Untitled.

Letting go has to be one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'd rather clutch whatever it is close and let it continue to boil my blood with whatever particular odors and connotations it concocts within my heart and brain.
With Mike I let go. I let go of being in control of everything in my world, I let go of the fear, and I can't even say I did it on purpose. It just happened.

Letting go has to be one of the easiest things I'll ever do. With school, it's so easy to let go, to not care, to let it sift under all of the trivial STUFF that somehow seems exponentially more important. It's the easiest thing in the world to say, "fuck it. I don't feel like it."
But the consequences are anything but. Because two weeks later I'm scared to go back to class because I don't know what I've missed, because I don't know anyone in the class. Because I'm scared of being alone, being alienated, being unsure, being OUT OF CONTROL. It's easier to watch yourself do nothing and scream it from the rooftops than it is to quietly try to piece together what you've taken for granted and what you've missed.
I'm older now. Wiser. I'm almost 19 and still...

I don't want to rant and rave about my inconsistency in school. I'm tired of that. And one of these days, trembling and proud, I'll walk back into that lab and I'll get over myself. Someday.
Whatever.


Ideas, moments are fleeting. Time passes, things change. Someone rocks your world, someone breaks your heart. And through this and that and everything else that LIFE entails...do we ever figure it all out? Do we ever STOP ASKING annoying questions? Do we ever stop stalking our friends? Do we ever stop being completely unsure? And what about the fear...does it ever go away?

I told Abbie today that I liked that there aren't answers to all the questions, because each time you ask someone new, you learn. You ask and you receive something new. A memory. A belief. An anecdote. A laugh a cry a hug a cringe. A bond. And you take one step outside the box that is inevitably YOU, that's all your thoughts and ideas within.

I personally don't have little quotes to fall back on. I wasn't raised that way. I'm pragmatic, I'm practical. When the game is over, the king and the pawn may go back into the same box, but that isn't because in the end, the maker of the game is trying to spread the message that big or small, black or white, royalty or peasant, we're all the same. That's just the way it is. It's a GAME. You need somewhere to store the pieces. Somewhere they won't get lost, where you can consistently come back and find them and use them when you need them.
And Jesus, maybe that's a huge metaphor for those sayings I don't believe in. Life isn't a fairy tale. Those always end up in happily-ever-after, and really, in this world, no one wants that. We need things to bitch about, to hate on, to gossip about, to complain... we're not nice, we're not "happy," we're HUMAN. We're not programmed to live happily-ever-after. We can't handle the lack of pain--we seek it out, we like the flaws, the challenges. It gives life depth, meaning.
"Happy" is one of those words your fourth grade English teacher told you was BAD or BORING. You were supposed to use "jubilant" or "satisfied" or "accomplished" or "content." Not happy. Never happy.

I told a couple people the other day that I thought chocolate changed the world. And I'm convinced it has. But like the proverbial butterfly who flies over Kentucky and causes a monsoon in Asia, history and the past are hard to fathom, especially their impact on our lives.
I'm in college now, I'm on my own. I now make choices that hugely and obviously and immediately change my life and my future. I made a decision to go to UCSB, to go to FSSP. That, of course was life-altering. Why wouldn't it be? Had I not gone, I wouldn't be the same person I am right now. I wouldn't know the same people, I wouldn't have been through the same drama, I wouldn't have discovered what I have about life and people and humanity.

I can't put my thoughts into words well. I can't create perfect, flowing, personality-filled paragraphs with correct grammar and syntax the way Matt does. I'm a terrible story-teller.
But the ideas in my head are valid. They're me. And as totally incompetent as I feel expressing them publicly, especially in writing, I do feel a desire to share my thoughts with the world. And in the end, I may go back a day later and be horrified at the utter SHIT that I wrote, but as a certain friend of mine likes to quote, "do one thing every day that scares you." And so I try.
I may not be able to face that lab or ask for real help when I need it, but at the end of it all at least I've written something down, taken a deep breath, and shared it.
"One step at a time," my dad has told me, all my life.

So I'm taking baby steps. Into what? Toward where? I don't know. But if I've learned anything at all in the past six months, it's from Abbie, and it's that life is HERE, and even if I don't go to class all the time and don't do my work perfectly, I can't waste my time worrying about it or being afraid I might do it again. There's too much around me I might miss. Too many new facets of someone's personality. Too many conversations, too many walks or quiet moments of clarity.

I often feel like I need to excuse my posts here for some reason.

Today I just felt like writing, and this is what came out.