Advice and Prayers

Today I saw a wonderful play called PAWN.  Studied one chapter of Stats for today's quiz when I should have studied 4.  Reviewed my four-year plan and looked up new classes.  Showered and now waiting for hair to dry.

Occasionally I think about what I might say if I were invited to talk to high school juniors and seniors about the college experience.  This is usually stimulated by words of wisdom I have to give to myself in response to a new revelation, so I figured I should start collecting these in case the need for them really do come up.

1. Listen to these advice and judge them for their validity, not their application.  When I was younger and sat in front listening to a panel of speakers like you are today, I ignored advice from people who weren't studying what I wanted to study, because I wanted to model after those who I thought were older versions of who I wanted to be.  For the most part, your intuition about who you are is correct, but in college you will learn so much more about yourself, and you might be surprised by what you learn.  So don't reject a piece of advice because you think it will never apply to you.

2. Take a class you think is too hard for you and see how you do.  If you pass it with average amount of work (not too easy, but medium), then try another, harder class.  Learn what you're capable of, and learn how to handle failure - that's going to be a very useful skill in life.

3. Be kind to yourself.  In college you're going to meet a lot of different people with different skill levels, and you might feel the need to compete.  It might be very easily to be harsh on yourself for not meeting your own expectations (and I hope you do place expectations for yourself), but the best thing you can do is forgive yourself for "failing".  It helps prepare you for your next challenge.

Flicka

 

A few years ago I fell in love with this movie, and lately its symbols and meanings have been coming back to me. It's a story whose characters and images explore the human spirit, embodied in the mustang and a young girl. It's a reminder that the soul can only be reined by love, and that only for love will it be tamed. Otherwise, the soul has to be free to express itself, to run without ever needing to look back. Some souls leap fences, refusing to let the barriers of the world contain them, but every day civility builds more obstacles, and every day it becomes harder and harder to run for as long as you want, and as hard as you want. Freedom is lost through the development of society.

Or at least, it's lost for some. For many, the barriers of society becomes a comfort. I won't willingly give up four walls, a roof and a constant food supply, yet at the same time I must trade in the freedom of self-expression in return for these comforts. Civility disapproves of wild acts of passion, and sees wildness as danger. But I say the need for wild self-expression doesn't intend to destroy. People are afraid of the wild tiger, but you wouldn't be afraid of a mustang, but what is not understood is that neither will kill without just cause. The tiger kills only what it needs to survive.

Philosophical crap aside, I'm not quite sure even the wealthiest of us ever escape the fences the world has built around us. The only time when we can ever run free is in our imagination, and as I grow I feel walls growing tighter around me. It's not a good feeling, but it's not a feeling I know how to escape. My voice is silenced because the things I really want to shout about are considered simplistic and insignificant, unworthy of the educated, sophisticated brain. Everything that comes out of my mouth now must be well-reasoned, toned and adjusted to the season of the intelligent. And as everyone around me becomes more educated, they start to see more uniformly, start to agree on the type of fences we should build and where. I feel the first signs of tightness and sometimes I want to panic.

You must learn their language in order to speak up, and to learn their language you learn their ideas. My language is fading, and I'm not quite sure where the me is, or how she's changed, and whether or not I approve.


[Wild Horses by Natasha Bedingfield]

Tears in a Bathroom

Today I received a 58% on my Chem31B midterm, and I took myself to the PHE's bathroom and I cried. I cried for my stupidity, for my ignorance, for my arrogance, for my love of chemistry.

How dare I love chemistry when it should be respected, feared, and when it is my absolute master?

How dare I love something that has no emotion, and that doesn't care whether I love it or not, because it's judgement is absolute?

How dare I not study, how dare I not spend every waking moment of my life learning, relearning, and studying and reviewing chemistry?

I don't know what to do, I don't know how to stop crying, how to stop being emotional, how to stop hating myself. I don't know how I can be t better at this.

there's nothing anyone else can say that eases the wretchedness within my heart. I've never gone into a public bathroom, sit, and cry myself sick before. and i know that after this i will go back to work, to study, and to not play, and i will still fail and find myslef back here in the bathroom, crying my heart to the floor.

so what more can i do than just leat the torrents flow, and flow, and flow, until there's none left? how do i save myself without giving up on something that's hard? how can i maintain my dignity in front of others when i know inside that i am a complete failure?

Get up, keep moving. Keep working.

Breakup

Oh good, much more awake now. Although more sleep is probably wise, it won't be happening.

I wanted to give an update on how things were going with my girlfriend and I. Alyssa and I broke up this past Thursday because it was too stressful, too strained, to have a long-distance relationship between two people who have never had a steady close-distance relationship with each other, or with anyone else. We are still friends who call once in a while, and the prospects of us getting back together again is still feasible, in the distant future.

It started about three weeks ago, when I proposed this question: would she stop clinging onto me so tightly, when we're miles and miles apart? She lives about an hour and a half driving time from me, and while I'm at school our relationship was maintained only through the phone. I felt that she was hurting too much over me. She was missing us so much, wanting me there, jealously clinging, when it was neither feasible nor possible. And I was aware of this, as much as I was aware of the fact that days went by when I gave her no thought. It wasn't equal or fair, and suddenly I felt bound to something that was never really established. Our friends and her family, in the desire to see us happy, deemed us girlfriends before we announced it ourselves, deemed us girlfriends by the time we've seen each other's face twice, an event that happens about once every two months. Even we forgot the fact that we never established the relationship officially between us.

So I asked us to take a step back, to let go of each other, and the response was tears and agony. Not at all what I was expecting. She wanted to break up right then and there, in tears and sobs, and I refused. It would have done neither of us any good to separate when I knew judgement was clouded on her part, clouded by a sudden burst of emotions. So I proposed a two-week's silence, during which I urged myself to consider the idea that the middle path might be too difficult to walk. See, I did not intend to break up with her, nor did I intend to move forward in our relationship. I wanted both of us to take a step back, hold each other only at arm's length, and focus more on our lives and the people around us. There was some nuance to this idea that was difficult to grasp, and more difficult to accomplish. And when I called her again after our two week's silence, she again proposed a break-up, but in a much more reasonable state of mind. So I agreed. The logical reason was there, as well as the logistics that proved we could not move forward at the moment. Better yet, we seemed to have reached a sort of amnesty, for I was able to go right back to telling her about all the things that's been happening in my life, and she in her's.

There are some liberties I'm allowed to take now that I am no longer bound, and whether or not I take them only time will tell. But for now, I stand alone.

And I'm really hungry.