Born for This

I'm taking a break from my researching for the extended essay to write a blog. I actually find my topic absolutely fascinating (you know, which is why I chose it in the first place), but I do need to take breaks or my brain just kind of dies.

It's July 28th. I have NO idea where the summer went. There are only 3 weeks until school starts again, and I feel like I've spent 2 months sitting around doing nothing. I mean, I've gone to work and couple Wrock shows (including an amazing one in Boulder on Monday). It's also not entirely my fault since we had to reschedule my driving test, so I don't have a way to get anywhere during the week. But basically, I don't know where time disappears to.

It's as if I'm standing still and the world is rushing past me, full of people growing and changing and living their lives. I desperately want to yell at the world to stop, or tell it to wait for me to catch up. But instead I just watch. I don't know what I'm waiting for, or why I can't join the crowd. Well, that's not completely true, but I don't know why I can't let go of events that happened so long ago. I hold onto the past and dream of the future, but I never really make an attempt to change anything. And I so wish I did.

"What you have to decide...is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So don't be afraid. Be alive." ~Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

I hope that as I'm going into my senior year of high school and preparing for college, I can learn how to be less afraid. Learn how to let things go and how to be happy in the present. Learn how to LIVE. And mostly I hope I can not only say these things, but believe them. I think so much about changing, about being happy, about how beautiful life is. But I need to allow myself to believe them, and need to allow myself to love people and love being alive, as scary as that is. I've been given a forever to live out, and I have the right to choose what it contains and how I live it. Maybe someday soon I can actually believe that statement.

I love so many things and so many people and so much about life, but I don't allow myself to express or admit that. I need to. I don't say the words "I love you" enough. I need to. I'm afraid of love because I'm afraid of loss, but that fear is keeping me from...well, everything.

So here it is:

I LOVE YOU.

I'm addressing that statement to everyone in my life, all the things I care about. But I'm also addressing that statement to life in general. It's a beautiful thing to be alive. Even if I can't always believe that, it's true. One hundred percent.

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." ~Agatha Christie

I know this isn't a very exciting blog post, but...as I said, this is a journal mostly for me. So I can go back and remember what I was thinking as I grow up. I do hope you find something in it, too, though. =]

In other news, BEDAugust is coming up...sort of. I think Maureen said she wasn't doing it, and I'm not sure if I will be at the moment. I think I'll try, but they won't be nearly as long of blog posts as BEDApril in 2009. But I won't pressure myself too much, more just encourage myself to try to blog everyday.

All right. I guess it's back to reading about ethnicity and Belgians and the genocide. (And appreciating the life I have).

Cheers!!!

Days left of summer: 19

Inspirational quote/photo of the day: