fight and follow through

another year, more questions. with so many paths to choose from, how do you decide? some people would tell me to pray about and see where g-d leads me. but what about free will? i guess i feel that most people who try to divine g-d's will ultimately end up doing just what they want to do and then claiming divine providence, just like the kings of england. so then the question is, what do i really want to do?

i've been hooked on one path lately and i can't quite figure out how it happened. maybe i do love the competition, the thrill of it all, throwing everything at a shot to get in. no reward without risk. could i find that elsewhere? again i am competing with my own mediocrity, at least i feel so. yet i look at my resume from undergrad and it tells a different story, at least on paper. but what was that story really? titles i was only half committed to, honors i didn't fully deserve and internships i did the very minimum for. i suppose my recommenders would tell a different story of me, which is perhaps why i worry so much.

i always looked back at high school and wished i'd been better—at school, at the arts, at extracurriculars. i swore i'd do better this time. and on paper, it looks like i did. but in reality, i guess i didn't really learn. even at work now, where i feel i do a good job at the mechanics of it—meeting the deadlines, keeping people happy—i don't go above and beyond. i only know what's going on in the world if someone tells me. i don't know who the ceo of x company is unless we've talked about them half a dozen times.

he and i are so different in this way. where people see him as less motivated by comparison and me as the overachiever, it really is the opposite. he reads and thinks more deeply about things than i probably ever will, yet he can't always put that to use because he doesn't fight for the opportunities to do so. i, on the other hand, am all fight and no follow-through. is that revelation supposed to tell me that i shouldn't go back to school, or that going back is the perfect way to change this? or is it just that i will never be content with myself?

on our own

i have realized that i sometimes struggle working in such a collaborative environment. its not because i want to do everything myself or hate working with a group. it's because ultimately, i feel like it comes down to the individual. that when mistakes are made, it is my fault and i should take the blame. that success or failure is mine alone. i know this isn't the truth, at least not always, but on some level it makes sense. it's like the point made back in pearson—we are a team, but at the end of the day we are hired or fired individually.

when i think about this i realize other things about myself, like the fact that i always put my own life first. is that selfish, or just survival? he would say that if you care about people you have to help them, but sometimes i disagree. we are each where we are due largely in part to our own choices, and it is no one's responsibility but our own to deal with the consequences of those choices. i don't expect those close to me to bail me out if i screw up, and i would never ask them to. i don't believe they would either. perhaps it is just my stubborn independence, but i don't believe you owe anyone enough to bail them out of their consequences at the expense of your own happiness and wellbeing.

does this make him a better person than i? probably. but i guess this is what life has taught me, turned me into. and how could i regret that?

expect the unexpected

halfway through 2012, this seems to have become the theme of the year. first atlanta, and world 50. then him. now, the one person i expected least of all.

i knew we had come a long way, and a long way further than i ever thought we could, but this . . . this was unimaginable. utterly impossible. i guess we both really have grown up. to the point where he can confront me about it out of concern, rather than anger or disappointment, and i in turn can answer him honestly, without denial, and own up to my decisions. to be able to claim them as exactly that—my decisions. to have him speak to the value of our relationship, and his pride in me, and the fact that this nor anything else could never change that. how far we have come.

we dream of the people those close to us could be, the people we want them to be, to grow into. but that was all it ever was with me and him—a dream. and now that it is real, i don't quite know what to do. it is both relieving and terrifying to have crossed that line, where there are no more secrets. it is a land i have yet to discover. what will come of it? i can only guess.

i suppose it really is true; all children do grow up.




i know we've come a long way
changing day to day
but tell me, where do the children play?

letters to boys

I've written a lot in my life. Papers, stories, journal entries, poems. So many words on paper in my short 23 years. But perhaps the most interesting and revealing of all writings are not the diatribes of my day or the creative fantasies of my child brain, but the letters. The letters I'll never send.

Yes, most of them are to boys. Typical, I know. With the notable exception of my journals disguised as letters to my long-passed mother, I can't think that I've ever written a letter I didn't send to a girl. There were love letters, hate letters, hurt letters. And as I got older, there were apology letters. Most of the time they were my way of conveying feelings I knew I would never have the chance to, or was better off not to. It was a way to gain closure when there was none. You never got an answer, but at least you didn't get one you didn't want.

I'm sure some people would say this is the cowardly way out, but what I've realized is that it isn't a way out — it's a way to heal.

But what happens when one day, someone answers the letter you never sent? As if he had been trying to write the same letter you always were, only he actually sent it? How would you respond?

It isn't as if I've been waiting for that letter, because I never expected it to come at all. Does it change everything? Surely not. But it changes some things.  It changes my view of him. It changes how I look back on those events. That perhaps I did do the right thing, at least in part. That perhaps it made a difference, even if he couldn't appreciate it until now. That perhaps it wasn't all for nothing.

this is a picture of the future & you'll notice that there's a lot of blank space because people haven't made up their minds about it

status update: in transit.

every time it seems i think i have what i want my life to be figured out, the road turns. there was the bounce between places until 'm thirty, then marry somebody cool and bounce around with him plan. then there was the bounce around for a couple years, go to law school, get married, enter real life plan. then there was the graduate and immediately start real life, do the whole young professional thing, marry the boy in a couple years, grad school somewhere down there plan. and suddenly i don't know what i want.

i always said i would love this time because the whole world was open. he and i agreed we would go our separate ways for a while, and figure out the future as it happened. when did i suddenly start wanting to settle right now? is that really what i want, to have the suit and the perfect resume to get my perfect job and start life now so i have this incredibly career before i'm thirty?

the conflict between my ambition and desire for exploration seems to be ever increasing these days.

sometimes i'm almost jealous of those people who always know what they want from life and never question it. even if that thing they want is to get married and have babies right out of high school/college. sigh. it must be easy to live like that.

i feel like i'm where i was four years ago, where everyone knew where they were going and what they were doing months before i did. watching the people who applied to one school and had everything figured out in october while i was still sitting around in april making pro/con lists. but, in the end i made the right choice, and I don't know that any of them had a comparable college experience to mine. maybe my life will be the same way. i guess the struggle is that i've spent the last four years being so directed with everything i do, knowing what i want and working for it. wanting to go to alaska and then making it happen. then the same with israel. yet despite all the changes in the last four years, here i am again, indecisive and unguided. i always feel like i'm a completely different person than i was when i got here, but now I wonder, have i really changed at all?

left

sometimes, it would seem, you just have to let people go. maybe they're dear to your heart, maybe they're practically family even, but eventually you have to face the fact that there's no point in trying to hold on when it's them that are doing the distancing to begin with.

was that my fault? i don't know. you could place the blame on me, and say that i didn't meet her expectations. i could turn around and place the blame on someone else, and say that it was the hand and the hurt he dealt me that inhibited me from meeting them. but either way, what happened and happened and i was on one level given a second chance but not on another. is it worth it? is it really even a true second chance? in all probability the someone new will walk in and receive the same preconceptions, see the same notes in my file and make the same judgements before even meeting me. perhaps i don't even have a chance to succeed, and i shouldn't have fought for one to begin with. it only increased the distance anyway.

now they are gone, in more ways than one. it saddens me because i had always thought of them as ones that would stay, regardless of geographic location. i guess a lot has changed in the past year. one is now disappointed in me, one is now otherwise occupied, and i find it funny that now the only one i have any real hope in is the one i didn't even really like to begin with. i guess that's how life works sometimes.

whether they really care or not now remains to be seen, and there is nothing i can do about it. why reach out if no one will reach back? why hold on if they won't? i came to this place alone, and maybe they were there for a while, but alone is how i will always go forward. it's inevitable, really. why bother trying to change it?

I'm an outsider by choice, she said, but I'm hoping that won't be my choice forever.

sometimes i am uncomfortable with where i have come. it feels odd to say that, as though i'm ungrateful for the blessings that have befallen me in the last few years, but that's not really what it is. its just that, this wasn't how it was supposed to go.

i was never someone people looked up to with respect, or feared. i was never someone that everyone wanted to know or befriend. i was never the person who could give someone a boost in the ladder of society. now it seems i've become all of those and i don't really know how it happened.

i mean, i guess i do. i made one choice, which led to someone choosing me, and nothing has been the same since. do i regret making that choice or resent the person who chose me? no. it isn't really that. i suppose at any point i could have said 'i'm done' and turned around, but i didn't.

i have perhaps seen more success than most students on campus, and while i value it, i also question it. was this what i was meant for? is this where i want to be? was i happy before, and would i be happier now if i were that way? i wish i could remember. i never realized how true it was when they said that it was lonely at the top. i guess i never thought i would make it there to find out.

perhaps maybe its best that i never planned for this, and that's why i've come here. i just wonder if i will ever stop feeling so out of place with it.




"It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well." - Albus Dumbledore