Grandma walks into my room and looks in horror at my books and papers sprawled all over the floor.
Grandma: So much.
Me: It’s all organized into piles! It’s just not put in the drawer or on the desk…
Grandma: It’s ok. You’re still in school. I’ll let it slide.
Cooler than my mom.
There was a time, a long while ago, when I thought taking my life was good. They would smile more, laugh more, be rid of this problem child. Less spent on me meant more money for them. Fewer arguments. Fewer burdens.
My friends were lucky. Their parents tucked them into bed, read them bedtime stories, smothered them in hugs. Things my parents seldom did, if at all. Things I can only hope for. Maybe tonight they will come pat my head, kiss my forehead, and pull the blankets tight around me before they went to bed, I would lay awake and think.
Calloused by the years, I learned to live without.
And then there were the woods.
It was just a typical hike. I brushed off my parents’ concerns like any other day. I’m not a kid anymore. I always return home, even if it’s a bit late. Give me my freedom.
The hike was fine. Until darkness swallowed us and we were still four miles from the exit. One flashlight. Scary bridges. Running waterfalls. No signal. The possibility of “not making it.”
I had felt helpless before in my life, but this was a whole other level.
Hopelessness runs through your veins and literally numbs your entire body.
I was scared, to put it lightly.
And all I could think of was family.
I thought of how they let me go because they wanted to honor my freedom. I thought about how my mom leaves me soup every night and a note in her broken English to go with it. I thought about my dad’s old jeans—the ones with the hole by his knees because he has a habit of rubbing them as he is driving, the ones he never wanted to replace because he’d rather us have new clothes. I thought about my brother plopping on my bed and randomly starting a conversation because he just wanted to talk. And I felt so sorry that I couldn’t have been a better daughter, a better sister for them.
And i felt it.
It’s different.
But I am lucky too.
I’ve never wanted to live so bad. This “adventure” made everything crystal clear.
Let’s just say, life is always good. Appreciate.
To expect someone to clean up your mess because it’s supposed to be their job should not be a thought.
Why can’t we strive to be better and take care of our stuff so that other people’s lives become easier?
Emotional Me: What’s holding you back? Just ask. What’s a little rejection now and then?
Rational Me: You’re going to regret it after you are rejected.
Emotional Me: You’re going to regret it if you don’t try. If you try, at least you will know you’ve tried. Who knows, maybe it won’t turn out bad.
Rational Me: You’re too optimistic. It’s not worth it.
Emotional Me: Shouldn’t we be optimistic in life?
Rational Me: There’s a difference between optimism and stupidity.
And it goes on. And on. And on.
Rooting for the Emotional Me. But how is it possible not to listen to the Rational Me?
In the end, who will win?
Probably not me.
I am sitting on the couch outside of the study room.
This one guy… I swear, I have seen him at least 4 times in and out of the place in a one-hour span.
Prime example of procrastination.
As the school year comes to a close (kind of), that feeling returns.
Thinking about the people, the professors, the memories, and (torturous) times… I just miss it already.
“Even on the rainiest of days when you’re feeling down and your head is hanging, if you look close enough the puddles reflect the sky to help you look up and remind you that things will only get better; you can’t keep looking down for long…”
—TC
I’ll admit.
I didn’t really understand it at first, why it became such a big deal. And I try to be wary of making premature assumptions before figuring out the details.
Recently, people have been riled up on campus over something our school president said. While words can often be distorted, how else are we to interpret “they are not public about it and we don’t ask them”? This does not exactly foster the most welcoming environment…
In a recent address to the campus community in our school newspaper, the president explained that there are two separate “policies,” for lack of a better word. One is the Statement of Inclusion, which is supposed to be nondiscriminatory to everybody regardless of their ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation etc. And the other is the Equal Opportunity and Nondiscrimination Policy. But this latter policy excludes sexual orientation. The president also said that they do not include sexual orientation in the latter because of legality issues.
I am not sure what other people are upset about. But I am upset about the apparent contradiction and the implicit meaning behind those words. First off, there is a conflict in separating a nonlegal policy to uphold the “Catholic values” from a legal-binding policy that tries to preserve “Catholic teachings.” If values and teachings are contradictory, why follow the values or the teachings or either of them? Shouldn’t our values be lined up with our morals, or in this case, faith? And if each person is a child of God and we are to honor the “inherent dignity of each person as a child of God,” then shouldn’t every person be honored by their inherent dignity despite his or her sexual orientation? It would seem that someone who disagrees with this holds a fundamental value that homosexuality is wrong. In that case, why can’t they admit that they are just—pardon me as I try to hold in some confusion—homophobic? Trying to patch that up with a Statement of Inclusion is like hiding in a flowery garden that is hardly reality.
Perhaps it is because I have never really been religious. But I think this to be the case for whatever we choose to believe, whether in religion or outside of religious beliefs. Whatever we accept, there should be some critical reflection about whether our values truly match up with what we are taught. If we blindly accept what is given to us, there is the possibility of hurting so many people. For example, Nazi soldiers in WWII were taking orders. What they did, I will leave for you to think about. Why do we not dare question the things we believe to be wrong? Why do we not try to be different? To be progressive in such a way that every human being is treated as nothing less?
Being a private institution should not exempt the university from moving towards a greater equality. As a dear friend of mine elegantly put it “when something may not change, it does not mean that it does not need to be changed.”
