Butterfly

I was there. In the middle of it all. I wanted to burst. I wanted to burst at the seams...I was in the bar. Drinks were being served to all and even me. I wanted to twitch and to steer to another universe. There was something inside of me rising....to all extremes.

Life is different when it is just not you in the picture. When someone else is mixed up in what you are mixed up in... What are you mixed up in? Life...it is life. Life is what you are mixed up in. Of course you can do it alone, for awhile. But after awhile life just gets lonely. It gets to a point where you can't do it alone. Where another human being needs to be in the mix of things. Because your heart craves community.

However, when that other human being is with you or beside you there is a chance their pain can affect you also. Lately, things haven't been happening to me but to the rest of my close circle. People are getting hurt, falling into pain, or struggling. The two paragraphs above I wrote a few days ago after an intense night. I expected it to be fun but it ended in being intense. My emotions were strong and held a lot of importance. I couldn't shake them off. At times I think I get attached and care too much to the point that I become a protector.

Since my mom passed away, death has affected me. When I hear someone has died...when it is my friend's friend, loved one, or relative...it hurts. It hurts in this weird way that is almost numb. I have obtained this new kind of empathy. Lately my friends have known someone who has died...who seems to be close to their family in some way. I find it hard to separate myself from it.

The three paragraphs were written over the month of January. The feelings I have been feeling havent just gone away or developed into something knew...or I haven't finished dealing with it. When I finish dealing with it, I do two things. I stop writing about it or I write about it and then its final.

They say that as an adult life just gets harder as you go. That it just becomes more complex and intertwined with more and more people. Your heart leaves traces on other people and they leave traces on you as well. It is as if you are a butterfly...their power leaves traces on your fingers...your imprints leave traces on them. If they give themselves away too much, they die.

Sometimes I feel like the butterfly. When I put myself in other people's live...when I let myself. I leave traces of me behind that I can never get back. Some pieces I wish I could steal back and other pieces I'm fine with giving away. I want to keep treating my heart and other people's hearts as butterflies. Because if you give too much of yourself away, you can lose yourself all together.

Though one thing I have learned is things like my familiarness with death, is something that I cannot choose to keep or lose. I give that piece of myself no matter what happens.

as long as they will let me

The holiday seasons have past and now we look forward to the rest of winter and spring break. Our lives revolve around the seasons...in fact they dictated by them. We celebrate and then move on. We get into the Christmas spirit and then we enter the New Year.

I don't have any resolutions that are elaborate or complex. Though I do have one. It is to have no regrets. Going into the rest of the school year with a positive and moving forward kind of attitude. I know once this last semester is over, my life will be strange. I sometimes have these little panic attacks about it. Back home I don't have a friend group. I wish I did. I once did. I will not have what I had/have here in Michigan.

In Michigan I went through some of the hardest times of my life and some of the greatest times in my life. I learned in my classes. I learned with my friends. My friends found me. I did not find them. I cried my most in Michigan and I also laughed the most here. I have thought about staying. If I could find a job. And then thought about how many of my friends will be moving to different places...or already have. I get really sad. Because there isn't a solution. I just have to stick it out with whatever happens.

Christmas break was amazing. I spent it with my family. With my brothers, my dad, my sister-n-laws, and my niece. I had the best of times. It felt like for once in my life my entire family was happy. That we have grown so much over the past 5 years. I look at each of them and see the life in their eyes. I wonder if the next Christmases will be the same. I've missed them each dearly.

One thing came out of the break was that I reconnected with my sister-n-law allison. I think it has to deal with the fact that I am getting older and maturing, haha. But anyways, to me it was awesome and just kinda magical. I really appreciated the time we had. I'm a bit different than my family. I dress differently and I'm interested in some different things. Though when you connect with your family...its magic. At times we just work to get along and it shouldn't be that way. We should just get along.

As the holidays pass and the world moves into it's daily routine, stop and look at the people around you. The people you surrond yourself with. Every single one of them. If they are worth it hold them close and never let go. Because a holiday isn't meant to be spent alone. But to be spent with family no matter if they are blood related or not. I'm going to hold onto my Michigan family as long as I can and as long as they will let me.

To Fight for a Better Me: Part Two

My last entry is so interesting to me because of has happened now. I have been learning a lot in the last two weeks. I have seen my childish ways so present in my life. I have seen how I need to fight for a better me because then I am capable in fighting for others. It is time that I become an adult. I have in many ways but I am starting to realize I have a lot of work to do in my life.

I have been through a lot and things are still getting figured out. Though I have realized in my strength derived from my struggles, it has prohibited me to relate to another human being. It has kept me from getting involved in my friend's lives. I have talked about myself for far too long and now it is time to talk about others. It is time for me to extinguish my beliefs that have been rooted in fear and laziness. I am not a child anymore...I am not in the "real" world where things get more complex and if we don't have the skills to survive in it, there is no hope.

I have been selfish. I have been so selfish.

I have this problem. I have a problem with getting involved in my friend's lives. I assume that if I am capable of being an open book to them that they should be also with me. That is a complete fabricated lie. I have definitely created that so I didn't have to get so involved. I fear of losing people. I have this fear because I lost someone very special to me. So I fear getting attached. I fear that if I do get attached in this way...that I will fail them. I will them like I failed my brother when he got consumed by drugs. I know this is a lie but sometimes the lies we tell ourselves...disguise themselves as the truth until we are told otherwise. I fear failing people. That I won't be what they want me to be or who that want me to be.

So I have this dilemma. To solve this problem, that I find so horrifying and troubling, will not be easy. Because to be honest I don't know how to. I don't know how to make this an easy transition or if it could be an easy transition. I ask of you...reader...to help me. Surely there are people that are better than me at this.

The reason why I want to be aggressive...is because I am 21 and after college it is like these qualities you obtain and how your character my alter through the years...I am making habits and these habits will stay with me. Before they get too deep in my skin and my mind I want to change it. I want to change it as much as possible. I will not be a prisoner in my own habits and rituals.

This is my next chapter. Turning the pages to find something new and more delightful. To not only bear the fruit from my own personal day but to bear the fruit of others' days. To be a listening ear. To be intention with the approaches to conversation. To be keen. Alert. Alive for others. To limit my talk of personal struggles. To fight for a better me.

I learn to fight for a better me

There will always be a battle. A battle in our hearts or against the rest of the world. We don't realize we are fighting until it just gets too much. And we need to make a decision if we are going to keep on fighting. Its that point where our character shows and where we build more on our character.

Fighting was taught to me at an early stage in my life. I was weak and shy. Although the world changed me because it asked many things of me. It asked me to fight and if I don't fight I won't last in this world. I didn't know how this decision to fight would influence me in the way I perceived life and dealt with it.

We fight in what we believe to be true and when our beliefs are tested. We fight when our loves are being attacked or when ourselves are being attacked. We fight.

I'm a stubborn fighter. It is part of my temperament. I'm finding it easier to realize that I could be wrong or even better yet...I am wrong. Though, I am also finding it easier to fight for others. I will fight for them when they are being attacked. I'm trying to do that. I want to do that.

This semester has been interesting. Things have come up that were and still are interesting. I suppose its like that most of the time though. I want to know that these things that have tested me will continue to make me grow in ways that I should. These are things that prove to be important to me. Life will go faster and become more complex as well become older. It is our choice to move along with it and to allow it to mold us.

We will meet people in our lives that will test us. People we dislike or dislike us...people we love or try to love. People that are important and will be important...people we just meet. I do not want to let any one slow me down. Instead I want them to either push me ahead or grow with me as I grow.

In the beginning of the semester my heart was harden. I'm not so sure about what. It grew hard and misshapen. Slowly it has been awaken...I can feel myself awakening but then I hit a wall.

I get to consumed and involved into things that I prioritize...haha and school is definitely not one of them. I get too consumed and too involved. So now I am learning even more about myself with the help of individuals.

I fight for the new me. The adult me. I fight for things that should be right about me. I learn to drop my fights with things that are wrong with me. I learn to fight for a better me.

Or maybe just some of those childish things

I am not quite sure how I got to this point in my life. Where I have become so dependent on myself and dependent on very few people. At times I think that my heart has grown into a stone or some kind of crystal. The exterior is hard but the inside of it is where everything special is. I suppose I started to not wear my heart on sleeve and only really be me around a selective crowd. At times it isn't that noticeable and in fact I don't really care. In the end I got tired of getting hurt and letting myself get hurt. So natural I changed it over time. The pressure of life and what positions I felt like I was in turned me into coal. I got sort of harsh and annoyed. Into some kind of critic. I'm looking at life through my experiences and things that have polished away the things that I just can't carry on with. I suppose I matured and left childish things behind in some way. Although those things, those childish things, might have been better to keep. Or maybe just some of those childish things. I cannot erase what people have done to me or what people have done for me. I also can't erase what life events have done to me or do to me.

I look at the people in my life and I count the people who really know me and respect me and the number begins to decrease from the actual number of people I am friends with. I cannot quite explain why this is so. Some people have taken the time to get to know me and others asked me to take the time to get to know them.

When I search through the sea of people I know I begin to wonder what goes on through their head. I want to know what they have been through that makes them tick. I wonder why I am not like them or they aren't like me. I wonder why I cry at these times and they don't and vice versa.

There are some that say people don't change. I don't think that is true. I think people can change. They have their fondation, their personality temperaments. Their cognition can change to a certain extent and therefore their behaviors change. Life is stagnate and it cannot stop on a dime. Events and situations keep happening that effect people like a ripple effect.

Ever since Spain I have had a hard time being involved with the church. I never felt like I really belonged. My ideas kept being different. Community was different in my eyes. I felt mature by life than most adults there. As the years went on from my freshman year in college to now...I view church different. When I walk in I do not feel welcomed. It feels as though people come to hear a lecture and sing songs. mingle and then leave. the pressure to have community is so great that it feels incredibly fake. I have yet to shake a hand and see Gods face in their eyes. Although I actually did once. In California I shaked the hand of an old woman who greeted me into church. Her wrinkles told me stories of life and frustration. Her eyes told me of love and embrace. I'm not sure why I have lost my hope in church. But what I do know now is that the meanest people I have met have been affiliated with the church. They talked with smooth and suave words but it felt like a bite from a snake.

I have felt more welcomed in a bar then at church. Maybe because people are drinking which is very true. But I have had great conversations in them also. I have met people who have been through hell and actually talk about it. I have met more kind eyes then I have in church. Its weird because when I usually meet kind eyes in a church, the person is older...much older then me.

I have changed in numerous ways. Learned lessons that reach the sun. I've cried for days on end. I have done horrible things. I have tried to be kind and then tried some more. I have told somebody I loved them. I have been hurt many times. I have held the hand of the dying. I have felt love.. genuine love from just an embrace. Though I have not lived. I have not. I have more mountains to climb and sorrows to bare. I have oceans to swim and rivers to wade in. I have couches and blankets and friends to snuggle with still.

I still feel like a bird in it's cage and the door is open but I still cannot fly out of it.

I have this photo on my desk. It is of my mom and I. I'm probably 4. We are both wearing white shirts and bathing suits. Taking a walk on the beach and look for seashells. My hair is up in a pony tail and a ribbon tied in. I wish I could go back to this time. Where I was innocent and didn't think too much. Life was simple and understood.

Traumas are very interesting. A person goes through something that can't be describe in any way. And to work their way to some kind of new normal, takes a very long time. I'm sick of missing my mom. I kind of just want to be over it. But then i think about the series of events I went through, especially towards the end of my mom's life. I don't understand how I got this far in college and still sane. How did I get here and survive.

I saw life being sucked out of a living body. I saw what was like to see life and then death in a human being. I felt the attempts of my mind to explain what I was seeing and feeling.

During this time I feel vulnerable. I usually get depressed or something. But I don't feel depressed. I feel vulnerable. Like a small animal. The only thing they can rely on is their mother. Not even themselves. I feel like that. I wish didn't. I hate appearing weak and small.

It is amazing to me how I can see people's true colors through tragedy...how well people deal with it. How they try or try not to relate with you. Sometimes it is perplexing.

I do not like Halloween in college. People become selfish with the holiday. You have to be doing something. You can't just be sitting around watching a scary movie. You have to go out and do something. There is always a party. A party full of people. Mainly drunk people.

As the days get closer to Halloween...I am drifting a little bit away from people. In therapy they advise you to plan something on the day that you lost a loved one or something tragic happened on that day. If it is planned out in a flexible type plan, it limits freaking out or feeling lonely.

I planned a dinner. A dinner to celebrate how far I come. That I am sane. That grief has no hold on me in everyday life now. I'm starting to lose interesting in this dinner. I am angry. I'm sick of hearing people that they are going to be there...that if I don't want to go out the weekend of halloween...they will stay behind with me. For some I don't think its true and for others I do. I wish I could better explain myself but I cannot. If I could explain myself with no problem...I wouldn't be writing this.

5 years since I saw my mom. Since then I still feel like a bird in it's cage and the door is open but I still cannot fly out of it. Will I ever be able to? Or I'm going to keep looking out waiting for something or somebody to change me? I don't know. But I do know the only time I really think about this is around Halloween.

fall

Fall