Diving Into Shallow Water

Do you ever get the feeling that there is someone in your life, at this very moment, who is just waiting for you to talk to them and they just don't know it? And you see them every week and just want to run up and tell them all the things you've been holding back because you were afraid they'd reject you?

Call it teenage melodrama, but it's been a very palpable hindrance my entire life. In short, my life has been filled with hundreds of people I could never get the courage to approach and as a result, I've surrounded myself with what most would only consider close acquaintances; we never really connect at a meaningful level, and it's easy for me to distance myself from them emotionally. Though we do get along because of our desire to avoid conflict and our conversations range from random to fun, I still feel...empty. 

I feel like there isn't someone out there I can share my inner self with, the self that no one has ever seen. 

It's uncomfortable, it's real. It's not something I'd flaunt to the world, so I hide it by being loud. A lot of people perceive that as obnoxious. Other times, I can be quiet and avoid eye contact; most people perceive that as unfriendly or standoffish. Yet the truth is both behaviors represent a facade I put up in order to hide the fear that someone will see my anxiety. It's not that they may notice my vulnerability that scares me the most - it's that they'll notice it and not accept me for who I truly am.

And that is a very human feeling.

We're social creatures; we walk on two legs, can communicate through language, and have an intense need to connect with others (human or nonhuman). That's why those erotic paperbacks with Fabio and Anastasia on the front cover are still so damn popular. (Well, at least partially why.) We crave for intimacy, since to live without it would be nothing short of a condemnation into one hellish existence.

We need someone to love who will love us back. And that can only happen through not just cooperation and respect, but through trust. 

You have to trust that you can share your opinion with me and not just agree with everything I say. You have to trust that I won't falsify our friendship by comparing you to other people I admire. You have to trust that I have my own ideas, thoughts, and opinions, and sharing them with you requires that you don't ignore them just to make a relationship happy. Because in all honesty, I'd rather have a meaningful conversation with you than one that only consists of "yeah, that's nice" or "yeah, you're right" every time I share a part of myself with you. I need you to let me know that you understand. And if you don't understand, please, tell me what you think.

Because honestly?

I don't need you to lie to me just to make sure I appear happy.

First Days

First days make me feel like I'm slowly going insane.

And unbearably so. No matter how subdued I try to be, how controlled I try to behave, I'm still always going to be awkward. It doesn't even matter that today made me feel great; the euphoria is not normal, and recognizing that causes me to fall into a whole new level of psychological pain. 

However, while I may not have felt normal today, that didn't stop today from being incredibly normal. The most normal day I've ever had. Yet those evil little bastard thoughts kept bombarding me until I dropped the facade and yelled ENOUGH!!!, walking home in a  jittery and paranoid state. 

Walking home wasn't even enjoyable this time. I kept thinking someone was going to throw a beer bottle in my general direction, and every other house I passed had a dog pressed up against the gate, barking and baring their teeth out at me.

And regardless of the fact that I did nothing wrong, instant shame washed over me.

Because of barking. 

Something dogs just naturally do.

...

...I'll probably be okay tomorrow. 

A Hair(y) Triviality

I love having short hair. 

It's convenient when it needs to be and doable and can still manage to look somewhat tolerable, even with a million different bobby pins and metal hair clips sticking out from various places. You don't even have to do anything but brush your hair three times, one on each side of your head.

HOWEVER.

When a pixie cut grows out to the point where the little wisps of hair against the nape of your neck become noticeably longer than the rest of your hair...a problem is presented. 

My first instinct is to do a little trimming myself. I mean, I've had some experience - I did cut my hair once in the sixth grade, and to everyone's pleasant surprise, it turned out to be immaculately straight. By sheer good fortune, of course, because everyone knows I can't cut straight edges, but that still doesn't discount the fact that straight is straight and that is that.

My second attempt occurred a year later. And regardless of the fact that I did the same exact foolproof procedure the second go around, it ended up looking like the kind of haircut you'd give a Barbie if you didn't know how to use scissors. Even from a fair enough distance, you could tell one clump was at least 2 inches longer than the other. 

That also happened to be the year I got glasses, which actually explains quite a bit of my childhood that would have remained a mystery had I not cleared my vision.

But anyway, I've already decided to grow my hair out, and after 8 months above my shoulders and 3 months of assessing the slow progress, the first signs of visibly longer length have emerged. And I already want to chop it all off. 

But I won't. 

I'm sitting on my hands right now in a figurative manner and will not touch my hair. At all. For at least another 3 months. Maybe the occasional trim. But that is all. And then we'll see how far this goes on. Until I'm ready to hold scissors again. With the same amount of trust I used to.

The Long Way Home

If I move at a fast enough pace, it only takes about 45 minutes to get home from school. 

Though sometimes, the time passes by much slowly if I feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders (literally, too, if I have my world history textbook with me). Since then, I've gotten into the habit of packing light because I enjoy spending an hour wandering through my neighborhood. It beats sitting in a bus, seeing everything pass by as a featureless blur through a window. There exists an element of confinement when you're trapped with fifty other people in an old vehicle that may or may not flip over at any given moment and, well...walking allows me the time I crave for myself.

You take the time to appreciate the desert you spent three years of your life hating. It's 2:30 in the afternoon, and while the sun may be beating down on your face relentlessly, when the wind picks up intermittently to counter the heat, it feels good. Good enough to make you feel like Pocahontas – that is, if Pocahontas wasn't Indian or Disney-fied or had a John Smith to stand with her at the edge of a cliff while she sung "Colors of the Wind."

My neighborhood is a relatively new one, barely a decade old - they're still building houses and apartment complexes to fill up land that used to be just bare dirt and shrubs, even now. Especially now. 

So I take the time to enjoy the way it feels to wander through rows of clay houses, following the curves of the streets, occasionally being lead to dead ends that force me to turn around and hike back the way I arrived. Then, by the time we get to my house, the roads end abruptly; we've reached the end of the suburbs. Beyond, there's the local community college 10 minutes away - I've walked there before - and beyond that, shrubs. Millions of them, I swear. They appear to be place markers for where the dirt hills roll and where they remain flat. 

There have been countless moments during which I've contemplated continuing further until I couldn't even tell which way I came from. But it's dangerous out there. And who knows what creeps in the untouched desolation. 

Yet beyond even that, you can still see for miles further. I think the furthest objects visible without having to squint your eyes are the mountains 65 miles away. From this distance, they're small enough to hide behind a horizontally raised finger, but you can still take comfort in knowing they'll always be there.

And I love it. I love walking through the suburbs when I'm feeling particularly melancholic or nostalgic. I've been doing it a lot these past months, and it's the best way to understand the different pathways that seem to appear out of nowhere, like the random ones between two houses or cutting through backyards. 

Shortcuts like those can be valuable when in need of an escape from life.

When I look around, everything is so pristine and fresh compared to the parts of the city closer to the mountains. There, the buildings are older, more antique in appearance. They emit a 70's vibe which I'm still debating whether I like or not. The roads are narrower and the drivers are ruthless, making the task of getting from Point A to B an experience akin to having a nervous breakdown. And above all, it's too far away to walk to, so I've never really been an explorer of those far-flung regions.

But I love this place. I didn't grow up here, so I can't claim to be a native, but picking up on the smaller details of life has taught me to be more observant of the noteworthy beauty around me. Like the way the sky is never the same color twice when the sun sets. Or how the clouds are perfectly assembled above the horizon in the afternoons. It's just...I fucking love it.

It's not only about how keen I am to embrace nature. It also has to do with the people I would hate to leave behind if I ever moved away; through first-hand experience, I've learned that it takes time and patience to build a relationship with a place. I hate sounding like I know these sorts of things, but there is wisdom hidden in these words. All the small joys of living and all the poignant moments that occur in between, they all stack on top of each other until you realize that you no longer feel like an outsider or a stranger anymore. And what do you know? 

Maybe it's finally possible to call this place home.

Songwriting As An Outlet

The piano is my vehicle of choice when it comes to escaping reality. I haven't been playing for a long time, so I'm no expert on the instrument, but I don't consider that in any way an indicator of the amount of emotional joy and exhilaration a person can feel when they play. 

I'm not a professional musician, or a rock star, or someone who'd willingly compete in The Voice or The X Factor. But I do believe we can get the most significance out of our lives through the act of writing our own music. It's sort of how I reflect on my own troubles and comforts. In a way, it's even more therapeutic than talking to a paid professional; I've always been a believer in the possibilities that arise when you open yourself up to the arts, especially when it comes to understanding yourself.

It's an intensely personal experience to write compositions, mostly because they are almost always a poetic evaluation of my relationship with specific people or ideas (but mainly people). I write about my standing with God, with my parents, with all the boys I've pretended to show no interest in; I'm secretly romantic to a fault, so I tend to write about intimacy a lot. Although it's true, I've never been on a date or had someone share a mutual attraction with me, those aren't necessarily disadvantages to how I perceive love. Sometimes, I wonder if they just make me naive and a little gullible to believe every person who comes my way has good intentions, so maybe that's why I have a tendency to pull away from people, no matter how much I like them.

It's the failed relationships - the ones that make me feel like I just died a little inside - that need to be expressed the most. Usually, it's when I'm vulnerable that I'm most honest with myself, and this susceptibility to what's going on around me drives what I write about. It's the only way I can allow myself be a teenage girl in regard to the fact that we're notorious for writing melodramatic poetry. Now whether that stereotype is warranted or not, I guess it just depends on which teenage girls you've been around. 

For me, there's always going to be a certain amount of shame and guilt attached to a song because of how poorly I've communicated with these people, but I realize it would be pointless to let those emotions weigh me down. Instead, I should let each song be a way to forgive myself. It should be a freeing experience in every sense of the word.

All the relationships that have accumulated over my (relatively short) life, all the people I've disappointed or driven away from me...of course I still think about that. Not on a daily basis, but enough to hold me back from moving on. But now it's time to make some changes; particularly in how I deal with my mistakes, and I feel like all my self-reflective writing may end up going in that direction now that it's a new year.

So. Cheers to making ourselves better people?

A Struggle With Faith

I was fifteen when I told my mom I might possibly be agnostic.

We were folding laundry in the living room, and I only remember that because a) discussions over religion while b) pairing socks and tucking in sweater sleeves is never a good recipe for the ideal mother-daughter bonding moment, especially in my family. And particularly about part a).

If there's one thing to be understood about my family, it's that we are obedient Catholics. It's unthinkable to even consider not getting Confirmed, let alone depart from the Church. And it's not just rooted in my ethnicity; aside from attending mass every Sunday, we pray all the time: during meals, in the car, with a rosary. Prayer just happened to be a routine part of our day. 

But at that point in my life, I realized that the words I was reciting, the continual murmuring in a sort of robotic, pious harmony, the hidden meaning behind the actual gestures people were making towards one another - we were treating everything like an obligation. Everything. Or maybe it was just me; maybe I simply felt an obligation to be compliant because that defined me as a "good Catholic." And while some may pass this off as commitment, and a necessary sacrifice in sustaining one's faith, I viewed it as a dishonesty. I was living out a falsehood.

It feels false to say "Ahem" when I hear the leaders of our church adamantly condemn gay marriage. To take the word of the Gospel and use it to mask their own interests. And I understand, it's only natural that one would find flaws in any institution. We're only human. There's nothing fair about judging an entire establishment based on the actions of the few; I am sure there are plenty of Catholics who live respectfully, and who rightfully deserve to believe without the corruption of those who take advantage of their faith. The right thing to do would be to love the teachings of the Church, despite the social conflicts that arise within it.

However, I'm beginning to look around at my community and have come to the conclusion that this is not the right place for me. I don't believe. I can't be as intolerant as those around me. And even the priests who show genuine character, who are 99% of the time a living, breathing definition of integrity - when I listen to them speak of Catholicism, I don't believe. 

While I may be an alter server, while I may be a lector, while I may be viewed as a role model...I don't deserve any of those titles. Because I recognize that I don't regard the Liturgy of the Word in the light that a follower would, and religion isn't the right path for me. 

My mother is one of the kindest people I know. She tries her darned hardest to be a positive influence in our lives, even if it's at the expense of her own happiness. So when I paired the last two socks in the hamper and opened my mouth to tell her how I felt, I anticipated for her to ignore me. To tell me blatantly, "Let's not talk about it," and go on pretending that I wasn't a teenage who had normal doubts and needed some honest guidance.

What I didn't expect was for her to do just that. "Let's not talk about it." Let's just sweep any uncomfortable problems under the rug and not acknowledge them, not even try to understand them. It surprised me when it shouldn't have. There exists this expectation for me to apply her own behavior to my life, to be less outspoken and more submissive, and that's not something I could possibly pursue. I've long suspected my discomfort to be a result of trying to balance two very distinct, different cultures in a country that is becoming more and more tolerant of an expanding and diverse population. I just never thought I'd have to choose between one or the other when it becomes difficult to have both.

I love my parents. They have done so much for me. They have supported me during times when I thought they would just turn away. And while we may have disagreements over many aspects of life, not to mention possess completely opposite beliefs on a number of them, they have always looked out for me and raised me with their own personal faith in my worth (though a lot of the time, it's not glaringly outright or direct). 

And I will freely admit, I don't understand my skepticism just as much as I don't understand my faith. I don't completely believe in either; if I were to allow my confusion to get the better of me and just not take a stance on either, I guess that would - by some definition - make me an atheist. But I acknowledge that I'm still young. I'm still trying to settle things out, especially my views on spirituality. Nothing is for certain and nothing will be for a long time, so my decision thus far has been to not openly question what I was raised on.

But to submit to external expectations and not develop the knowledge to make a deeper choice...wouldn't that be a strike against my freedom? Against my right to religion, in a country that has managed to maintain a set of certain human rights that each and every one of us has the power to exercise? And doesn't that right also apply to those who don't align themselves with any religion at all?

I have trust issues. I really do. And it has never been more apparent than now, during a time in my life when I need someone to trust. It's an issue that has caused my relationships in the past to suffer; to better myself as a human being would require opening myself to other ideas, other voices, and other opinions. And from that, I can shape a well-rounded view of the world. Instead of holding onto the conviction that I know everything in the world, I can learn the true meaning of balance and not devote myself entirely to any one attitude. They call that open-mindedness, and it's a hard place to get to.

Yes, I am still young. I have a lot to learn about the world. I have no real sense of the word commitment. I still have time to give second chances, third chances, infinite chances to those little nuances of life I write off as "incompatible" or "irreconcilable" to me or how I live. Which is why, as of now, I don't think I'm ready to rival any belief I don't have a full grasp of. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe religion is what I really need, and while I currently can't comprehend what is being preached, the understanding I currently lack may reveal itself later in life. There's no room for me to rule out any possibilities. 

Needless to say, aiming to become someone who doesn't ardently condemn either of the opposing beliefs, but can respect and see value in both, appears to be the soundest option to settle on.

My First Day as a Motivational Speaker

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HANUKKAH (for those of you who celebrate it; also, I just learned how to spell Hanukkah five seconds ago, so thank God for spell check) AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND THANKSGIVING AND ANY OTHER HOLIDAY I FORGOT TO MENTION TO COMPENSATE FOR MY LONG ABSENCE. YAAAAYYY, EVERYONE'S INCLUDED IN THIS POST AND NO ONE'S LEFT OUT!

...

So. Why all caps? Because it's been a while since I've posted. And I think a new year calls for a brand-new attitude, no matter how unnecessary it may be to sound like you're shouting from a rooftop. Though there is a little nugget of truth in this, because I absolutely do feel like screaming from a rooftop and spreading my arms out as I let the birds fly through my hair and toward the distant horizon, which could in itself be perceived as a symbolic moment of me moving toward my own bright, distant future. 

Just like in the movies. 

There are times when I wish to vacate my life and jump into a new one, like those times when it feels like I messed up too much and too badly to even want to continue being myself. However, that's taking the easy way out. There's always an opportunity attached to a problem. The opportunity to fix it; which is, quite honestly, the best opportunity life can give you. People seem to find it discouraging, since it does take a large amount of effort to dig for solutions, but there's no real reason to complain about the spilled milk or failed exam if you view it as one of the many inevitable stepping stones leading towards success.

Thomas Edison said it best: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." He also said: "I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun" and, "Maturity is often more absurd than youth," but teachers never hang those posters on their classroom walls. Since it does go against their nature and all.

I think Thomas Edison would have made a fantastic motivational speaker.

But he's dead (to put it bluntly). And while he does continue to exist in human memory as an inspiration for plenty of ambitious inventors and just people in general, the one motivational speaker we should all be able to consistently depend on is ourselves. Tell yourself that YOU - ARE - BEAUTIFUL. If even that makes you uncomfortable, just quickly yell something like  "You're awesome!" to yourself before running away from the mirror you've somehow managed to avoid for the past several years of your life. In fact, get acquainted with that mirror as you emerge from your hibernation and actually notice that brushing your hair isn't half bad. I myself do it every once in a while.

Like Edison said, anything can be fun if you have the mind to view it as such.