A Spot

*In one of my writing classes, my professor made us imagine that we had a spot somewhere in our chests. She asked us to explain not just the spot, but what surrounds in, in a page long project. Some did some metaphysical things, but it was meant to be personal and this was as personal as I could seem to make it. So yeah.

   I don't have just a spot anymore, I have a gaping hole. There is a gaping hold without an exit wound. There is a gaping hole without an entrance wound.

   They've tried to stitch it up. Many have tried. Many have failed. Some have come along with their needle and thread and just as soon as the hole starts to close, they make another tear. The hole comes back, only wider than before. Frayed.

   It's festering. The hole is festering, making itself wider and wider with each passing day. At first it was small, so small a doctor could not see it with an x-ray when I first complained.

   There is no visible wound, but there is a festering hole growing larger the more perfectionist "practitioners" attempt to fix it.

   They say I'm angry because I am Irish. Because I have red hair. Because I am short. But really it's the pain of a hole growing so large I feel as if I might implode that makes me angry. A hole no one sees. No one believes. No one else has. And it makes me bitter. I am alone with a hole and it makes me bitter. It is the lack of feeling that I feel the most.

   I don't complain anymore. It keeps them away so they do not try to fix my hole with needle and thread, but only tear at it instead. I don't complain and I pretend it does not exist. They believe me. If you cannot see the wound then the hole must not exist. My chest compromises of smooth, soft skin, of lungs, of a sternum, of a pulsating red mass. And a hole that does not exist.

  Is it natural?

  Does everyone cover their hole with skin and deny it's existence to the world?

  Does everyone feel this way, is if about to implode form a self-torn disease?

  Or is it just me?

  Destined to live alone, bitter, and denying the very existence of my core self?

On the Count of Four

I'm in a sort of state of shock.

But that's no matter.

It's the fact. I'm in a sort of state of shock right now and I can't seem to be able to explain why. Let's just say that the past 72 hours have been emotionally straining, culminating in a phone call this afternoon. Let's go with that.

I'm in a sort of state of shock in which I can't figure out where I'm supposed to go.

I've been noticing something lately about my friends. They've all been moving up in their lives, getting married, engaged, graduating college, getting new jobs, moving to new cities, having children, being promoted. And for some strange reason, I seem to be stuck.

There are a few things I'm aiming for in my life right now.

First, is to make it through school without failing or getting so stressed I drop out.

Second, is to get promoted at work so I feel like my true talents are being put to use.

Third is to fall in love.

And fourth is to start feeling like I actually have a glimpse of a future.

I feel so stuck, because there are things, something, that seem to be holding me back. I'm watching all these people move on with their lives, and I can't do a damn thing about it. It's truly frustrating me.

On the first count, I'm doing somewhat successful. I just want to graduate. Unfortunately, I've a few things in my way right now, such as a math class I  can't pass, and a whole other year in my future. All my friends save four or five are graduating in a mere 55 days. No such luck for me.

On the second count, I have reasons that are holding me back. Things that are really out of my control but I'm trying to take charge and push through. But despite my efforts, I feel as if my screams are becoming all for naught.

Third is a thing I've been trying. Seriously trying. And every time I think I might find a glimmer of light, something unfortunate happens. It happened again only recently. And it frustrates me because I feel as if I can't catch a break. That all of my friends are happy in their significant relationships, and I'm a long string of bad decisions and "in another life"'s. And as sad as it sound, for me this directly correlates to the fourth.

I keep seeing my friends move on into their future. Within a short period of time, I took giant leaps and experienced things that no one at my age should be forced to experience on their own. As a result, I feel as if I should at least be 5 years older than I actually am. I feel as if I'm 10 years older than I am. I feel as if I should have my future out because I'm a 30 year old, acting as if I'm 25 but in reality I'm only 20. I've got nothing, and such a large life ahead of me that I shouldn't be worrying quite yet.

But that doesn't stop me.

I keep seeing the significant people in my life make all of these worthwhile decisions, such as traveling out of the country and moving out of the state on a week's notice...and I can't help but wish I could be one of those people. I wish I could feel as if I have little to no responsibility to weight and tie me down.

It's funny because I spent 18 years of my life trying to void myself of all ties that would bind me, and as soon as I moved and got my job, I wound up getting attached.

I hate being attached.

For once in my life, I wish I had no responsibility. I wish that I could simply move from place to place, that I didn't have a job and a lease to tie me here. I want to leave the country. I want to go back home.

But I can't.

And I see all these people who are doing this, who are leaving me in order to move along. And I just want to shout to them "Stop! Please! Don't do this! Don't leave me here! Can't I convince you to stay?"

But I can't do that to them. I can't find it in my heart to ask anyone to stay in my life for just once. I can't find it in my heart because I feel as if they potentially have a fate and a future that lies outside of my own, and for me to take that away from them would be selfish.

I wish I could convince them to stay, but I can't take away their possibilities. As much as it kills me.

I just want to stop feeling so old. I wish I could let go for once, get rid of the ties that bind, and for once in my life, learn how to live. Learn how to speak to people and speak my mind. Simply learning to let go and fly.

A wise man tonight told me that if I fix one thing in my life, that it could potentially fix many other things.

If I could fix one thing in my life, what would it be? What could it be? What could be the one thing to fix that would help in all the other areas of my life that severely need help?

I need to learn to let go.

To let go and fly.

1...

2...

3...

Go.

Waking Up

I was pulling out of my parking spot at my apartment the other day, just like I have been doing at least once a day for the past ten months.

Ten months.

I don't know why this time it was so different. But all of a sudden I realized that I was pulling out in MY car, from MY parking spot, at MY apartment where I have been living, paying rent all on my own for the past ten months, the second place I've lived at on my own since I moved by myself to California.

It was like all of a sudden I came to this realization, as if I'd only been going through the motions until then.

I've been having these moments a lot over the past few years.

Moments where I suddenly just have this moment of clarity, when I finally realize that all I've been doing is going through the motions of living. I haven't been truly living until that one solitary moment when I realize that what I'm doing is an excuse for what we call life.

I pass through the days, not making much note of anything. It's become routine. Wake up after a restless night's sleep, go to school, study, go to class, go home, go to work, press buttons or direct traffic, go home, shower, spend some time on the internet before I attempt to sleep for the night. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Each day is the same lately. The same things happen, day in and day out. The moments that stick out are the moments that break me from the ordinary. I will remember yesterday because I had to run across Disneyland to change from a Fantasmic costume to a Haunted Mansion costume, a side-effect of working for the Happiest Place on Earth. It was hot outside, my make up had all run off by the time I got to costuming, where I had to fight with them to let me take my costumes out.

I remember that.

It was different from the millions of times where I've simply arrived at work in the correct costume, with no need to worry because I'd be working my scheduled shift. Simple.

Yesterday, for a brief moment, I lived. Even if just for a moment.

It used to be when I had these feelings, where I finally, for a moment, realize what's actually happening in my life, that I would remind myself that I am an actual citizen of Earth. I'm an actual living, breathing creation who moves and creates a life on their own.

I'm alive.

Lately, it's changed, to me being immovable, going through the simplistic things in life, without putting much thought or action into what I say or do, knowing full well that no matter what, I cannot change my fate, I cannot change what's going to happen. Despite my best attempts, I might not be able to change a damn thing because my life is this constant string of unimportant happenings and I am damned to face my fate. These moments are just a brief reminder in time that there is so much I could be capable of...if only I were able to live.

From alive to barely breathing.

These moments are fantastic in a way. To remind me of all the things I'm doing, of all the things I'm capable of. Maybe. Someday. If I try hard enough.

Each time I feel it, I feel as if I'm waking up from a long period of sleep, only to bat my eyelids, examine that it's still too early and my alarm won't go off for a few hours yet. And just like that, I'll fall asleep again.

These moments are the brief reminders that I will be forced to wake up soon.

I barely remember what being awake feels like. In the past few months, I've been in a state of shock for I had had a decent amount of time where I felt alive. Where everyday was an adventure, and I couldn't wait to wake up each morning and see what it was that I could accomplish. That was a great feeling to have.

Since it ended, it's like I permanently put myself to a state of waking unconsciousness.

It started with me not being able to sleep on my own. I averaged 20 minutes of good rest each night, if that. I spent my days a walking zombie, going through the actions. Unable to forget the feeling of being alive that I had had in my grasp, that I had played with and taken for granted. It soon went from that, to being used to the feeling of going around without a sense of life.

I forgot what it felt like to be awake.

Lately, I've been realizing this. I was looking for lipstick the other day, when suddenly I realized it was in the bag that I had taken out with us one night, and when I had gotten home that night, I placed it on my counter. In all the time that has passed, it hadn't moved.

It's like I've been stuck since that day.

But everything inside of me is trying to scream and yell at me to wake up. Slowly, but surely, I'm waking up. That moment in the car was the first of many. The moment where I realized that here I actually am, alive and breathing and moving and operating 2 ton moving vehicles with nothing more than 8 fingers and five toes. The moment where I found my lipstick right where I'd left it all those months ago. That moment where I ran from one side of Disneyland to the other and back again.

They're all moments begging me to wake up.

Right now, it's too early in the morning. I'm batting my eyes, glancing at my clock, and rolling back over to go back to sleep.

But soon my alarm will go off. Soon, I will feel as if the world is mine once more.

I'm beginning to wake up again.

I'm going to live.

Learning is Everywhere

Learning is everywhere.

That’s the campy idea behind going to a sort of prestigious university. While on their hour-long tours, which is often the make or break point for many high school Juniors or Seniors on whether or not they chose to attend the university, they promote this idea from the moment they leave the Visitor’s Lounge. Learning is everywhere you go.

Look at this student union. See them studying? Learning is everywhere.

Look at this building that’s over a hundred years old. Student’s classrooms are in there. Learning is everywhere.

Look at these state of the art housing options. See how they have multiple lounges which include television and study spaces? Learning is everywhere.

Look at this fountain. See the students surrounding it, enraptured in their intelligent conversations with their classmates as they sunbathe? Learning is everywhere.

Learning. Is. Everywhere.

Each day I sit by the fountain in front of the library at Chapman University. Each day I watch the guided tours, sometimes with five potentials and their parents, sometimes with forty-five potentials and their entire family. Each day they walk past the fountain, speaking about the library, the Argyros Business School (which is what many of the Asian’s only interest is), and the five pillars of education of Chapman (or whatever the symbolic statement actually is, as it is never mentioned again after the first day of orientation). They walk through the fountain on their tours everyday, examining the learning that is occurring everywhere.

Sometimes the students look bored out of their minds. Usually those are the ones who wind up at the local community college or perhaps a state school. Others look truly intrigued. Some continuously ask questions about Greek life so that they will be able to forget the fact that they’re in a somewhat prestigious university. Others ask about study abroad options, already looking for a way out. The younger siblings shout about wanting to go to Disneyland soon as soon as the tour guide reaches the part of the tour where the statue of Chapman himself is supposedly facing the general direction of the theme park only 6.2 miles away. Little do the parents realize that Disney is a social way of life here, and if they send their child to Chapman, they might as well buy them an annual pass because that’s where they’ll spend most of their time (even if they should be in class).

Learning is everywhere?

The fountain is almost as good as a place as Disneyland to sit and watch people. Not just the frustrated teenagers that walk by on tours, but those who actually made it past the tour and onto campus for the next four to seven years of their life.

How did any of us end up here?

I remembered my own tour of Chapman, already knowing that I wanted to go to school here, not only because of its Creative Writing program (something of which I balk at now) but also because of it’s close proximity to the Most Magical Place on Earth. Let’s be honest here. I remembered walking down the AF Walkway, towards the theatre and music school, and looking down the street, and seeing how absolutely quaint it was. I could imagine myself renting out one of the houses down the street, and studying under the large oak tree.

Learning is everywhere.

The more I look around the fountain in front of the library, the more I laugh about my final decision to come to Chapman in the first place. True, out of all the other schools that I applied to (and technically attended in many cases), Chapman felt the most like home. But I laugh at the reasons for which I came in the first place. Back when I thought California was where I was meant to be. Back when I thought I was going to be the most studious thing in the world and maintain my 4.0 average. Back before I learned how nearly impossible it is to live on your own in the state of California, when you have no support from your family, and spend more time working your slightly-above-minimum-wage job at Disneyland than you do hitting the books. Back before I learned that this might not be what I want to do with my life after all.

Learning is everywhere.

I look around the fountain at Chapman and see the other students and I question how any of us ended up here. Were any of them actually happy with their decision to come here (other than the students at Dodge whom, for some reason or other were always an exception)? I can look around the fountain and see so many students, wearing the Greek letters, talking about how drunk they got at the last fraternity party, or their plans for the upcoming weekend.

Is this what we’ve come to?

Learning is everywhere?

Around the fountain, there are students everywhere. Sometimes photographers come and take pictures of us, or of their models standing barefoot in the shallow side of the fountain. Sometimes they’re reading some smartly bound book, looking inquisitive. If they’re graduating, they’re overjoyed for the end of their learning.

Students sit with their laptops open to Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter…anything where they can discover more about the world outside of themselves. Learning is everywhere. Even if learning is discovering that the guy they think is hot in their Friday afternoon class is Single. They spend hours on their laptops, complaining all the while that they have so much homework to do and there’s no way they can finish it in time, as they click “Attend” to that night’s rage.

They sit in circles on the stone walls that jut out awkwardly every ten or so feet surrounding the fountain, gossiping about their friends. Some catch friends from last semester up on their lives since they had last seen one another. At such a sort of prestigious university, connections are always being made, and it’s easy to forget or move on from the people that you shared such a connection with in last semester’s Introduction to Analytics course.

The tours traverse their way through campus, and across the fountain, dodging in and out of bikers and skateboarders, telling facts about the sort of prestigious university to only half interested high school students. I could tell them the real facts about life out here, I think. If they don’t have a mommy and daddy to anchor them down, I can give them all the best tips and tricks for surviving in the society of the upper middle class white kids of Chapman University. They might not learn about the school, but they’ll certainly receive an education. Which is what we’re here for, right? Education?

Learning is everywhere after all.

Passenger

"I don't want to be your friend anymore."

I was 5. In Kindergarten at the school down the street. One of my closest friends, I think her name started with a T, just relayed this information to me.

God, kids can be harsh.

Luckily, just as my eyes were welling with tears, my dad pulled up to the school's drive and I managed to run into his car before they let loose. He knew what was wrong, and immediately he drove in the opposite direction of home. We traveled down Power Road until it left the city, and turned into a wildlife reserve, trailing around the Salt Lake.

We drove and we talked about things that weren't bothering us. And I forgot all about the girl who's name might have started with T.

"Everything will be ok," he told me.

It was another day, when I was 13, stressing about my life in Junior High. I'd gotten out of school early, he did not have to work. But neither of us felt like going home. And so we drove, this time down Brown, up the mountain, talking as we curved up the winding paths.

Age 16 and in High School. It was a Saturday, and only a week before, we'd gotten a foreign exchange student. The two of us didn't quite click at first. And so my dad took us on a drive, far up north, to a lake we'd gone to when I was 4 when we had gone camping. We walked along the water's edge, and then made the drive back down the mountains, and we started singing Disney songs. My dad and I in English, my then-on sister in French.

Age 18 and my dad was going to drive me to California, to college at Chapman University. I was to be the first person in the family to ever earn a Bachelor's degree. He was so proud of me.

That was a drive we never got to make.

I spent a lot of time in the car with my dad.

He took me to all the places I know. Everything from picking me up from school and driving me home, to my first ever job, out to Phoenix, to Disneyland all those times, up to the mountains, across the country to North Carolina and Florida, both times to San Francisco. He was the one who taught me how to drive. All the time I spent with my dad in the car, was all the time we got to know one another. Many times, in the early morning drives to Las Vegas, he and I would be the only ones awake in the car, and we'd spend the few precious hours speaking quietly, getting to know one another. We told each other our biggest secrets in the car. He learned about the first boy I ever fell in love with on a drive, and he told me the story of how he failed college Algebra three times when he was younger.

After the drives stopped, it never quite hit me why I had the strange urges to get on the freeway and simply drive. I never quite understood why the idea of a commute never bothered me. Or why I had the desire to explore the hill past the Target on Meats, to learn as much as I could about my new surroundings.

I never understood this feeling, until I realized that my fondest memories of my childhood took place on the road, in a car. My dad introduced me to the world as I sat in the passenger seat. It was a world that I hungered to know.

Now I sit in the driver's seat, driving myself too and fro in a strange city, far away from home. But I don't mind.

I miss my dad a lot lately. I miss the way when we would drive, how he'd put his hand on mine and smile at me. I miss his cough, and his sneeze which scared everyone each time it happened. I miss how we'd always go to the movies, miss the way he and I challenged each other to be our better selves. I miss when he would bring home flowers for my mom, miss the way he and I could make up shit that anyone could believe because we were that good. If our relationship were literature, he would be Mr. Bennet and I would be Elizabeth.

I miss the drives, when I was able to sit in the passenger side. I miss being a passenger as my dad helped lead me, not only down the road, but through life.

I'm 20 now. Twenty years old, which means I've been street legal for four years. One-fifth of my life. For two of those years, I've been driving myself, unguided, and not knowing where to go, only relying on the tips my dad gave me so long ago. I don't want to be the driver forever. I want to switch off and on, from passenger to driver.

And, eventually, there will come a day when I will be driving someone through their life as well. Someday there might be someone, who's name may begin with T, and I'll be the one driving down the road, out of the city and into the wildlife reserve, as we talk about all the things that don't bother us. And I'll be the one to say "everything will be ok".

And that scares me. I have a lot to compete with.

Despite the accidents, being in the car makes me feel as if nothing can go wrong. As long as I'm in the car, I'm going to be ok. No matter if it's a drive back home where I'm crying because my heart was broken, no matter if someone's decided they don't want to be my friend anymore, no matter if it's a 6 hour drive just to go home and see where my dad now rests in peace, nothing was going to go wrong.

"Everything will be ok."

Words.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I've been told before that cussing is no way in which to express yourself. That the wonder's of the English language can accurately portray your emotions without the use of profanity. That intelligent people don't cuss. Well, guess what. My fucking IQ is out of the roof, and my favorite word is cunt.

Fuck.

Words are a way in which we express ourselves. Yet, I find it difficult to portray anything through the use of words. Despite being a writer, words are not my friend. They run from me, find themselves slippery, just outside of my grasp.

Writing is the only means in which I can express myself much these days, and so it is to writing I turn.

Words, what are words?

I never understood this glimpse into the metamorphosis, until just recently. What are words? Can words accurately describe anything outside of pure appearance? Sure, words can tell you that the door is a rich mahogany, heavy to pull open, but simple to close shut in the ornate doorframe. But, can words accurately describe the emotions going through our mind as we close that door, knowing it is the last time, knowing that everything is about to change the minute you walk through?

I don't think they can.

Words are only skin deep. Words can't explain the heart and soul of a person, place or thing. This has been a sense of frustration for me lately, because I can't understand why a person makes me feel a certain way, just that they do.

Words are failing now.

I don't understand this feeling. Fuck.

If life were different....

I keep thinking that phrase.

If life were different then maybe the situation would be different. But that's the frustrating part. Life is not different. Things are the way they are. It's a big old bound up complicated piece of shit that won't pass.

I feel like our lives, these lives, would have gone on without one another. In another life we would have been inseparable.  And then something strange happened in this life, causing a chasm, if you will. Suddenly, the lines between this life and that life were mixed.

And here we are.

We're stuck, halfway in this life, halfway in that life.

Fuck.

And it's beginning to kill me because I want that life. Of us being inseparable. If life were different, I wouldn't have to be so confused about how I feel about you.

You, from time to occasional time, say how much it bothers you. Words are not my friends. And thus I can't put it into words how it is the same for me. Because if life were different, we both know exactly how things would pan out. We both know that in another life, things wouldn't be this complicated. In another life, these things would be natural.

I can't say the words for which my feelings are trying to convey because they are too big, too complicated and I'm afraid to give a voice to the thoughts which plague my mind.

Words, what are words?

Sometimes I have perfect control over these thoughts and feelings. Manage to quell them, make them dwindle until there is nothing left to give and life continues on as if that's how it's meant to be. And then something happens, on any night, on a night like tonight, where it all comes rushing back. These things that I can't hold suppress for so much longer.

Fuck fuck fuck.

I wish life were different.

Others see it. We see it. And yet we're stuck in the continuum of having two separate lives where the lines somehow got blurred together. And there's nothing we can do about it. But no regrets.

There's so many things to say, and yet nothing said. Words don't get to the core of a person, they cannot accurately describe what makes a person a person. We're stuck at the surface, stuck on a metaphysical level which is nothing of what is the truth in actuality.

What are words?

The Experience of Life and Death

I remember my first run in with death.

I was 4 years old. My family had a guinea pig named Buddy. One day, I came home from preschool after catching a ride with my babysitter. It was raining, as it usually seems to be doing on days with such significance as this. My brother was already home from middle school, and when my mom let me in the front door of the house, I saw him crying on the stairs.

I was too young to understand at that point. But I knew that Buddy was gone.

When I was seven, I'd grown up enough to understand that experience and understand that in a house such as mine, where we had so many animals, and so many lives to look after and consider, that this would be a natural progression. Animals died. However, I did not understand what it meant when my dad told me that my grandmother had had to put her dog, a little Chihuahua, to sleep.

Two months later, I asked my mom if he'd woken up yet. All she could do was stare at me, looking as if she was either going to cry or burst out into tears.

I understood it's meaning at age 9 when my family came home from brunch at the IHOP to discover that my dog Sheba, the one who had guarded me in my bedroom the first five years of my life when I slept each night, had defecated all around the house and was now lying unconscious on the kitchen tile. We put her to sleep too, only to end the misery that would have come if we'd allowed to her live her natural remaining days.

That same year, my grandmother died, a victim of a poor heart. It was a Wednesday. Ironically enough, the Monday just before, she had gone to the doctor and had been deemed healthy. When she left the car that day, I didn't realize that that would be the last time I would ever see her. I didn't understand the fact that my selfish childhood ways, in which I didn't want to spend time with her because I didn't understand the difference and significance of age, that my resilience to not give her a hug would haunt me for the rest of my life.

We didn't find her until Friday.

It wasn't a surprise at age 14 when my dog, who'd been taken to my house as a puppy just a month after I was born, died while my family was on vacation in Disney World.

I'd seen it coming a long time coming.

Around age 15 death was something that surrounded me almost constantly. It is around this age when these newfound teenagers begin to question their existence. And once downtrodden by life, having someone find something wrong in everything they do, to find themselves stressed, a line of explosives down their body, and the slightest wrong movement will make them explode. At age 15, my best friend of the time and I shared something very deep in common. We felt worthless, as if life was at its end and there was no use.

I contemplated my death each day, wondering how I'd go. On one occasion, maybe twice, I'd tried to end it then and there. I welcomed death.

She did too. And she almost didn't survive. Neither of us did. But we made it.

But at age 15, my grandmother, who'd been ill for years, was reaching her final moments. I got the phone call right after class that she was sitting in a hospital room in Nevada, each of her organs killing itself one by one. And while I wanted nothing more for my own life to end, I did not want this. It was a time when I still believed in God. And so I prayed for her life.

She survived.

I survived.

But death didn't leave me. It became a fact of life. At age 17, almost 18, that same grandmother finally passed. She was cremated and her ashes brought back to Arizona. That was the first time I'd seen heppa, as we spread them. Heppa, an almost daily conversation topic of mine now due to work. Heppa, all of life and what made a person in some grayish substance lighter than sand.

At age 18, my dad died. We'd had 2 days notice but it wasn't enough. It's never enough. We rushed to the hospice and made it moments after his passing. He was gone. I cried and cried for 2 hours that day.

I haven't shed another tear since.

At age almost 20 now, I still question this idea of mortality. I work at a Haunted Mansion, a place where death is a commonplace fact, whether it be for show or not. It happens. It's a fact of life in which I have accepted. I still contemplate my own life at times, but unlike age 15, I do not wish it to end, rather to know what it will bring to me.

There's something beautiful in this idea of darkness. I believe in the beauty of darkness. Not just of death, but of things as a whole. I do not fantasize death. No.

But I still ponder.

It's a fact of life I've learned to accept.

People tend to confuse this with my personality. They seem to think that because I am of this mindset, I am automatically deemed to be depressing. Depression was something I battled, and let me tell you, this is nothing like it. Despite this being my interest, I'm still a happy personality. I laugh, and I smile, and I enjoy life.

I've come too close to death for me to not enjoy life.

I try to take risks, and go out of my way to make others happy. Yes, admittedly, I'm not Little Miss Sunshine all the time. I find that fake and I have great respect for those who can genuinely be 100% that all the time. As for myself, I'd rather be one hundred percent me.

I am a happy person. But maybe my definition of happiness is different from others. I am happy in the fact that I love my family, I love my friends, I love my job, I'm surviving life, I'm on my own, I'm free to make my own decisions, and have a life worth living. It makes me happy to watch movies by Tim Burton, to look through creepy photos on Tumblr of the darker aspects of life, to watch horrifying TV shows and sit on the edge of my seat, and to enjoy playfully scaring at work.

I am happy.

I have come to understand that life ends at some point, whether we want it to or not. Whether we understand it's definition or significance or not. Whether or not we're ready for it or if the people in our lives are ready for it. It ends. And I'd rather accept that fact, and die knowing that I did what made me happiest in my lifetime.

So if what makes me happy is different than what makes you happy, then so be it.

But don't go around thinking I'm not happy.

Because in truth I'm probably the happiest sadistic person you'll ever know.

And I'm ok with that.

Passion

Are there just certain things that just all of a sudden pop into your life and inspire you so much?

Can I have you folks do me a favor?

Can you watch this? Maybe not even just watch. But listen. At least listen to this before you continue reading.

Listen to the way the narrator speaks, in conjunction with the music.

Isn't it gorgeous?

I watched this for the first time last night and was immediately in awe. Absolute and complete awe. Not necessarily because of the subject matter, but by the way that the narrator uses and speaks these words.

To this day.

So much power. So much force. And, you know, the subject is true as well. Relatable. Believable. True.

This is what I want to be like.

The way that the narrator speaks is the way that I want to write. I want to control my words and give them as much effect and power as he does. I want people to go through all these ranges of emotions, from the early effects of innocence, to soon feeling the pain, the trials, the suffering, and finally to feel the inspiration and rising of spirits within themselves.

I have the power to create power.

For the first time in my life I feel like I'm good enough for something.

Somehow this is beginning to relate back to that clip. For years of my early life, I was happy. But the first time I was called fat, that was it for me. I wasn't good enough for anything. For baseball, for dancing, for acting... Even to this day I'm not of the belief I'm pretty enough for anything, especially a relationship.

To this day, I still have given up all hope on these things, even if not willingly. 

I gave up on sports.

I gave up on dancing.

Most of all, I gave up on my love of acting.

I'm breaking the cycle though. I refuse to give up on this now. I'm good enough to write. I'm good enough for my job now. I like what I do and they make me legitimately happy.

My writing style is changing lately. Maybe it's the fact that I'm older, more mature. Maybe the fact that the majority of what I'm writing lately is actually creative nonfiction. The fact that I'm a bit more hardened by life. That I've changed.

And I want to write like this. To evoke the emotion of passion. That's what that feeling really is. Passion, which everyone has. Passion is my passion.

I dunno.

But my writing is different.

And it's starting to get noticed. Rather than giving you some form of a creative muse tonight, all I want to really do is thank you.

I want to thank those of you who are reading, whether we talk or not. I want to thank those of you who have stepped out of their ways to tell me how much they enjoy my writing. I want to thank everyone.

See, with restarting this, I've realized the passion that I have for writing. Over the past couple years or so, with my lack of inspiration amongst other things, I've forgotten why I even bother with writing. But then when you read these things, you remind me why. You remind me what it is that I truly want to do with my life.

I want to write.

I love my job at Disney. I would be content doing this for the rest of my life. Really and truly. But there's something about writing.

I have passion.

And passion is something of worth.

Friend Zoned

We have a lot of friends in our lives. Hell, nowadays, if someone isn't our mortal enemy, then they're our friend. And there's a lot of types of friends.

Best friends.

Old friends.

Facebook friends.

Friends.

Friends with benefits.

Platonic friends.

More than friends.

Mutual friends.

"Just friends".

Close friends.

Forced friends.

The list goes on. On one hand I can list the number of best friends I've had over my lifetime. It seems like, as time passed on, one would appear just as another was in the process of disappearing.

That's the funny thing bout friends: They have a habit of disappearing.

I remember one of my first ever friends in elementary school. Kindergarten, to be exact. I think her name was Kayla and she used to live next to our school, which was only down the road from my house. We hung out just about everyday and we sat next to one another in our afternoon class.

Then one day, we were playing at the school's playground with her older brother, and she looks over at me and says "I don't want to be your friend anymore". I was 5. I was heartbroken because Kayla had been my best friend. Luckily, my dad had just pulled up to pick me up, and so I ran crying to his car.

I didn't go to afternoon class after that.

Then when I was 8, I was upset after my best friend cheated at Uno. At least 8 year old me thought she'd cheated. We'd been friends forever, but that didn't stop me from drawing a mean picture of her, which I immediately tore up and threw away. But she found it, told my teacher, and suddenly my entire school hated me and I lost my best friend.

The same year I met the girl I've been best friends with for 11 years. We went through everything together, from transferring schools, to theatre, to Disneyland to high school, to our lives changing forever. We've been through thick and thin together.

But in the past year or so, I've noticed us distancing ourselves from one another. Hell, homegirl didn't even tell me she was engaged. We hardly talk and best friend seems to be routine, but something that neither of us is really making an effort to maintain. And it scares me because I don't know what I'd do without her in my life forever. But I'm afraid that's the way it's beginning to look.

Then my current best friend now, a boy I haven't even met living on the other side of the country. Without him, I wouldn't have survived much of the past few years. He'll get a big head reading this, but it's true. We've got plans to take over the world together. Literally. But I've seen what's happened between me and friends before, and I don't want that to happen here.

Lots of things about the word "friend" annoy me. It doesn't seem like it can truly convey everything that a person is.

I remember being with the first guy I was ever romantically involved with before we were anything official (which we never were) and him being on the phone and saying he was "hanging out with a friend". It killed me a little bit to hear, especially because I regarded him as so much more than a friend.

Friend.

Friend. Friend. Friend. Friend. Friend.

It's a 6 letter word with 600 connotations. It's a dangerous word because it can imply so many things, and one usage of the word can mean different things to different people because of their own experiences.

I've been friend zoned.

I've friend zoned.

But there's a lot of different ways in which to do it, either for your protection or for theirs.

What is a friend?

Why do I care? If friends are a thing constantly changing, constantly moving forward, adding and multiplying...then why do I care what it is?

There is no one singular meaning to the word "friend".

A friend is just something that happens. And we don't always understand why.

To be a friend, is to know that you will be a piece of someone for the rest of their lives.

November 2nd.

Has there ever been a date or a time that seems to haunt you?

For me, in the last three years, at least (that's as far as I can remember), I always seem to look at the clock at 9:11 every day.

I don't mean that it seems like everyday. No.

Literally every single day.

At least once. Sometimes at both 9:11's.

It's been something that's plagued me since I first noticed the affliction. What was the significance of 9:11. What is the significance, even today? I don't understand. A part of me feels like there's something that has happened, or will happen at 9:11 someday. And so, as fate's funny way of getting me ready, it forces me to see that time, over and over again. Every day. Until it happens.

Or to make me think back to events that may have taken place at 9:11. I mean, the time of day. Other connotations are obvious.

I don't know what it is, but it mystifies me still.

Just like each time November 2nd seems to roll around. For the past few years, this seems to be a date of some significance in some way or another.

My grandmother died this day when I was 9.

I met my best friend at home this day when I was 8. Well, actually talked to her.

It was the day my first "boyfriend" ever asked me out.

I moved in with one of my best friends on November 2nd.

And it was the date of my last dance, the first where I actually brought a date not out of requirement who meant something more than a friend. It was the day I finally learned to let go.

It seems like November 2nd has some sort of significance in my life in addition to 9:11. Or maybe I'm going crazy. But that day has always had some sort of aura that surrounds it, I don't know why. There's always this weird feeling I get, reminding me that something great is going to happen on that day in the future. Or maybe it already happened, on the day that I learned to forget, and that feeling will return no more.

Part of me, ironically, wants to get married on November 2nd.

Understandably, that's a bit of a stretch, from one conversation topic to another. But it's a statement that needed to be voiced. A part of me wants to get married on that day because a part of me thinks that something big will happen on that day, and it will be the day, maybe this year, maybe some other year, when I meet the one, if such a thing exists. Or the day that I'm asked out for the first last time.

I'm a hopeless romantic in many ways. If you haven't realized this by this point in my writing, then maybe you should refer to any and all of my pieces of old. Love is a big part of who I am, whether begrudgingly or hopefully. It just is. And so, as many young girls do, I dreamed of the day of my wedding. And how the day wouldn't be a day conveniently chosen, but one with purpose, thought out and meaningful. It would be an anniversary of the first date, or of the date we first met. Maybe November 2nd will be that day. And maybe it won't.

Maybe something will happen at 9:11 on November 2nd.

Something that will change my life forever.

I don't know if I'll ever know. But these things can't be coincidence, can they? The times or dates throughout history that have repeatedly been something noteworthy...those have to mean something don't they?

It has to mean something.

Double Entendre

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

That was the first sound that Denise heard as she slowly gained consciousness. The bright white lights infiltrated her eyes, forcing her to squint, trying to block out all light. The beeping continued, keeping time with her heart.

She was alive.

That’s what she reminded herself as she ever so slowly came back to consciousness, as she slowly realized that she was in a hospital, tied up to God knows how many machines. Her eyes opened, and she could see, if only blurry at first, that she was in a hospital bed. She’d been here once, years ago when she’d had her tonsils removed, and recognized it as UC Irvine Medical Center. Out the window, the sky was clear, and the tall palms swayed in the winds and the traffic from the 5 nearby.

There was knock on the door, and as is usual of hospitals, they didn’t wait for a response before walking in. A nurse dressed in blues holding a chart stepped in, looked at her, and mumbled something about her being awake now, and then checked the monitor.

“How are you feeling?”

“Good. I’m sorry, but what happened?”

The nurse looked at Denise with no expression on her thin face. “You were in an accident. There’s a state psychologist outside waiting to talk to you.  Can I send him in?”

An accident?

Denise’s last memory before waking up was fuzzy. Had she even been driving? She could recall almost nothing, just the pain of stiffness in her joints.

          How long had she been unconscious?


(Author's Note: I wrote this portion for a Noir piece in class, but I actually intend to use in it another piece I'm writing in which a person can delete memories of a person.)

Red String of Fate

I don't know if I believe in soul mates.

That there are two people in the world, and no matter what, they always will find each other. It sure is a nice thing to think about, that there is someone in the world that is made for you. And that you're made for them. And everything about your hearts and souls is connected, intertwined, and that from the moment you meet each other, fate has taken hold and there's nothing you can do.

I'm a particular romanticizer about the Red String of Fate. It states that there is an invisible string that connects the fingers of soul mates. That the string, over time, can get tangled and messed up, but it will never break. And in the end they will always come back for one another. I think it's romantic. Almost as romantic as realizing that the stereotypical image of a heart comes from two human hearts being sewn together. Which makes sense why broken hearts look as they do.

But I just don't know if I actually believe in the idea of soul mates. Is there only just one person in this world who is meant for you? Or is there one perfect person for you at a time and then when you change, that person changes too? So when I'm 14 and innocent still, could Bob be the one meant for me (even if I haven't met him yet), but then when I'm 21 and hardened by life and heartbroken by 17 year old Bob who was changed by 15 year old Denise, is Steven my actual soul mate?

I do think that everything happens for a reason.

I believe that there are people that come into our life for a specific person. That there are people who come into our life, that are meant to come into our life, to give us some higher purpose. I believe that the first boy I ever fell in "love" with (well, I thought it was love at the time, but to be fair I was 16 and naive) introduced me to the best person in my life, my best friend, who I've yet to meet. That boy came into my life, ruined it in many ways, in order for me to find a higher happiness.

There are many cases like that, where things happen in order for you to gain a higher knowledge and appreciation out of life. I know why things happen. I know why I didn't move away for my first year of college, I know why I graduated high school a year early, all so that I could spend my dad's last year of life by his side rather than 1000 miles away at a school I couldn't care less about.

Soul mates seems like it could be a thing. But I have a hard time believing it because people change, unexpected things happen, but does all of this happen so that we can meet "the one"?

And what happens if you don't have a soul mate?

I met a guy in the early part of this year who was really nice, really kind. We went on a few dates. He was good and sweet and we had so much in common. We actually could have been something, I believe. That is, if I hadn't been changed by others I'd met before him. This new boy could have been the soul mate of 18 year old Chelsea, who wanted something like that.

But now, at nearly 20, I realize that that's not what makes me happy because the one of late that has made me happiest was the complete opposite. Not a nice guy, not sweet, and yet he made me realize what I truly think could be a potential. And so I ran from the guy that could have once been connected to my red string.

The Red String of Fate can pull, twist, tangle...but never break.

But do I have a red string? Because who I am now is different from who I am yesterday and who I will be tomorrow. Sometimes I think I should learn how to read palms, to see the love line and see if it intersects and runs together, or maybe my soul mate's line is broken before it meets mine.

Will I be alone and without a red string?

People say that I'm young and that I just haven't met the right person yet. Well, obviously this is true. But you begin to wonder at the age of 20 when you've never changed your Facebook status to saying "In a Relationship" ever, whether or not you ever will. And you begin to wonder when you'll finally give up. Because giving up almost seems like the better option after 20 years of being lonely. And how, after 20 years of living, and knowing all of these people, and loving your own life, you can't seem to find anyone who feels anything towards you in such a way.

I'm beginning to give up on the idea of a soul mate. At least a romantic one.

There are people in my life that I was meant to meet. There are people who I will be forever changed by, either in a bad way or a good way. In the end, it's all for the better. It's a matter of getting over the bad to recognize the good.

There will always be The One That Got Away.

There will always be the Beautiful Mistake.

There will always be regrets, or the one you should have looked closer at when you had the chance.

Some people then believe in The One.

The red string of fate can be stretched, tangled, and twisted...but never broken.

But what if it can?