10 December 2021
This past whirlwind of a semester has made me come to the realization that reflection is so important. It takes a lot to reflect and it takes a lot to not feel overwhelmed in an environment that sometimes has the ability to feel claustrophobic. I never really got homesick until this past month or so which is funny because it’s usually the opposite; you feel homesick in your first year and a bittersweet recognizance in your last. There are only six months until I leave this place and less than a day until I turn 22 which is unfathomable. A place I have come to love and hate in equal measure. A place that has hurt me and has cataloged my pain into words and late-night conversations. I do not wish to come back, and that is something most do not understand. But once you decide to leave a place behind you can’t come back. Leaving is different than leaving something behind. Leaving implies a return, leaving something behind implies that it is a figment of the past.
I fear if I allow myself to wholeheartedly feel the emotions I want to feel there is a chance to trip and fall backward into the void of feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed and claustrophobic seem like opposing forces but it has been through self-assurance that they are very much on the same scale. The way claustrophobia gives that sense of calmness, ears ringing, eyes stinging, chest seizing. I begin to wonder if I will ever breathe again. That is being overwhelmed. So, in conclusion, they are one and the same. It is often hard to differentiate between them and if I am to allow myself to feel everything I am meant to feel does that push the mind into a reset, into overdrive?
Life does not ever go according to plan. Although that isn’t the saying and it might seem pessimistic. I have begun to wonder if it is a good thing for life not to go according to plan and to sit with my hands clasped behind my head, as one does when trying to be the utter picture of relaxation, and let things flow naturally. If I make one decision over another what path will that take me in? I wonder furthermore if things would have been different, could have been different if I chose the other path. One winds up around and around and around until it pulls taut and everything turns a purplish-blue. The other might be one filled with all things associated with happiness: sunshine, rainbows, daisies what have you.
I am trying to plan things out. And since nothing ever goes according to plan it is hard to do so. To make lists of cities to go to. People to see. Monuments to take perfectly edited photos in front of only to discover that they are overwhelmingly crowded upon arrival. Nothing goes to plan and yet everything somehow works out. It works out the way it should even with large bumps and missteps looming in the road. It works out even if there needs to be a sense of overwhelming uncertainly and no plan to speak of.
Sometimes the best things come out of not having a plan: beginnings.
On to the next one.
BLOG IT BABY 