Saturday, August 14, 2010

Graduating to What?

Stardate 64119.9

10: 03 - It has been roughly a year since I graduated with my bachelor's degree.  Although, time-wise, it seems short; it feels the past 1/22 part of my life has been the longest and probably the roughest part. For nine months, I balanced the two worlds of being a grad student and a full time student politician. Sometimes, I felt as if I succeeded and in others, I knew I came short of meeting my goals. I have always been an extremely goal oriented person who got what they want just by putting the effort into it.  But last May, I watched as three years of hard work went up in flames and feeling helpless to to do anything about it.  As summer began, I knew I was too young to feel this washed up and bitter. I had so much anger and hate for so many things; it was hard to eat or sleep because of the disgust that I felt. There was no one I could explain this feeling to. I just wanted to put it behind me. So flying to Costa Rica, I left all of it behind.

I was so determined to leave everything in College Station behind for three months that I never once talked about home or who I missed because the truth was that I did not miss home. Everything that was deemed necessary in life was transported to Costa Rica, and the nonessential was left. I spent three months trying to heal myself. Heal my optimism, my spirit, my drive and my will to keep going.  Removed from my usual surroundings, I could see how toxic of a person I had become. I cannot say that over night I started feeling better, but it took a slow process of reworking the way I thought about my life. Everyday as I walked to school, I had reinforce that it was my choice to live a full and happy life, and I will not let myself settle for anything less. As a part of this process, I cut people out of my life temporarily and permanently that took part in making me this way. I have never regretted this decision to drop people out of my life. Once, I made the choice to let all this hate out of my heart; I could not step back into that path. With the hate in retreat, I first regained my sensory feelings again. For the first time in my life, I ate a meal with all five of my senses. It is an odd thing to explain, but truly sitting down for a long period of time and appreciating the food, the area around you and the time you have can do wonders. Then I went on to find what used to make me happy that I gave up on long ago. My passion for soccer and dance came back and helped me drive out everything else. Having the ability to feel again and then reigniting my passion for life allowed me to start rebuilding who I wanted to be.

Today, I know that I have another rough year coming up, but I know what it feels like to be free and appreciate the life I have. Because I know I have been blessed, I just cannot allow myself to stray far from being who I choose to be.

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