Do you want to join me?

This blog post is going to be a little bit all over the place, so forgive me. I have a lot of thoughts rolling around in my brain and I need to get them down so I can squeeze myself into a corner of the library this weekend and study/write papers nonstop.

First, I would like to return to my musings on time. I know I say this a lot, but time is a funny thing.

Yesterday
Clear night skies, Christmas lights on palm trees
Walking home
From a quiet yet busy library
Where everyone ignored the books
And sat on their now modern computers

Last week
The end of November
The end of my second novel.
My second?
Or my first real one?
How do I wrap my brain
around this strange
but lovely accomplishment?

Last month
Election night
Alternating between Twitter,
MSNBC,
And my orgo notes,
cheering and celebrating in my own secluded room
with friends on twitter,
grilled cheese,
(and a little bit of wine)
to keep me company

And what else?
What about further back?

Two years.
Let's travel back two years now.
The kitchen of
The Eating Disorders Unit,
Full of friendly faces,
families I didn't know,
and strangers...
I'd be pouring my heart out to.
Two days
Two days away from discharge
And was I ready for this?
I wondered as I sat sipping my water
I felt my body get up
I ignored the people around me
Moving, dancing, gliding, soaring
All the things my words couldn't say,
My body knew at the core
Grief and love
Hope and despair
Fear and desire
Dancing, dancing,
Always dancing...
And now I could dance with them.

My basic point with those words above is that time is one of the hardest concepts to understand. Sure, we as civilizations have divided time into minutes, days, years, centuries, millenia...But how do we truly measure how much time has passed? By what the calendar says? Or by how different we feel inside?

As the beautiful song from Rent asks, do we measure the year in minutes, seconds, months...Or do we measure it in sunsets, in the late nights spent studying, in the time spent staring at the stars, in the lunches with friends...Do we measure it with love, or do we measure a year in numbers?

On Tuesdays, I always seem to feel like the week is never going to end. I have a bad habit of always "counting down" to something, whether that thing is getting out of class, the test I have next week, the party three weeks away, or how may weeks are left until home. But then Friday hits and I somehow find myself shocked to see another week pass by.

I try my hardest to live in the present, to focus truly on how I feel and what is happening right now. But I'm still not very good at it. I spend far too much time dreaming of the future, simultaneously convincing myself it will be both grand and terrifying. Which it probably will be. I have at least gotten to the point where I no longer dream of the future as being perfect, free from troubles or stress or tears. I recognize that while things may get better (or worse), life is much more complicated than that. But, sometimes I move a little too much in the bad direction, and find myself worrying about things years down the road: graduate school, where I'll live, if I'm getting enough experience in college to get the job I want, if what I'm doing now really is what I want to do for the rest of my life, if I'll ever find a relationship, etc, etc.

Are all of those things important to think about? Yes.

But are they things I should be thinking about every day, often in that hour when I can't fall asleep?

No.

However, I think it is unfortunately just part of my nature that I get overwhelmed by too many options. Deep down, I love choices and I love change. It's exhilarating and freeing to know and really feel like anything is possible  But the dark side of myself continues to see things in black and white: if I choose this, then nothing else is possible. If this turns out to be a mistake, I've wasted my life. If I don't make friends now, I'm doomed for my future. Etc.

So, going back to the last stanza of my poem, some things haven't changed since two years ago. I still doubt myself far too often. I still wonder if I have a place in this world. I still think I'm not good enough. And when I say that, I don't mean I think I'm not good enough for my parents, for professors, for potential employers  I mean, when I say that: I'm not good enough for me. I'm not the person I should be.

I guess, I just feel like the stories you always read, the stories always portrayed on TV, are those of the second or third year college student who has all of these opportunities, so many internships, a large group of friends, the best roommate, a good job relevant to her major, a close family. Often (though not always), pop culture and the media skate over those of us who are...normal.

For my psychology class, we had to read Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir on her manic-depressive illness, which was lovely for so many reasons. But one thing that really got me when I was reading the memoir was how amazing she was in college. She got to work with all of these professors, do research as a second year student, graduated and was immediately accepted into the doctoral program in psychology at UCLA, and started teaching classes at the age of 27 (I think). All while she was, yes, suffering from manic-depressive disorder. This is not to skate over the many difficulties I know she had and I know she overcame, but in a small way, her accomplishments only fed my feelings of inadequacy.

Because I'm not doing any of those things. Yes, I had an internship this summer, and yes I have a steady job working at the library. Yes, I study hard and interact with my professors in the hope to get recommendation letters from them. Yes, I do talk to my peers. But I'm not exactly "successful." Nothing I've done (so far) is going to help me get a job or get into graduate school. I'm not the college student who goes out and parties every weekend. And, most importantly, perhaps, I'm still not sure what exactly I want.

That scares me, I think. I'm not sure why, but I feel like I should have a set path and be on that path right  now. And I definitely do not have one.

I know...I know I definitely do want a job researching the oceans, spending as much time as I can in the field (focusing on sharks if I can). And I know I eventually want a relationship  But beyond that, the future is a big white blur, full of uncertainties and too many possibilities. And I don't even know how to go about getting the things I want.

Are these normal things to worry about? Is it normal to be thinking and panicking so much that I start to feel an immense pressure on my chest and start breathing faster when walking with my head down to the shuttle, worrying and worrying?

Maybe yes to the first one. Probably definitely not to the latter.

Eurgh.

I'm not exactly sure where I wanted to go from that, so I'm going to skip the well written segue and just go on to my next topic here...

Again going back to the poem, and that last stanza:

Exactly two years ago, I was performing my dance for a room full of people I loved, but also a room full of strangers I didn't know. I opened up my heart and soul and allowed tears to flow through my blood and muscles and finally out through my eyes. Two days away from being discharged, I was starting to open up my bubble to the outside world. I remember crying to Gary, afraid of taking the leap into the outside world, even though I knew deep down I needed it. I was ready to grieve, ready to live, ready to fight and fight and fight for my true self, for the person who had (and still has?) so much to offer to the world.

I took that leap. Fighting against the critical voice in my head, I jumped into the chaos of reality, armed with my knowledge and hopes and dreams and fears and memories and love. Even despite the past, I held a lot of faith. I knew faith couldn't prevent the worst from happening (again), but holding it close to my heart could buffer some of the pain and make the cycle of the universe that much more beautiful. Things were rocky for a while, but I refused to give up. Not again. I came so close to dying, I saw the other white world, and I decided I'd rather stay in this messy, emotional one full of triumphs and tragedies.

Certainly, that faith took me a lot of wonderful places. It powered me through the end of high school and IB, brought me a lovely group of girls to talk and laugh and cry with, pushed me to college in Hawaii and urged me to connect with the people I lived with. It carried me through college and all of its triggers and issues. It allowed me to continue the grieving process.

And, above all, it pushed me to realize a very important concept: no matter my weight, no matter the clothes I wear, no matter how many possessions I own, or how many acquaintances I have, I'm not going to be happy unless I allow myself to be. I hold the power to bring happiness to my life.

I still know this to be true, but I cannot help but notice that, generally, the successful people (again, at least portrayed in the media) are the attractive ones, the ones with a lot of money, or the ones with a circle of connections (ie the extroverted people).

And I am not that person. I'm not completely sure I want to be that person.

Anyway. Three years ago, I was suffering and just beginning the headlong fall into the dark chaos of anorexia and a numb mind. Two years ago, I was starting to thaw. Fall became winter became spring, and new growths were beginning to happen.

Yet, I feel like summer has yet to come. I think I lost a lot of faith in myself this summer in Connecticut, where I was met with people who neither accepted me nor truly wanted to get to know me. Coming back to Hawaii, where I found my "friends" weren't really my friends and I'd essentially have to start over the painful process of making meaningful connections, I continue to lose that faith.

No matter how hard I tried to hold on to it, I could feel it slowly dripping through the cracks in my hand, like seawater desperate to follow gravity and just fall down. Fragile and scared, I somewhere lost the strength and force to hold on to such a fickle but imperative thing.

Everything, I feel, crashed around Halloween, and even though I loved NaNoWriMo, it did little to bring my strength or faith back to me. I still feel like I'm missing something.

Definitely, this semester has been rough. I can definitely feel the pull of home, and I hope to find some rejuvenation there. Because while home does hold some bad memories, it's also ultimately the place I was reborn, the place where I found my faith and pushed fear aside. It's where I learned how to dance through life, and breathe in the beauty all around me.

In the end, I know the classic definitions of success are not going to make happy. Having money, a steady career, a solid home, and the same friends I had in my freshman year of college....These are lovely things, but do not equal happiness.

I want to sit on a roof sipping wine and watching the stars, talking about everything from Ellen Degeneres to Neil DeGrasse Tyson with someone willing to wait and watch the sunrise with me. I want to find myself bathed in sun on a boat, doing some sort of important research. I want to find my way to Africa or Patagonia and just wander around for a while with a camera and a backpack. I want to meet a wide variety of people. I want to be a person whose heart is spread out over many places, who finds home throughout the world. Of course, a steady job would be nice and money is still important. Those things will contribute to happiness.

I don't know if it is possible to obtain all of those things, but right now I will say this: I DO HAVE FAITH. I'm not unrealistic, I don't expect to find ultimate happiness, I know there will be many future stresses and tragedies and griefs. But I have faith. Life is a beautiful, strange but lovely miracle birthed from the oldest stars of our universe. Somehow, I think, everything will work out in the end. Not in the way I expect it to right now, and not in the same way for everyone. But there is hope and love and joy available for every single person on this planet. All 7 billion of us. Money, food, oil, water...these things are not renewable resources, they involve competition.

Hope and love are our most vital renewable resources though. Always.

Okay. Again, I'm not really sure what the point of this entry was, other than to get the words jumbled in my brain out onto paper. Or, really, out into a jumble of 1s and 0s that will float around the internet for possibly thousands of years to come. But you get my point. The words are out in the universe now, and I can't deny myself the truth of my feelings or thoughts anymore.

I don't know much of anything; I am willing to admit that. I find myself racing through the labyrinth every day, but I manage to make myself look up a the stars and remember to dream. I am learning, I am grieving, I am loving, and I always try to be filled with faith. I don't know what my path is or should be, and I don't know how to get through this life we are given.

But I think maybe I can start in much the same way as my character in my novel did.

I extend you my hand, across whatever distance exists between us, and ask you this:

Do you want to join me?

Inspirational quote/photo of the day: "Hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, that despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us — so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting." -President Barack Obama 
Word of the day: orotund--speaking or singing with fullness, strength, and clarity of sound or voice
Days until home: 12