it is that I'm not thinking about you.

I have been thinking about you for the past 8 months. Day after day, week after week, you have been a part of my mind. And if that's not enough, for the past month I have been retraining my mind to think of you differently, to think of you as no longer a part of me.

Well hello. How's your summer been? You look happy. What have you been up to?

And just. like. clockwork.

Hey! It's been good. You look tan now. Not too much, you?

I try to squeeze back into the mold I fit so uncomfortably in all year. But this is a different kind of discomfort. It's the strangest kind of discomfort. Because the uncomfortable suddenly just feels, comfortable... and that's all. No bells, no whistles, no knives. No ups, no downs, no emotions. Just comfort. Just "used to." Just easy.

I walked away from you that morning and didn't think twice. I didn't wonder if you thought about me, and I didn't wish to hear from you. In fact... I don't really care to hear from you at all. How strange is that? How strange that after months and months of you engraved on my mind, one moment with you and I feel nothing. Am I blocking it out? Am I forcing myself to be numb so that I don't have to deal with the reality of things? Or am I really truly actually just not thinking about you. How can you have held so much control when you were away, but then you're here and I feel free? Explain the logic there.

Well of course, like everything else between us, I can't explain it. Not yet anyway. I just never thought I would be at a lack of explanation for a sudden lack of feelings. Because for the past 8 months I have loved you. With every ounce of me I have loved you. And I know that I still do. I have to know that. But why don't I like you now? Why don't I miss you, want to be with you, want to talk to you? You touched me and all the magic faded. Have I truly been in a world of my own mind's creation for so long? I felt hard and I felt strong with you. The highest and the lowest. To not feel at all? That is when I know something is truly not like it was. Am I free? Is this what freedom feels like? I didn't ask to be free of you, I never wanted that. But if this is freedom, maybe it's not the hell I've been fighting against all along.

I should be thinking about you. I should be consumed by my own thoughts- breaking down and analyzing every second, every stare, every word. But what am I doing instead? I am staring at my polysci notes, wishing I had a legitimate distraction to help me procrastinate.

The greatest thing freshman year gave me

​Today the class below me graduated high school. They put on the same navy blue caps and gowns that I wore just a year ago and walked across the make-shift stage in the gym, saying their final goodbyes to the little high school world I once knew so well. A year ago, when I walked across that stage, I could never have imagined the reality of the new world I was about to enter into. But today... today I am on the other side of things. 

I am 19 years old.
I am officially finished with my freshman year of college (minus the one class I have to make up over the summer- freshman year is actually hard ya'll).
I am no longer the baby. I know the ropes, know the streets, know the classes.
I still don't know the relationship game (but honestly who really does).
I eat different things, drink different things.
I am older, I am wiser, I am calmer. 

Yes, I am different than I was a year ago. Who I am has not changed, but how I am that person has. Because I learned a lot this year. I learned how to truly stand up for myself. I learned the true, irreplaceable beauty of alone time. I learned that it's okay to be the average one, and to not know exactly what you're doing, currently and in life. But I think what sticks out the most from everything I've learned this past year is that I gained the ability to accept my current circumstances for exactly what they are. Let me explain.

There are many things in life which we can control- what we eat, where we go, how we spend our time. And then there are many more things in life that we cannot control. We can't control how fairly that TA grades our work. We can't control how other people (our friends, classmates, random strangers) choose to treat us. And we definitely can't control another person's feelings, and what they choose to do with them.
Each of us is simply one individual human, and we cannot control all of the other humans who we come into contact with each and every day. This seems to be a fairly obvious statement. But when it comes to day-by-day real life, this fact is much harder to swallow than we realize. I learned this from my teachers, who didn't always give me the grade I felt I deserved. I learned this from my friends, who once and a while didn't exactly see eye to eye with me. I learned this from the imperfectly-perfect boy, who consumed months of my life then walked right out of it.

But the grades, they were no longer in my control. I was powerless- there was nothing more I could do, so why allow myself to be consumed with stress over it? And my friends, well I can't control how they feel about things. I can only accept that their mindsets may be different from mine, and because of this we'll probably hit a bump in the road every now and again. As for the boy, that will remain as confusing as life itself. All I can do from here is accept that there will never be an explanation for why things are as they are.
You see nothing is solved. All of those circumstances remain as unanswered as they were to begin with. But what's different is me. I can look at all of this, know that nothing's right, and yet still be okay. There are a lot of things from this past year that were "not right." It would take more than my two hands to count all of the times that something didn't go as planned. But what I've learned this year, what I am most thankful for, is that I have the ability to be okay, even when things are far from okay. My life may not be perfect, but it is still my life. And it's the only one I've got. Tomorrow's gonna come no matter what, and I have to meet it when it does. And it's not about putting on a brave face all the time, or faking it till you make it, because I believe that emotions and sadness are part of the process. But it's about accepting that you simply are not and do not have the power to be in control of all these things that happen to you. It's about recognizing that you don't understand, and accepting that that's just where you are right now. 

Life will fall into place when it's meant to. But these are not the years when life's supposed to make sense. These are the years to feel everything, fully. What would be the fun in a simple life? It's the chaos and confusion that will one day make it all worth while. So I say, allow yourself to feel. Things are going to happen that you don't like, but things are also going to happen that are great. That's just life. But take it all in. This is your life. 

but even then

So here I am.
2 more finals stand between me and summer.
I want to be excited. I want to be spending my last few days as a freshman fully engaged in freshman things.
But instead, here I am. Avoiding reality and avoiding you.

I always thought our last goodbye would go unsaid. That we would just drift apart over the summer, and never really resolve anything. Just like how we never really started, I thought we'd never really end, but that some day we'd just be done.

That is not how it happened.
Instead it happened with hostility and anger and sadness and yet still, no resolution. We fought and I cried and you shut me out for good this time. I don't know if you'll ever learn to let anyone in. I hope one day you do.

But that one day was not with me, as much as you and I may have both wished it could have been. So now you'll leave for the summer, and I'll stay here. We won't speak. Instead we'll see pictures of each other and I'll wish I could be a part of them, or even a part of your mind when they are taken. I'll wish you could let yourself truly feel for once.

And in the fall you'll come back, and I'll still be here. And even then I'll still want what I've always wanted. Even though I am angry and sad, even though you refuse to face your own life. I'll still be here. I don't really have a choice. I wish I did. But even then, I think I'd still choose you.

Lend me your spine

There is no feeling quite as lonely as losing a best friend. It's an emptiness that you can't really explain. You just want to talk to someone about it, to have someone tell you everything's gonna be okay. But the person you want to talk to is the same person you no longer have. You want to laugh and smile and for everything to be normal. But you know it's never going to be just like it was. Even if you try to make it that way, it's impossible. Your life does a 180 and you can't flip it back around on your own. You suddenly find yourself going through your life, with the same struggles you've always had, the same emotions, the same situations, but now they all seem different. We are made for human connection, and once we find it, we hold on with all we've got. We allow ourselves and our lives to merge with other's and we don't even realize it. Until one day, something happens, you fight, you cry, you lose touch, you are alone. The space they once filled in your life is now empty and you didn't even know there was a space there in the first place. And you can do your best to fill the space with other things, with other people. You can distract yourself, pretend nothing's changed, fill your life with surface level fun and surface level people. You can refuse to feel. But at the core of everything, you know. You know and you feel empty. But you just go on, you live life, you try to fix yourself each and every day, until maybe one day you'll brain wash yourself just enough to believe that this was how it was meant to be. Cause if we didn't believe this, wouldn't we all just die from heartache? Life is not easy. No one ever said it would be. But it sure was a lot easier with a friend like you.

Changes and Stages

I put on my makeup this morning only to cry it all off a few short hours later. Not because something traumatic or life changing happened, but simply because another day of life happened. As an almost-college-freshman, I am experiencing more changes than I would ever wish on anybody. I am having to buy all new things to fill a whole new place with, one where I will be living for the next year of my life. And though I will be staying in the same town I have grown up in, I will be leaving my childhood bedroom and the comfort of home for a tiny, dull dorm room on the 4th floor of a high-rise building. I will no longer be able to rely on my mom being right down the hall whenever I need her. I will do my own laundry, find my own meals, do all my own cleaning. All of the typical adjustments when going from an at-home high school student to a dorming-college freshman, I will be experiencing. And while all these changes are going to take a lot of time to get used to, they are not going to be the worst part.

No, the worst part for me about starting college is watching my friends go away. It's watching the precisely placed life I've had for the past four years disintegrate into thin air. It's knowing that I'm going to be surrounded by hundreds of new students in my classes, and none of them will know my love for british accents. or my dog's name. or the reason I don't like to wear bracelets. All of the quirky things about me... no one will know! I won't be able to look across the room and burst into laughter simply because I exchanged a look with someone. Every single one of the classmates who made up my last four years will be going off to a new place with new people to sit in new classrooms and not know what the person beside them's dog is named either. I'm sure that every person making this transition understands this feeling in some way, but coming from a class of 19 students, you feel it that much stronger. It is heart wrenching, not knowing... Not knowing what the next four years will hold for you and for those you grew to love so much. Not knowing which relationships will still be there come the end of freshman year and which will be a distant memory... that's terrifying. We would all like to believe that everything will stay the same forever, that we'll just make more friends and have more people to surround us, adding to our already formed life. But sadly, the reality is that change will come whether we like it or not, and though it is impossible to comprehend now, all we are experiencing does have a greater purpose. We may have to drift apart in order to drift back together at another time. We may lose some people because our lives will end up being a little bit better without them. Whatever the reason, it will come. The change will come. And as I hold on to every last moment I have with my current relationships in life, I truly have to hold back tears. It is a blessing and a curse to love so deeply. I choose to see the blessing. I choose to feel the love. 

The funny thing about life, is that it's not funny at all.

How many times have you ever heard someone use the saying, "I hate my life?" My guess would be a lot, and you've probably said it yourself at times too. And while this is simply an in the moment, over dramatized expression, people say it because they are genuinely upset by the current happenings of their life. It is pretty safe to assume that most of the time they do not mean that they literally hate their entire life, but whether it be a person causing them strife, a situation gone wrong, or a mistake they themselves made that backfired, something is awry.
The funny thing about life, is that it's not funny at all. We live in a here and now world that demands us to be present and have it together at all times. But one can't do that without taking the time to make sure everything is how it should be; to plan and to prepare their life in the way they want. Can you see the gap here? It is impossible to win at life.
So what can we do- when our world demands perfection and all we can see is the mess and confusion that fills our days? Simply be. Time spent doing nothing, is not time wasted. Take time to be alone with yourself. You will never fully grasp the beauty of your life if you are too caught up in the chaos to see straight, and you'll end up "hating life," when you really just need a moment to get past that one thing. Simply being is what humans were made for, everything else is simply a perk of living.