the mermaid on my wall and other reasons I love to live

As many of you know, I hate to throw up.
vomit, puke, blow chunks, disorgement, barf, regurgitate, the dirty dog
Call it what you may, I despise the feeling.
Many people say they feel so relieved after throwing up that they just let it come, and don't really mind.
I am not so easily quelled. I do feel better sometimes when its over, but its not enough relief for me to forget the memory of throwing up, plus the anticipation of throwing up is often just as bad to me as puking itself.
Its just like "Oh, I'm going to wallow here right next to the toilet, anticipating my DEATH." Its awful.
But.
This post is not really about puke, believe it or not.
There's this feeling I get deep down, and its straight from Satan himself. I know it is.
I think about all the things I have to do, to get where I'm going.
"Do I really have to take Physics? CAN I even pass Physics? What if I fail?"
Even with running, something I love to do, I find myself saying,
"Can I really run EVERYDAY for the rest of my life, like I have been?"
It seems so exhausting. Its too much.
I panic. I can't do it. I can't do any of these things.
I can sit in my room, doing calculus, watch my hands start to shake, and get sweaty all over just sitting there.
I can act like the cosmic purpose of my being enrolled in calculus was to teach me that I can't do any of these things.
And then I could cry. Like I used to.
OR.
I can look at the mermaid on my wall. A piece of construction paper with a mermaid drawn in marker by my niece Macey. Its beautiful. What you don't see is on the back. Macey asked me to draw a mermaid. I can NOT draw at all but I attempted to draw Ariel. Its alright. I gave it to her and she flipped it over and started to replicate it all by herself. What resulted is the most alien looking, distorted mermaid with spiky red hair that you have ever seen. But I love it.
Because, when you look at her five years of life, how a second ago I had to stick my finger in her mouth to keep her from swallowing carpet fuzz. It would've been hard for me to think of the day when I could put a marker in that little tard's hand and watch her create something all her own.
I'm reminded that the anticipation is the worst part. It seems impossible. But you wake up everyday and think "This is never going to work." But then in a little bit of time, you start doing the impossible.
How I was dreading this semester because of calculus. But then I wake up and I'm four weeks away from it being over and I have an A in the class.
You just do it somehow.

Bloggability

Some slight alterations in my life have been cause for much concern.
They changed the shower curtains to clear.
The weather is cold.
My water bottle smells weird.
All of the deluxe mixed nuts are gone.
My stomach issues have come back, causing me to not have run very much lately.

All of this brings me into this next issue, which is blogging.
I'm not very good at it. I look at other blogs, and my blog sucks.
Its just become something I am not good at, so I usually avoid it.
Other people write about things that matter.
They do fun things, like go out and live on their own, or raise families.
I sit in a dorm and do homework and laugh at things that really no one else would understand.
I have fun, don't get me wrong.
I just feel like I'm not really at a very bloggable point in my life. Nothing's happening that would make a difference to anyone else's day.
I don't have any advice or words of wisdom to offer anyone. I didn't think of some new revelation today that I just HAD to share with the world.
I just live a life that's exciting and fun and completely insignificant, and I'm fine with that for now, because at my worst day, I still feel like I'm moving forward. I guess that's the beauty of being stuck in a place that was created for training you for your future (college).
And I guess its good enough.
For now.

Failing

Failing is liberating. Sometimes.
Failing can teach you something. Sometimes.
Sometimes.
But sometimes,
Failing
Is
Just
Failing.
Like my calculus test.
I flunked it.
I failed.
I studied and did the work and everything that was required of me.
And then I failed.
But.
Sometimes.
Failing is enough to put a smile on your face when your failure is above the class average.
:)

a little bit of math

There's math. And I hope I'm not speaking too soon about this. I have a test on Thursday, so we'll see.

Math is liberating in the most frustrating way. 

You have a problem.

And a set of rules to solve that problem.

My foundation in algebra is not that great thanks to public education, but I'm getting better while learning all these calculus functions.

By the time I finish an assignment, I have found comfort and accomplishment comfort in solving clean, perfect problems within a set list of constraints.

I find myself wishing other problems were so easy.

maybe this post will turn out to be universally applicable but its really only meant for my specific situation so

sorry about that.

I've got time. I have time to figure out the reasons that I should hold back from throwing myself wholeheartedly, all of my being,  into the things I want. So forgive me if I am not thinking of those reasons right now.

I don't want to think about what will hurt if it doesn't work out. I don't care about what I will miss in pursuit of these things. I'm talking about a determined feeling that I only get every once in a while. Something that can only be expressed as an aggressive "Get that."

Sometimes, you do it. You go for what you feel. You do it and you don't know why or how you did it, why you wanted it in the first place. And then you look back and see that THAT was the hand of God, guiding it, blessing it, showing you that this is what He wanted for you all along. Its hard to find the path that God wants for you by looking out into the world for a sign of what you should do. And its hard to find because He puts it in you, he makes you do things for a reason, disguising it as a "feeling" or a "drive." Its been there all along.

So that is what I will do.

and yet...

I'm back at school again and in some ways it feels like I never left.
Its weird how much this place feels normal when about 5 months ago, I had no idea what it would be like.
Christmas break feels like a blur, when just two weeks ago, it felt like it was the only thing I was living for.
I feel like I'm learning so much, coming to so many revelations at once that I don't know what to do with any of them.
My drive back here was an interesting one because of this. Every song I put on, had something that I related to and I had a whole bunch of thoughts and things that I turned into determination to do certain things differently. Every song seemed to be exactly what my heart was saying and my mind was full of so many things that I have forgotten a lot of what I was supposed to do when I stepped out of the little world I had made in my car for two hours and got back to real life.
Sigh.

"Used to want time to run so quickly
Now crawling is fine
Cause the older I get the more
I see I need every moment
To let my roots grow down deep" - Jillian Edwards

just a dream

There's all these memories in my mind, and I'm reminiscing the good times.
Smiling faces, sunny days, full of spirit and lacking in cares.
2010 was chock full of memories.
It was the year of my high school graduation.
The year of 9 needtobreathe concerts.
Weekends, birthdays, holidays, summer nights.
The year that love came and went, came again and went again.
A cheer to all the victories 2010 brought for me.
A year of sweet dreams, butterflies, holding hands, skipping, wind-in-your-hair kind of moments.
A year of my best friends and family.
A year of college nights, getting to know people of all different backgrounds.
Embracing, understanding, respecting, and loving the differences between us all.
The year I learned that I can do anything, get through anything, and come out stronger on the flip side.

I'd like to travel back down a few roads I came to in 2010, correct some mistakes, build on this past year to make the next one even better- but other than that, the year is tucked away, under my belt, and I look back on it with the fondest of thoughts and wonder what the next one holds for me and all the wonderful people in my life.