Bravery

Making decisions is arguably one of the hardest parts of being a person.

You have to purposely, honestly, force yourself to make a choice about something. 

It's easier to close your eyes.

Closing your eyes is relatively easy. You can hide in details and fantasy worlds and neverending newsfeeds. It's easy to say whatever comes to your mind. It's hard to write something worth writing. It's hard to be a person instead of a reaction to a hundred different stimuli.

I think that's why I love heroes in novels, movies, whatever. They are the people that make their decisions and go forward without hesitation. 

Being yourself, unabashedly yourself, is really damn hard. You have to try though. You are who you are, and no disguise can change that. A mask can blend in perfectly with the persona you've created, but you are still in there. 

Don't forget that.

Peace.

A Dedication and A Debt (This has been sitting as a draft for awhile so I might as well publish it)

(This has been sitting as a draft for awhile so I might as well publish it)

***
A Dedication

My first coherent thought during graduation.
"Really? They're quoting Steve Jobs?"
I was expecting the whole ceremony to be a life-changing roller coaster of emotions as goodbyes were said and proper endings were made. I was expecting the ending of a fairytale, or at least a YA novel.
That wasn't the case.
People said bye in their usual social chatter. I didn't see any breakdowns or emotional goodbyes. Just goodbyes. Happy endings. It's like at the very end of a story when you expect to see a plot twist, except things really are happy and good and there is no more conflict to introduce or things to wrap up. The characters make their final appearance and you see them leave, but you don't feel anything particularly. It's a conclusion. The characters make their last wave and you wave back but you're feeling only a little nostalgic.
I suspect the climaxes, the big emotional rollar coasters that define high school have already happened. They happened over the four years, over the little fights and social squabbles and grade anxieties...The transformations are completed. Graduation is the end of all that for high school. It's not the part where the bad guys come invade and ruin everything right before the big showdown of the end of the season. (I'm looking at you Vampire Diaries)
I guess I should blame High School Musical for this.
***

A Debt

But what is the case is that I owe these seniors alot.
I owe my sister, for being amazing and wonderful and tolerating my never-ceasing wave of bad moods. I owe my sister for having my back and showing me that school isn't all that bad, for letting freshman me tag along with her friends so I had somewhere to belong to for awhile. I owe her for being a pretty damn cool sister.
I owe the DVP seniors for reminding me that appearances aren't a big deal and that it's okay to feel like shit sometimes. They reminded me that you can be whatever you want to be, and you don't have to follow what you think everyone wants you to be. They helped me learn how not to always be an awkward social turtle, which I'm internally grateful. Most of all, they were there for me even when they barely knew me. Hell, I still don't know them. But I owe them.
I guess I learned that you have to be kind and understanding because people are screwed up too.

It's Time To Begin, Isn't It *Listen before reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sENM2wA_FTg *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sENM2wA_FTg

It's Time is a beautiful song. It is not an easy song, to write or listen to. It rings with pain, pain in every lyric that despite its inspiring lyrics, suggests the exhaustion of a long battle. Ryan Reynolds gives it his all, every time he belts out a lyric. 

"It's time to begin isn't it, I get a little bigger than this but then I'll admit, I'm just the same as I was. Now don't you understand? I'm never changing who I am." 

I'm never changing who I am is a promise. I'm never going to change who I am even if hellhounds are coming after me is what he means. Inferiority is not tolerated. He will do what he wants regardless of what the people around him would want. That's not to say the song is about rebellion. It's about setting off to find your own path and hoping that happiness and satisfaction will follow. In whatever case, complacency is no longer a viable option. Only victory is. 

But that victory feels empty, weak. Once the victory is gained, you could lose it all. Fear eats at you. You need the strength to handle the fear in order to fully understand and deserve your victory.

The song rings both of winning, cheering at the victory, but also of the strength it takes to resist the fear that comes along with it. The song is about strength, the strength to pursue the long run, and the strength to fight off the insecurities that could take it away from you. 

The lyrics are not very obtuse or deep persay. They are not the secret to life's questions. It is not less than any other bubbly song, nor greater than any other deep song. And yet, I love it. 

An Empty Orchestra Room

Today was the end. In all of my shitty grades and terrible coping skills, it was done.
I got out of finals an hour early, and decided to wander around before being yelled at/directed by the hall monitor to the cafeteria. I wait an hour there, scrolling through my iPod waiting for it to pass.
The period ended. I was officially free from school. Excited, I wandered into the orchestra room by instinct, and, almost surprised, found it empty.
I'm not in orchestra. I quit in 8th grade. And yet, that haunting empty room was terrifying.
Because from this moment on, it would always be empty after school.
Let me explain.
Day 1 of freshman year, I was been the young sycophant that desperately wanted people's attention and thus never got any of it. I had no friends.
My sister, a semi-well off sophomore at that point, was not in that state.
I don't know exactly how, but one day I joined her social group in the orchestra room after school, or at least the rag tag assortment that showed up there.
Most of them were my sister's acquaintances/friends, but pretty soon my best friend and I found a place there, and they became our friends.
We did alot of things in that room, mostly hang out until 4:00 talking about random crap and screwing around.
There was no Denny's we went to or a daily ritual we had. We weren't all good friends.
But we showed up there, most of the time.
That was the place where I kicked a violin locker in frustration after being palmed off by a friend. It was the place where me and my best friend hung out, talking about random crap. It was the place where we hid behind the gaping towers of chairs, playing games of if we could fit behind them or not.
A lot has changed since then.
I go there by instinct now. Three years I found sanctuary in that room.
I find myself continually disappointed at how empty it is, at how I won't find Betty packing up her stuff to get to the bus or Victoria sitting on the floor by the door, eating a snack as I say hi. I won't see Noel standing by the door talking to a friend of his right outside the door. I won't see my sister sitting in the big spinny chair at the front of the room, talking or yelling or even cursing someone. I'll see none of it. Because they graduated.
And now there's nobody in the room.
It's sad.
I can't imagine next year, the haunting feeling twisting in my heart every time I feel the need to pull into that room and find that the comfort I found there is gone, replaced with an empty room that stares back at me instead of giving me what I had come to expect. No comfort, no warmth. Only emptiness, and silence looking back at me.
Here's to senior year, to looking into an orchestra room and finding silence. Here's to the end of junior year, beginning messily and ending in silence.
Here's to it's end.