Steel

You don' t know how strong you truly are.

You don't know how strong you truly are until it's tested.

You don't know how strong you truly are until it's tested by the worst winds.

You don't know how strong you truly are until it's tested by the worst winds and you come out ok.

Repetition, though my least favorite form of poetic device, was necessary here. Even in the college bubble, I am constantly reminded that reality is not far from any of us. Reality...the worst kind of leech, the sneakiest predator. It's absolutely biting, how we can lose what we thought we had in the space of a moment. My inner strength is not something I have come by with luck or genetics, but rather by both consciously and unconsciously building it up. Strength doesn't happen upon us, you see, and many bend to pressure or change themselves when they could change their attitudes or situation, if they had the inner iron. My life...well, it's never been easy. I've been blessed in many ways, and in other ways, I've had a harder time than many on this earth. I am truly and deeply grateful for it all. I have had the life experience needed to form me into the person that I am, and when I see someone else struggling not because of outside forces but because of their own failure to be strong, I thank God that I have been shaped so sturdily at such a young age.

Life is hard. Even when I am at college and have joyful days almost every single day, I realize how difficult life is. The world does not stop so you may enjoy your happiness. Each battle, I grow stronger, though letting each piece overtake me often sounds appealing. And I want this uncommon strength to grow in its commonality. I guess we'll see.

Promote

As this week dawns on us, I realize that last week was sort of...perfect. Well, not perfect. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. But it was busy and exciting and so good. I got 2 promotions! I am not the Domestic and Sexual violence liasion/expert/activist for the Women's Resource Center! I am planning all of these amazing events and it's so incredible to be able to be physically affecting change for the thing you are most passionate about.

I also got "promoted" to co-director on the tv show I am on. I used to direct all the time, and I realized how much I missed it when I got to be on set without the pressure of being in front of the camera. I love it so much...doing something you enjoy, however small, can never be considered a waste of time.

My future lays before me, and I know that now. It will be beautiful, no matter how hard or how uncertain it seems now. I think extracting the joy out of any situation is both probable and very, very hard. Many situations lend themselves to misery, but not one is without its silver lining. Though I can't pretend that I am always happy, I do know that I'm being cared for, and my life is pretty good, in many ways that most of my peers couldn't even begin to imagine. I have an unconditional support in my mom...do many 19 year olds care about that? I have an incredible reserve of self confidence and self assurance...does anyone even give that thought? Everyday, I try to be fearless, and we all operate out of fear. And truly, I'm scared of it all, scared to trust most of all. Trying to not be independent 100% of the time is not something I'm so excited about. "The only person you can really trust is yourself", my cynical life philosophy, is something I'm working on letting fall away.

In the meantime, I settle for looking for the joy in every day. No, we mustn't measure our time so grandly. Not in months, weeks, or days, but in minutes. In moments.

Today, I am a lost soul.

Peace.

Excitatory

"By investigating how someone got somwhere, we are more likely to see the achievement as hard-won and our chances as more plausible." All these amazing people with their accomplishments, these people I am surrounded by, these people that intimidate me thoroughly...they were in my place too. They just had the confidence to overcome it.

As I sit in my office at work, I find myself overcome with anxiety over my future for the rest of the year. So much of what will happen to me lies in chance, lies in the hands and whims of people that don't know me personally, or my story. I keep typing applications and filling out forms, feeling a tiny bit of my sanity slip away with each submission. Each means weeks of worry and realizations that something could have been stated better. Each one requires an immense amount of confidence in myself, trusting that these things are all worth it and that my value will transmit on paper. It's absolutely crazy-making. The idea of leaving BU, where I am settled, established, and doing it all over again somewhere new is overwhelming. It has become the unthinkable, in a very mild way. I just can't give it space in my mind to live.

Thankfully, I don't have to. Well, with the UCs clamoring for information via inbox, I do have to..but, I am suddenly and blessedly busy with the world that I am wrapped up in here, and I don't have one giant storm cloud in my thoughts at all times. Never having a free moment can be a true gift, especially to one such as myself. Or, as my infamous rival once said "I love people with brains like yours. They move so fast, you can't even keep up." So true, frenemy, so true.

So, these days pass quickly and slowly. I feel like I am throwing out more paradoxes than I should, and I apologize, but I guess that's another feature of my brand of cranium. I wish I could say I have it all figured out, but I am my a work in progress, and I know approximately 5% of that everything. Maybe less. I'm just doing my best and putting faith in my unknown, that my life will turn out as it is meant. What nerves, she said. What nerves, indeed.

The sky deepens out of my office window as these snow flurries do as they must. I love that word, flurries, and I love the weather that it connotes. Gray, soft clouds leave wispy white trails in their wake. Less messy than rain, more beautiful than a storm. They're the perfect in between for a warmer winter day. And, in the end, they calm my restless soul.

Calme

There's a restlessness in the quiet. Do you ever notice that? Everything unsettled is significantly magnified when we are devoid of distractions. I fill my world with color, music, knowledge, and people. Maybe I'm just trying to fill myself with those things. Quiet is easily pushed off, but each time it is, it grows quietly stronger as it waits for its time to pounce. You push your own mind off for long enough, and the moment it gets its chance, it will flood you with the unwanted.

Or maybe, it will flood you with inspiration.

I always thought it suited me best to be a social butterfly. In high school, I had friends in many cliques, a hand in every pot, and I never had a moment where I felt that there was no one with whom I could sit or talk. Life was structured, mindless, a routine. Deviance was exciting. In college, I see that deviance is often the norm as I try different things, different personalities, different friends, different lives. You are given your time to do with what you will- wether that be filling the silences or leaving them to grow. And I thought I had to fill my silences with others. That's what we must do at this beginning of our lives, correct? Meet many, choose many, discriminate few. I thought that I was supposed to be happy and outgoing all the time, and really, I am often like that. Sometimes, though, I'm not, and usually, I have no desire to meet people out of an inherent distrust I have developed of accruing friendships. It never works. Some say I have so many friends, others say I have few, and I say that numbers are unimportant. I learned that, anyways. I don't have to be constantly meeting people, and I don't have to want to be around those I do know all the time. I seek out my silences, I don't run from them. I love being alone, love going places by myself. I'm different, unique, quirky...whatever you want to label it, I have interests that just don't fit with most people, but that doesn't mean that I let myself die with the whims of those surrounding me. I'm content to be different, even if it means a fight, even if it means that I'm alone sometimes.

I'm just one of those rare creatures that, at the young age of 19, finds that I really love my alone time. I like the contrast in it. I am around people, by choice and by no choice, most of the time. Even being around one person is social exertion for me, because even one person deserves individual attention and to see my best self. So, I have to recharge a lot, be by myself, remember and remind what is truly important. It can be so easy to lose your values when there are so many alluring things trying to fill up your silences.

I write this in the special, breezy silence of a dorm that has just realized that a long stretch of classes lay ahead. It is an especially subdued, post-action kind of silence. It is completely different from the Friday afternoon silence of a college, one full of potential energy and the radiation of psyches ready to implode. Every silence, even if you must fight to create it, has it's own self-revealing merit. It's own way of asking for distraction and creating who you are. In all this, silences hold a stronger power than the loudest yell.

They are, simply, the quietest capture.

Unreality

I sit on my windowsill, listening to the sounds of the rain slowly turning to snow as it hits my room. Ukelele music softly plays from my speakers and I am content, safe from the fierceness of the winter mix and from thoughts of reality and truth that creep across my subconscious. After years of careful practice, I know the exact things to do to shut my brain off and only allow thoughts of peace and, surprisingly enough, determination enter my mind. Determination gives me peace, though a paradox that may seem. Giving myself a purpose gives me the peace that I am accomplishing what I need to feel ok. It's like...the possibility of satisfaction is some sort of satisfaction in itself.

My poetry book, staying warm in its leather binding and wrapped with my feet in this blanket, calls to me tonight.

Before I create on paper, though, I must create my thoughts into their own being on this page. I have had an inordinate amount of insecurities the past while, and, most recently, those insecurities have been in the person I can rely on the most, the one person I know best and trust innately. They have been in myself. It disappoints me that I am still able to lose some of the faith in myself that I am so proud of, that makes me the confident person I constantly have to fight to be. When uncertainty mixes with reality, you can certainly be in for a mental wallop. I'm learning, every day, to grip those things I must hold close and let go of the rest that will never be within my control. I'm learning that I have limitations, and they are never the things I expected them to be. With that, I am also learning that I have a vast number of capabilities that I never thought possible for me. Even to myself, I am not who I seem to be.

Bringing myself out of my own stream of consciousness, however, I guess I just realize that the little phrase "It's unreal" that I have been using has more relevance than I realized. You know how people say you create your own destiny? Well, as we learned in Perception and Behavior, "reality" doesn't really exist except in your own understanding of it. You create your own reality, your own world, and more importantly, you create your attitude and actions in that world. No matter the peer pressure or environment or the awfully heavy weight of loneliness that can seem to pull the most self aware person into a self defeating vortex, you are still powerful. You are still in control of your own reality and what you make of what you have. Life is given to you, a gift, in whatever form that may be. You can abuse a gift, abandon it, or you can embrace it for the fruitcake that it is and try to make it into your own miracle. Even the worst gifts, the ugly sweaters, can be styled right and look like a fresh new fashion statement.

I can't stand a lot of things. I can't stand my generation, common customs, social norms, even the fact that I need so much sleep to function. I can't even stand myself sometimes. But I try, every day, to choose a reality that I can stand. To make what I have into something that is tolerable or, better. It's hard being different in that way, in wanting to actively affect yourself into something better, someone more motivated and more compassionate and smarter and kinder. Mostly, we steer towards constant contentment, and that is often comfortable. I guess I just expect, or want to expect, something more out of myself.

Uncertainty, meet unreality. I'm making them both my own.

Caterpiller

It has certainly been a while since I last posted. This break was...the worst, ever. It was wonderful in some regards, and I definitely needed to be home. However, there was never a moment of complete peace or total joy. It was very difficult, and requiring of the inner strength I have had to build for many years. It wasn't all bad, however. The difficulty of break gave me the perspective I needed on this past semester and on my life. I realized that I was so desperate to have everyone love me and be that perfect social butterfly that I was simultaneously designing my own destruction. Every part of me rebels against that, about being constantly social or even chatty. My personality is extremely distinct, and I often describe it as anti social, though I'm not sure that's the correct word for it. It's more like, I need my space and alone time in much greater volumes than most 19 year old girls. I'm easily impatient, easily weary, and have a hard time hiding my feelings. While this can make it hard to interact with people, it has forced me to choose my friends carefully and to understand myself more deeply than others. I guess...I wouldn't have chosen to be this way, but since I am, I can see the true good in it. I will never be the girl with the 1000 friends, but I finally figured out that that is completely acceptable. I just have to be careful with how I spend my time, socially and otherwise. And that's my constant struggle, I suppose.

Otherwise....I have mixed feelings about this semester. It promises to be really difficult, academically, and a lot of work in everything I am involved in. I will have to throw myself in with fervor. And that's...awesome?