Evolve or remain.

A lot changed this year. Some that I'll talk about, and some that I won't. Some that I saw coming, and some that I never could've expected. Some that I wish I could live again, some that I'll spend quite a while trying to forget. But 2019 was good. Really good. Despite the jam packed calendar and personal challenges. 2019 was really, really good- and I'm choosing to focus on that.  Because I could say that this was one of my worst years as far as my mental illness is concerned, and I could highlight why that's true, but I'd much rather sit here and tell you about how I let it all help me. This was the first year I was brave enough to open up about my mental illness. I started writing a lot more about what it's like to live with depression and anxiety, and consequently found myself buried in very intimate conversations about it too. Conversations I was never really ready for, but had been waiting to have at the same time. Conversations that forced...

The other day my professor for one of my lecture courses started the session by calling my name and asking me to read my paper in front of the class. I declined.  Writing is what I do and it's what I'm comfortable with, but it's also where I go with all the parts of me that I don't feel safe enough to speak about. That's where I go to put the feelings and ideas that make me uncomfortable or that highlight my insecurities, because there's nobody inside that paper trying to question it, criticize it, or (worst of all) give me an unsolicited opinion. But I didn't know how to make him understand that, so I just told him I'd pass. "He looks defeated," the person sitting next to me in class told me as my professor tucked my paper back into his binder.   My professor pulled my paper out a second time, motioning to me in hopes I'd change my mind. "This is really good," he said. "You're full of really good ideas and I...

This piece will be all over the place, similar to the way I've been for the longest time. Warning you in advance in case you'd like an out, signaling you to settle in if you're someone who would like to stay. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I talk a lot about how I have no regrets. How I've grown to appreciate the value of experience for everything that it is. How I've ended up as someone who can look back on my absolute worst memories and can still say, "at least that taught me something," or "at least I was able to grow from that" while genuinely believing it with all that I am. But it hasn't always been like that. I'm only able to value any of that now because there was a time in my life when I was the furthest thing from teachable. If I had to regret one thing, it'd have to be the time I spent thinking I knew all there was to know and that I always had to be right. I wasted a l...

It's so cool to sit here and write this post from a place, both emotionally and physically, that I didn't even think to be possible this time last year. So much has changed for me since the first day of my junior year. There's been so much growth. So much progress. I'm so much happier than I was a year ago today.  If you had told me this time last year that my job would require me to be up, dressed, and out the door by 7 a.m., I probably would've cried. So I guess I'm walking proof that things can change a little quicker than we tend to believe. I live for what I do now, and for mornings- but mostly for sunrises. I love those sky colors and quiet drives while the air is still cool and traffic doesn't exist quite yet. That's when I get a lot of my most genuine writing done. Maybe it's because I'm still groggy and the anticipation of waiting to find out what the day will hold fuels the creative part of me. Maybe it's because that's rea...

It's 6:52 a.m., and the maintenance man for my apartment building has just smiled at me and told me to have a great day at work. He's never seen me or spoken to me before. He doesn't know my name. He doesn't know what I do. And he doesn't have to . What he does know is the important stuff- that it's 6:52 a.m. on a Friday, and there's still dew on the grass from the chill of the night, and that the littlest efforts towards a human connection matter. You don't have to know people to be kind to them. It's 7:15 in the morning now and there's a young girl standing on the corner waiting for the bus. I can't help but wonder where she's going or who she's meeting. I wonder why she's alone. I wonder how far she walked to get there. I wonder what obscenely early hour she must've been up at, or if she even slept at all. I wonder if anyone has made her feel happy yet today, and doubt it by the way she keeps her head down and seems to be...

Okay yeah, I can't lie to you. I wouldn't lie to you. Writing isn't something I particularly love. The process is interesting and discovering myself more with every piece of work is humbling, but there's more to it than just that.  I think there are things that you need to understand about me and where I'm coming from before that makes any sense at all to you, so I'll lay it all out here now. I don't write for the sake of pleasing an audience, which tends to confuse most everyone. I don't write to gain followers or increase my page views. I don't write in an effort to be praised or critiqued.  Obligations and debts are dead to me here. I don't have anyone to answer to here. I speak my mind without interruption here and this is where I don't have anyone trying to argue with me or tell me how they would do it differently. This is where I don't have to listen to anyone try to convince me that writing is a waste of my time or a nonsense us...

Several weeks ago I sat down to work on one of these posts from my bedroom floor for the last time... and didn't know it. Several weeks ago, I couldn't hear echos coming back to me from the same walls that had been stuffed with the last 11 years of my wild little life. Several weeks ago I HAD to be sitting on my floor to get any writing done because my desk was overflowing with homework assignments, poetry drafts, half-full nail polish bottles and the Ibuprofen tablets that kept me standing through the toughest semester yet in terms of my mental health.  Things are a little bit different now.  My room is empty. There aren't clothes in the closet anymore, or artwork on every wall, or twinkle lights across the top of the curtains. There aren't yesterday's shoes in the corner and there's no smeared mascara on the pillowcases. There aren't loud guinea pig squeals coming from it anymore. It's clean, and quiet, and you can hardly tell that it hosted mor...