Fierce

Fierce: displaying a heartfelt, powerful and sometimes aggressive intensity. Living on the road months at a time teaches me that life is short. Live fiercely, love fiercely. Do things that scare and grow you.

Graduating

Desert

I need the desert.
Right now. I need to be out in the dry, dusty, barren desert with the heavy silence and brilliant stars. I need the rocks. The cacti. The texture. The silence. The rugged silence. I need to stare at the vast emptiness and let my mind whirl. Life is too busy, too complicated, too demanding, too exhausting. I feel like the desert is an escape from realities and responsibilities. A magical moment to pause time. A place where I can think and be and revel in my utter confusion while the distant world of obligations and phone-calls spins chaotically on. Without me.

Graduation looms a mere three months away and I feel as though my world, security, and sanity is crumbling before me. I have no idea what I'll be doing in three months. I have no idea how I'll pay loans off when volunteering seems to be the only prospect before me. I have no idea how to make dreams happen. I've pursued something I've loved for so long, and now that I'm on the brink of it, I'm balking. I'm terrified. Excited and anxious and scared and restless and frustrated and bewildered and tired.

What do I want? I WANT to grab my camera and notebook and listen to the stories of women around the world. I WANT to sit in the dirt with these women and give their voices a platform. I WANT to show the commonality of women and mothers around the world; their struggles, their pain, their joys. I want to gauge my ears, get tattoos, get sunburned and sit under patched roofs and learn from people I've only read about. I don't want to read one more theoretical model or social critique. I'm so burned out from academia. I want humanity, I crave connection, I need reality and honesty and humility and simplicity. I'm starved for real people in real places with lived experiences and their own personal narratives. I'm so exhausted by chronic abstraction; the sitting behind desks in quiet rooms in filthy rich La Jolla TALKING about poverty and aid and women's rights and empowerment and how white people have fucked it up. I need to do something with my hands. Let me help deliver a baby. Let me dig a well. Let me scrub the floors of some orphanage. Let me plant crops. Let me DO something tangible.

I need to walk and walk and walk and walk. In silence. In hot, sweaty, unbearable silence. I need to trudge, and think, and be. I want to stretch my arms across the mountain ranges and breathe in the vastness of the stars. I want to revel in my humanity and my identity and my own uncomfortable skin.

In three months, something will happen. But right now,
I need the desert.
Right now.

I feel paralyzed by inadequacy. Frozen by overwhelming doubt and inability. These job apps loom terrifyingly and I want to just turn around and wait tables. I can do that. Really well.

And my soul will die.

More wine. And chocolate. 

I want a soft couch bathed in sunlight with a table covered in books at arms length. I want to be surrounded by quotes that speak to life and hardship and challenges and the beauty in mundane, simple things. I want to be in love again. I want maps to cover my walls, not so that I can boast about the places I've been, but so that I can plan trips to see the ones I love who live there. I want music to move me to tears. I want my camera to capture what words never can. I want love to fill every corner of every room. The deep, profound, unquestionable type of love. 

To Regret or Not to Regret?

In my spare (ha!) time I like to peruse strangers' blogs. I find them an intriguing insight into another's thoughts; it's like a window into someone else's mind. Fascinating.

Tonight, I found a hurting blog post who's interpretation of heartbreak made me stop and reflect:

"Thoughts: Regret is Just Love Spelled Backwards

People in the end are just regrets. They are the email you shouldn't have sent. They are the phone call you shouldn't have made. They are the late night you should have walked home alone. They are the streets you should have never walked down and doors that should have stayed closed...

...People in the end are just a series of events we wish we never experienced."

See, I differ in my opinion of past loves; I find this pervasive regret sad and unfair to both parties. It may not have worked out in the end, but that doesn't discredit the happiness, the intimacy, the countless beautiful moments and laughter shared together. I have never, not for a moment, regretted the year we had together, the months I waited, or the tears we shared. And so, I'm countering with my own "thoughts":

Thoughts: Evolve is (ev)Love Spelled Backwards

People, in the end, are teachers. Windows into the secrets of humanity and the universe. They are the ones that forced you to be vulnerable and taught you how to trust. They are the text messages that made you smile at midnight and the hand to hold down countless cracked sidewalks. They are the reason your eyes have more smile wrinkles and the reason there's the understanding of heartbreak hiding in their depths. They are the ones that taught you what you value most - in life, yourself, and in others. They taught you the science of cuddling and pillowtalk, the beautiful riskiness of trust, of and how far you're willing to compromise. They are proof you tried. People, in the end, are a series of teachers that help you discover, and evolve into, who you truly are. 

Good news: My major was approved! I will officially be graduating in June as a Global Health and Social Justice major. Cool.

Good news: A book I conducted research for and helped write was sent to the publishers today at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Should be published by Spring 2014. Cool.

Good news: Get to go backpacking through Anza Borrego next weekend for free as the professional photographer. Cool.

Bad news: Exhausted and sick. Can't get out of bed. Ever again. #drama