...for the Stagnant

I started my first week of classes this past Monday, and while I would love to say I was going through the hustle and bustle of finding those classes spread out far and wide around campus, I was merely down the road at IVC.

Nearly all of my friends have left for college and I really thought I was fine until I logged onto Facebook. Status after status and wall post after wall post about new roommates, freshman year activities and new faces they see each day have left me feeling alone and stagnant.

Unlike my friends who get to experience the excitement of moving out and onto a whole new journey, I've continued living at home, bumping into the familiar faces of high school.

Don't get me wrong, I am so excited for all that my friends get to experience, and although I know this stay at IVC was the best for me right now, I can't help but feeling like this isn't where I should be.

I always thought my freshman year would be spent at a University and that going to Bed Bath and Beyond would be a given. I never expected to spend a year at a community college before heading off on my own. I never expected to be the one friend that stayed behind, watching as everyone else started new. I always told myself IVC wasn't for me. I always told myself I wouldn't let that happen.

I walked into my first class on the first day of school and rather than saying to myself, "this is going to be a great year", I said "there is no way I can stay here for two years"

I hate it. Honestly, I hate this. This situation I've chosen for myself and placed myself in, thinking this is what I wanted. Deep down, I knew I never wanted this but I told myself I did; financially, spiritually, allowing me to get further involved with things here in Irvine. I am already starting to see the positives of me staying here:

a beautiful group of 7th grade girls to lead at church

running Ignite a second year in a row

new internships taking flight

But most days, the negatives heavily outweigh the positives in my life. The thoughts of missing out and being left behind consume my mind and take me through this daily process of self-loathing.

I feel stupid. I feel stagnant. I feel useless.

I just want to be able to do everything else it seems like every other person is doing. I want to have a roommate and decorate my dorm room. I want to go to orientation and sit through droning seminars about "college safety" and the school's standards. I want to eat bad dorm food, rush a sorority, put all of my toiletries in a bucket. I want to have a week full of ice breakers and new student games. I want to be apart of something bigger than simply going to class. I want to be apart of a group of people who want to be where they are and are in the same exact boat as I am.

I know that staying here has presented opportunity after opportunity for ways to be involved and truly make an impact.

But, as much as I may know this, I still want to be upset. Just for a little bit longer.

I haven't been able to fully let go and realize that this year simply isn't going to go as planned.

I know that someday I will, but today doesn't seem to be that day.

I wish I had words of encouragement for myself, but today doesn't seem to be that day either.

...for the shocked

Being gone for the past week on a trip with junior high ministry, I decided I was tired of my sour patch kids and packaged food diet and made the wise and proud decision to head to the gym.

Arriving excited and ready to get back into the swing of my usual routine, I wasn't expecting to leave with tears welling up in my eyes.

After my successfully tiring cardio workout, I made the next stop on my list to the sauna before I started on weights and such. I had been sitting in a sweaty awkward silence for about 10 minutes or so when suddenly the guy next to me had an outburst. See, there were four of us occupying this tiny space. Myself, two younger guys in their 20's and a man I'd say not much older than the other two who was coughing excessively. He was on my left while the whack job was on my right. I feel like it's only necessary to tell you that the innocent man to the left of me smelled of lavender while the predator on my right was soaking wet and had a very distracting tattoo that covered the entirety of his back.

Back to the story:

It was obvious that this man's coughing was a bit loud and contagious, but rather than politely asking him to cover his mouth or even step outside for a minute to clear his throat, the guy next to me flung curse word after curse word at this guy. I heard his piercing voice through my earphones and quickly turned my music off. I was shocked; So taken back by this man's vulgar approach. He even had the audacity to ask the rest of us if we agreed with him, implying he was right. All I could utter from my mouth was, "well, that was really rude of you to do." He proceeded to curse and tried getting the guy to step outside and fight him. I got up from my seat and opened the door and right as I did, I heard the words, "and my god, look how big your nose is, seriously." It was coming to a point where an attack was happening. I stopped dead in my tracks and contemplated turning around to lash out. But all I could do was turn around, glare, and keep walking.

Why are people so rude? Especially to people they don't even know.

I wish I could have said something, mustered up the courage to do more and defend this man who was being so harshly verbally attacked.

But I didn't, instead of stepping in, I stepped aside.

I left the situation alone and allowed this tattooed, insecure, inconsiderate man get away with nothing but a few weak words and a cold glare.

I don't understand what makes people think they have the right to treat someone so poorly. It's something that has always plagued my thoughts and really rests heavy on my heart. I don't get it, so if someone could explain it to me I would love to hear the explanation. As individuals, we have a choice. We have a choice to interact with those around us or continue on our path as if we were the only ones present. Given the opportunity to meet new people or cross paths with someone I've never met before, the first and only thought I have is to be considerate. Maybe it's how I was raised, or maybe it's being a decent person, but no one ever deserves to be talked to the way this man was approached today. It stung me, and I wasn't even the one being talked to.

I wish more people would realize that the only approach should be through love.

So, what will you do? Continue on your path, cold and downcast, shying away from new relationships, or will you lift your head high, and meet everyone new with a smile and an open heart.

...for the long gone but close at heart

Saying goodbye sucks.

So I usually avoid it.

Saying goodbye sucks and although I would love to avoid it, it's inevitable and sometimes I just have to pony up and do it.

It seems as though these past few weeks have been filled with nothing but goodbyes and quite frankly, I want a new change of pace. Going house to house, a picture frame or card in hand, readying myself mentally for all of the nostalgia we will go through, the memories we will reminisce about, and the holiday breaks we will be sure to visit each other on has become repetitive and robotic. Not to mention the weekly heytell or texting updates and frequented yet most likely dwindling Skype conversations that we plan out right before the final hug.

Last week my goodbyes were reserved for the long time friends I have grown up with all throughout high school and for some, even elementary school. Those have been some of the hardest, but the ones yet to come are going to be the worst: the best friends.

After a great going away party last night, the host of the night pointed out to me that he had to leave his best friends behind that day; that for him, that was the last night he could say goodbye.

And it hit me.

I didn't realize that I would ever have to really say goodbye to my best friends. Scattered all around California, I am lucky enough to say that my closest friends are in an inconveniently enough driving distance away from me, but for them, it's all the convenience I need. Then there's Maddy. 3,006 miles away from me in Providence, Rhode Island, I can't hop into my car whenever I feel like getting away for the weekend. No, she decided to intentionally place herself as far away from me as possible. Kudos to my other best friends, but for her, I have decided to hold a grudge.

Needless to say, saying goodbye to the people I know best is going to be a moment I am dreading to experience.

But then, camp happened.

Right when I thought I knew everyone I wanted to say goodbye to, I met a whole new set of 12 amazing people.

For those of you who have never experienced a church camp, being a leader for a retreat, or any other leadership experience involving bonding with strangers, you may not fully appreciate the impact that these short-term best friends make on your life.

Saying goodbye to best friends is probably the worst goodbye I will have to ever face, but saying goodbye to a group of people who just recently walked into your life and then so quickly walked out is a weird feeling.

I spent about 3 hours a week for 8 weeks straight with a group of strangers and then once camp hit, the 24 hour a day interactions turned these strangers into family.

We ate together, we woke up early and stayed up late together, we made fools of ourselves and observed as others did the same. We had deep conversations during our meal times and gossiped about the events of the night huddled around a small apartment table. Pranks were pulled, hats were worn, and shakas were thrown and all throughout these events, we bonded. We became a group of leaders rather than 13 leaders placed in one room.

We worked together and it was one of the greatest weeks we could have had.

But instead of going back home and picking up where we left off, reality set in and I realized that we don't have the opportunity to do that anymore. Our "camp high" would hit its low right when we departed to our respective cars.

That feeling, that goodbye, sucks.

Saying goodbye to someone when there is still so much time to say hello is weird. It didn't feel fair to me that these relationships were cut short before most of them could fully take flight.

I am excited for all of us. I am excited for the paths we will be taking at our new schools and for the whole new set of strangers we will meet and call our friends. As excited as I am, I didn't expect to be this taken back by how bummed I feel.

I know that if it's worth it, we will stay in touch.

I know that as time passes, it will get harder and harder to do just that.

I know that as weird as those goodbyes may have felt, I have a week full of memories to keep me stoked on those people.

Saying goodbye sucks.

But the people you are saying goodbye to make it totally worth it.

Thanks to my week-long ASB camp family

-let's not become too estranged, ya?

To those of us out there having to say our goodbyes: good friends, acquaintances, best friends and family, or even those people who just came to say hello,

Goodnight and Goodluck.

...for the Believers

Last week I attended my annual visit to Pageant of the Masters. As we were huddled around the "kid table" at Sorrento Grille, Alana proceeded to fill our friends in on the typical events of the night:

walk to the show in uncomfortable heels, look at the art in uncomfortable heels, and protect yourself as best you can from mosquitos all throughout the duration of the entire show.

Not once did she mention that we ever fully engage in the show, so you can imagine how excited our friends were when they realized the next three hours would be spent gaining nothing close to the appreciation of art, but rather a new collection of bug bites.

But to my surprise, this year was different. "Only Make Believe" was the theme and when the show started off featuring Peter Pan, you knew the audience was hooked, or at least I was.

Looking around the crowd I saw people texting, sipping their white wines and chatting all throughout the show and for a moment I was compelled to do the same; until one piece of artwork struck my attention.

Faeries.

A beautiful painting of faeries sprinkling dust over the eyes of sleepy passer-byers in a forest grabbed my attention, not necessarily for the artwork displayed, but rather for the simple words uttered from the narrator's mouth- faery dust.

I immediately thought back to fifth grade. San Fransisco. A day trip my then-married parents took me and Alana on. Through the monotonous tours of Fisherman's Wharf and even in the silent quarrels between my parents, all I could think about was faeries. See, at age 10, it's fairly typical to have grown out of the stage of make-believe. But for Alana and I, it felt as though that was all we had control of. I had my eye set on this slender glass jar filled with fairy dust, completed perfectly with a pink bow. All I remember thinking was all I need is this dust. All I need is this little jar of hope to make all of my wishes come true.

See, it wasn't the fact that I still thought I believed in faeries, or even the fact that my parents bought me the vile of glitter and sequined paper, it was the fact that I had something to believe in.

I put my full trust in this little jar of make believe when my belief in anything else had been taken away.

We so often rely on the simple solution, the quick result, to get us out of any doubts or confusion we are surrounded by.

My faery dust didn't work. I spent the next year engulfed by confusion, relying on even more make believe moments to escape to.

I jumped out of this memory and back into the show to look behind me and see my dad with his wife and Alana with her friend.

It occurred to me that neither of them were thinking about the faery dust I put all of my trust in.

It also occurred to me that through the whole year we spent in confusion, they all had their own viles of make believe to fall back on.

Whether it's faery dust or the Bible, a friend or a hobby, we find outlets to help us cope with the confusion we don't have any control over.

For me, it started out with a small jar of dust. It ended with a community of friends and mentors and left me delving into a book of hope to search for the answers to my confusion. For me, that book worked and always will.

What will it be for you?

Buying a stale jar of faery dust or searching for what you truly believe in?

...for the Enlightened

Are you ever filled with so much emotion and you don't quite understand why?

You think of everything that makes you happy and all you want to do is run in the middle of the street in the pouring rain and cry because everything just feels so perfect?

I felt that just earlier today and I couldn't tell you why or how I felt that way- I just did.

Call it cliche, but as I was watching Glee tonight, my heart melted. I can't sing, I haven't danced for years, and Broadway has never been a dream of mine. But sitting on my couch watching them perform on an empty stage with absolutely no one watching and only their dreams to carry them through the song, I thought back through all of high school.

No matter what point in my life I was stuck in, theatre always found a way to pull me out of it. Acting is my passion and a life lived without a performance wouldn't be one worth living. I just sat there and thought back to my hours of rehearsal and the stress I went through to put on just three nights of performances.

You see, I have this moment. This moment right before I go on stage where I doubt everything that I have worked towards. I scratch my head and my nose in an OCD series only my dad could point out and I read over my lines in my head at least five times. After this, I walk alone to the side of the stage and look out. That view of the blinding lights blurring everything in my line of vision leaves me there with a smile. I feel alone without one ounce of loneliness, like all I need is myself to conquer the world, to conquer the stage.

It is at that moment where my heart breaks and a smile peeks through.

It is at that moment where I remember what makes me happy.

Being alone on an empty stage.

Pulling out my tap shoes and improvising until my feet bleed.

Walking in the snow with my favorite forest green hat on.

Envisioning myself in New York City living a typical 90's rom-com sitting in a loft ordering chinese take-out for me and my eclectic roommate thinking about the boy I met in the laundromat an hour earlier.

Sitting on a bench watching the autumn leaves fall to my feet, strategizing just how I am going to step on all the crunchy ones.

Checking out an old library book.

Talking outside in the summer nights with nothing but a tanktop and shorts on.

These make me feel like everything is okay.

These make me feel like anything is possible and the whole entire day is mine to just live every movie I have ever seen and dreamt of starring in. To live by every soundtrack I have listened to in hopes of living a life characterized by those perfectly selected indie tunes.

When it comes down to it, simplicity makes me happy.

As of right now, my life is a chaotic whirlwind with only a few moments of a calm breeze to balance out my week.

I want my life to be simple again. I want to live in the breeze.

So, what will you do? Peer out from behind the curtains and smile, or will you continue your pattern of memorizing each and every line to make sure you never miss a cue.

...for the Fearful

"The best years of my life I was a fool to give to you"

In the words of Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, fear consumed the best years of my life, those of which being the majority of my high school career and today of all days, I was reminded of that very fear.

Whether it was the heat I was immersed in or the hundreds of theatre people I was surrounded by, I took my experience at Theatrefest as one of learning. Yes, I scoured the CSULB lawn for an ounce of sanity, hoping to find it in my ipod or at least one straight guy throwing a football, but when all I could do was witness the flash mob of YMCA, my mind started wandering.

To say the least, Guys and Dolls was on my mind and the soundtrack was playing on repeat in my head. Leave it up to me to find a hidden meaning in the hot box girl's defiant lyrics.

As I played over the duet between Adelaide and Nathan, I recognized a comparison to their dysfunctional relationship and my ever-growing fear.

Today at Theatrefest, I walked past cross-dressers and clowns, refused to take part in the "spirit activities" of picking up trash, and switched my guydar on full blast in hopes of finding someone to flirt with. But through all that chaos, I still found time to be reminded of a fear that consumed me this past summer.

We all go through different life experiences yet we all seem to share the base feelings and emotions; one of which, is fear. For me, fear comes from people leaving.

What I battled through this past summer was realizing that my fear of people leaving ultimately led to my destruction, causing me to pull away from every and anything good in a relationship, in hopes of never having to reach the point of being so

in love with,

enamored by,

closed linked,

wildly impressed,

or forever attached to someone, and in such a place of comfort, only to have that safety stripped of me, leaving me alone with the preconceived notion that people always leave.

My doubts have seemingly been the only reason something so great turns to something so messy and jaded.

It's funny, really. And quite a contradiction.

That my fear of people leaving ultimately leads to a reality of people gone?

Why do we succumb to the expectations presented to us by our fears?

When will we allow ourselves to break the rules and dare our fears, face to face?

It has been said that the only thing to fear is fear itself, but I would argue to take that a step further. Fear itself if you want to look at it straight on, is a pretty frightening concept. But turn it around or view it's profile image, and you see things you may have never seen before. The inner-workings of where that fear came from or the side effects of never facing those fears are hard to see on the front cover, but read the pages and it all becomes so clear.

Yes, fear itself is frightening, but if you take the time to dissect that fear, it becomes nothing more that a puzzle to solve.

The bully who steals the underclassmen's lunches reads "Tough Guy" on the front cover, but open to chapter one and is starts to unfold that his dad is out of the picture and he is forced to be the head of the house, with nothing but the fear of seeming weak to weigh him down.

The comedian who reads "Optimist" as this week's best seller may really be the younger sibling of the perfect child, so she relies on her personality to hide her fear of seeming imperfect; not skinny enough, not bright enough, not pretty enough.

Or for me, the extracurricular junkie who reads "Well Rehearsed" across the front cover, to really reveal an actress who is semi-acquainted with half the school and keeps it that way to keep her relationships simple because of her fear of people leaving.

I could be off on the notions, and I could be looking too much into things.

But what if I'm not? What if behind every cover there were pages and pages of uncovered information about your peers, your family, and even yourself?

In today's society, we have typed up a title to allow others to read and have left it at that. We have let ourselves believe that the pages are blank and all there is to fall back on is the two or three words plastering the front cover. It saddens me that we have let ourselves become bystanders to our own lives. We have mentally erased the pages written and have vaguely typed up a few new ones in hopes of seeming a little more put together than we truly are.

So what will you do? Will you obey your fears and erase the pages already written, or will you double-dog dare them and continue writing until your fear becomes nothing more than a chapter in your book.

::John 6:37::

...for the Joyful

Look Up.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received.

It seems a tad arbitrary to just look up, but if you really go into depth about those two simple words, it will unravel a moment of overwhelming comfort which just today brought me close to tears.

In this chaotic life, it seems as though simple moments are pushed to the side.

Family dinners, a few minutes of silence, or even a second or two to glance up above are a few of life's simple pleasures that have slipped away through the hands of our generation.

Over my four years in high school, I have found that each year I get older and older, the less and less of these moments I allow myself to soak in, and that scares me.

It scares me that at 18 years old, I have my whole life ahead of me and on the path that I'm on, the only parts of my life I'll be living are the scheduled events and commitments I have racked up, unable to trade them in for a coupon labeled "day of nothing. take a breath."

Crying alone in my room last night, failure could most definitely be a valid word to describe the bulk of my emotions. Right as I was about to grab for the tissue box, a friendly facebook chat grabbed my attention. In the sea of words, all I needed to fish for was Look Up. Frustrated, bitter, and determined to do one thing right, I looked up at my ceiling and broke into even more tears of frustration.

Today though, that piece of advice was greeted with tears of another sort. Tears filled with emotions I hadn't experienced in weeks. As I got out of my car, I remembered these words. Standing in the middle of my street, I followed the directions and the reaction was one I wasn't expecting.

Joy beat through my heart and welled up in my eyes.

The simplicity of nothingness and the ability to feel as small as a grain of sand was something that sent my mind spinning.

Why do we ignore the simplicity around us and allow ourselves to be controlled by our schedules?

I forgot joy could come from such a simple action.

I have found that the hardest road to take is often the one most traveled when it comes to our work load.

If I join sport A, college B will accept me.

If I stay at the gym X minutes longer, boy Y will like me more.

If I never say no, my life will be easier at some point.

Well, when is that point?

Is it ever really reached?

No, I beg to differ.

By stretching yourself too thin, you get sucked into the mindset that free time is a waste of time.

I have been living my life with the idea that I am worthless, useless, and stagnant unless I am always on the go, always adding more miles to my road travelled, and never having to feel the weight of failure at the nearest turn pike to grab a bite to eat and take a breath of fresh air.

So, what will you do?

Get out of your car, Look Up and experience a moment of free time, or will you continue down the road, never taking the nearest exit in fear of wasting time that could be better spent getting you closer and closer to your destination of Nowhere.