I have this weird little quirk.

Well, I have many quirks, but there is one in particular that's been on my mind lately.

I am fundamentally inept at letting the people who are important to me know how important they really are. I think it has something to do with not wanting to come off too enthusiastic, or being afraid that these feelings wont be reciprocated, of not knowing how to show it, or of just coming across as "emotional".

Because, the people who are most important to me are the obvious ones, but they are also some of the people you would never guess. People I don't talk to everyday, or don't know the best. These people may never realize how much they mean to me, and that's a shame.

But that doesn't mean that they stop being important, and that doesn't mean that I don't wish everyday that I could come up with a way of letting them know.

Freeze

Every now and then, only not as frequently as that phrasing makes it sound, I will have a moment - an instence - of pure contentment. A moment where I think, if I could just freeze time, if I could just live and re-live this moment for the rest of existence, I would be happy. I remember the first time I had this thought, at least the first time in my semi-adult existence, and I remember most of them that have happened since. They're all different. Some seem a little silly, others, idyllic. Almost all naive. But I can still remember the ways these moments made me feel, the assurance, the relief they offered.

It's funny to think how, if I had had my way, I could be stuck under a tree in the rain, or staring contentedly at someone I used to know so well, or looking up at a set of bright stadium lights.

But living in any one of these would have meant missing out on every other moment that followed. It would mean I would be perpetually 16 and happy, or 17 and confident, or anything else that I have been. But it would also mean being nothing that I am.

Because I can't be anything other than the product of my troubles, finding refuge in the light of my days. I don't know how. And I'm okay with that.

More than okay.

Seasons

I was once told that there is a seasonality to life beyond the changing of the natural world around us - in our attitudes, relationships, and thoughts. Lately, this has been proving itself true in my life. The easiest way for me to describe the past couple weeks of my life is as being hot and cold. One minute I'm excelling, the next I'm stressing. One day I'm everyone's friend, the next I'm feeling like no one cares.

Each morning I wake up at 7 to get ready for class, and everyday while I'm riding the bus I have this moment where I catch a glimpse of  the sun really beginning to start to poke through the morning fog with some force, and I have this momentum inside of me to live and be happy doing it. And then, bit by bit  through out the day, little pieces of that fall away and are replaced by  the obstacles that cross my path, and by the end of the day sleep feels like my closest friend. And it's exhausting.

It seems like consistency is the hardest thing to find in life.

Dear Slimfast,

How can you taste so decent, yet smell so ridiculously gross?

I don't get it.

Coping

Yesterday, I found out that someone I went to high school with killed himself. I was never super close with him, but he was always in my classes and was in general a pretty cool, talented guy. Although, to be honest, I haven't paid him much thought in a while.

But now, he's all I can think about. How long he's wanted to do it. How he did it. What things would have been like if we had been close in high school. What his friends and family must feel. How I would feel. What I would do if it were someone really close to me.

And it's messing me up.

For some reasons that I don't understand, and for some that I don't feel like talking about here.

But it's hanging over me.

Cell

I’m trapped by your lock and key

That you’ve hidden within me

Somewhere where my hands can’t reach

In a cavity my nails can’t carve out

Sitting there, existing

Beating, with your pulse

That traps me

More than metal, more than iron

It breathes as you breathe

It beats as you beat;

You’re locked with it

Locked with me

Distanced by the flesh and blood and bone

That I can’t remove

That you can’t escape

Because your trap for me

Is my trap for you

So now we exist

Solitarily jailed

Together.

Don't Breathe.

I've got you here
in my lungs
compressed and rebelling
the repression of my ribs
of my bones
and the things that know
what you're doing here
but can't let it out
can't let you out -
to swallow me whole
to keep me in your lungs
the prisoner to you that I'm already becoming
the words and the thoughts that are already shoving -
now in my eyes
who have learned how to see you differently
jailed by my skull
by my bones
while you have learned
to consume me like I consumed you.
heavy and whole
fogging up our insides
and waiting
praying
for both of us to breathe

Musica

  Here's what I can't get out of my head at the moment.

Real World

Something people say a lot to me when I mention all the trials and tribulations I've been going through in the last couple of weeks is "welcome to the real world".

I have a problem with this phrase for a couple of reasons. Namely, to say that I am now in the real world would imply that I was previously in an un-real world. As far as I can tell, the last 19 years haven't been spent asleep or in some alternate universe. Unless this is some Inception style plot twist in my life, (in which case the real world really doesn't matter because I must still be asleep) this most definitely is a word just as real as it was last year, or five years ago. More sheltered, maybe. But just as real.

And, secondly, it's a phrase that people say at every major milestone. High school, college, marriage. Seriously, how many real worlds are there?

So, what has changed? When I think about how to categorize a life I can't help but thinking about Alexander Pope. Pope was a writer who lived in the 18th century, and pretty much the only way you would know who he is if you are an English major. Pope wrote about this concept called "the chain of being" as a way of talking about knowledge, and it's an idea that has always been kind of interesting to me.

Visualize a chain. Now imagine that each link on the chain represents a being. The bottom link belongs to rocks and dirt, the top to God. In the middle are animals, humans, and everything else. Essentially, each level on the chain has access to a certain amount of knowledge that the organism on that level can master. It can never know more than it's level allows, only speculate, and the closer a link is to God, the more it can know. So, a rock can never know more than the bottom link, and God can know all the links.

I don't think the world is real or un-real, I just think that our capacity for knowledge, experience, and opportunity changes. For us, the links on the chain are landmarks. Each period of our life allows us to only accomplish so much. But unlike Pope, we have the opportunity to move up the chain with time, link by link.

So I'm up a link.

Main Street UCI

is a project putting on my school to chronicle different views and experiences of/on the campus. Check out my submission here:
http://sites.uci.edu/mainstreetuci/2011/10/11/the-transfer/#respond