when my heart is calm and my head is light

I have these moments in my life when my heart is calm and my head is light. I have a lot going on but I seem to be content. I don't know how I will afford some bills right now but I have a roof over my head. I have food in my belly. I have two jobs whether they are good enough or not.

I got a tattoo a few months ago. It is three arrows. I got the idea from my culture induced brain. However, I designed the arrows and made each one different. The middle one is further down than the left and right one. It represents my family. The right one represents my friends that turned into family. The left one represents my best friend. Arrows are meant to hit their target. They are meant to go straight. With the people in my life I'm going straight. I have seen the path and I am going there. For some reason its always been hard for me to not rebel. I've wanted to rebel since I could remember. But I thought about it more than doing it.

I put myself in hard situations. I tend to do it subconsciously. When the situation is figured out the benefit is amazing. The feeling you get when you get that first pay check is stimulating. I suppose I learn the hard way. I haven't really learn things the easy way or even had the chance to at most cases. I suppose I like to fight and then be held when it's too much.

Lately, I have been looking at my arm which as the arrow tattoo. The weather has been warm and the leaves are starting to change. This is my favorite season to be silent in and just watch the commotion of mundane activity through out the city. I've been able to see my tattoo. Most of the people that are behind the tattoo aren't present. So maybe looking at this symbol in my life makes it feel like they are right there with me. I don't know to be honest.

But I feel content. I feel struggle. I feel loved. I feel tried. I feel pushed. I feel relieved.
Though yesterday however I started to miss someone so bad that it hurt. I didn't want to reply to the text. I wanted to be with them. When you love a person whether it is a friend or the person you are with there will always be hard moments. Moments that you want to be ceased. Though to be honest in some of those moments I feel my most content. Because I know I'm doing something right when they miss me and I miss them. I know I'm doing something right because it takes work to make something better.

Most of the time I'm selfish. Most of the time I have walls that I don't even know I had. But I fight...I fight for something better. I fight to be content in my situation and when I achieve that I feel a very intense emotion. The emotion makes me want to sing.

It doesn't seem real.

I never knew what growing up was or what it meant to me. It has always looked different. On my roadtrip from California to Michigan, I was driving through Colorado. It was so beautiful to me. I haven't seen beauty like that in so long. It reminded me of so many things...the beauty in my friends and family. It reminded me of the feelings I got in Spain. I couldn't quite place a finger on it about how it felt in Spain until I felt it again that day. I saw what I felt, the beauty. Spain was a place where I grew up and so many things about that trip made me feel alive. I feel alive again though in a very different way. I'm unleashed by undergraduate school. Life is an empty salad bowl. I have chance to put what I want in it now. However, life's normal occurrences have been interrupting exactly what I want in that salad bowl.

When I arrived in Michigan I had decided early on that I would have no expectations of the place or what it meant in the past. My mind was left blank to allow the weird turn of events to wedge themselves in my life. My life here is different, very different from what it was in college. No one expects anything out of me besides work. I have to put on my own demands and constraints. Like always I learned the hard way in the first two days. My rent and security deposit was more than I expected which resulted in a depletion of my money. If thought that was bad...it got worse. My credit card was stolen. It never seems to end. I had a bed...just a bed in my room. No food....and a dad that was angry with me.

There are times where I just want to curl up in my Mom's arms and have her stroke my arm until I fall asleep. This period of life is defiantly one of them. Though obviously I couldn't...it's not possible. So I took a big bite of the bullet and pressed on.

I'm not totally sure how I am going to pay for rent or the payments on my car or for bills and food. Hopefully the two part time jobs I am working at will pay off.

This is life. I've pretty much grown to just adapting to it and not letting things really get to me. I've evolved into someone else over the years. Someone different and I'm getting to know this new person. Life is a bitch. It really is. It's only going to become more of a bitch but you have learn to adapt to it. Change the things that aren't working for you. I've had to cut out a ton of things that I love because it costs money. For 4 years I had the privilege of budgeting those things into my monthly expenses.

I'm trying. I miss my best friends like crazy and I know it would be easier if all of them were here. But I don't have that so I have to change and adapt to it. I miss them so much. It doesn't seem real.