Mad March: Real Life Is NOW

Every graduation speech ever written starts with a simple fact: "commencement" means something beginning, not ending. You see it as the endpoint of something, because it's the end of the whole world that you know. And every grownup and parent and teacher in the room knows it's the opposite, so they enlighten you with a little vocab. They're not wrong. But they're also not precisely right, because it's been too long for them to remember that it's both. It's the beginning of what they think is the real story, and sometime soon you'll agree. You'll forget that any of this mattered. You'll turn around and condescend to the kids that come after you, and assure them that it's not something ending, it's just the beginning. Real life starts here.

But you'll get the same speech when you graduate college, when you have a kid, when you turn twenty, when you turn thirty. When you turn forty, oh my God they'll tell you that speech a million times when you turn forty. "This is when your life starts. This is when it's real. This is when it starts mattering. Everything before this was stupid and doesn't mean anything. This is the day you become real."

And you can feel relief, every time, because the last chapter was so fucking exhausting and you learned so much and hurt so much and changed so much, it really does feel like the beginning of something. And in that long stretch between twenty and thirty, and thirty and forty, maybe you'll secretly wish for a few more ceremonies, a few more commencement speeches, just to give you that permission to start the new chapter. To become more, to start your life, to treat it like it's real, like these moments matter.

You'll get tired, and you'll get discouraged, and you'll stare yourself down in the mirror and promise to be perfect from now on. You'll break up, you'll get divorced, you'll suffer unbearable disappointments. You'll pick up again and keep moving. You'll get fat and you'll get skinny. You'll learn languages, and you'll forget them. You will fall down on the job, and you'll be ashamed of your weaknesses and your unthinking, exhausted cruelties. You'll see the patterns in your life taking shape in your children, and you'll want to warn them to be better, stronger, faster. Quieter. You'll wish for silence more than anything, and for a moment to sit still in the sun. You'll beg for the right to feel your actual age, and not like a horrible mistake has been made where you're suddenly accountable for your own actions. That feeling never goes away. You'll have as many epiphanies as there are seasons, and some of them will take. Most of them won't.

You are the evidence and you are the only territory of any of this. You bear every scar, every moment since your birth is an entry in the book. And that book only ever gets longer. You can't tear out the pages and you can't burn it up. You can't edit and you can't rewrite. You just turn to a new page, and try to do better. And it never ends, and it never gets easier, but if you let it, it can get more and more beautiful. As long as you don't let your exhaustion get to you, as long as you remember that you always have choices, as long as you're willing to read the book and see where it's taking you, as long as you love the book and the sum total of things that have brought you to this place, right now, this very second, you'll stay afloat. As long as you remember there are no secrets, not really, because it's all in the book; as long as you remember there is no shame, not really: it's all in the book already. It's the best book in the world, and it never ends: it only commences. The point of any commencement speech should be just this very simple, very scary truth that so few of us ever own: The only person writing it is you.

-Jacob

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This March, I'll be saying goodbye to all of you. You'll be saying goodbye to me. And I wish you all the best, and then some. See you soon. :)

I Will Never

Before going on that trip to swine flu country, I already made the previous post in a fit of anger and disappointment. I was ready. Then. I was prepared to leave behind everything. But I am still here. I did not chicken out, rather I chose to be, for the first time in years, brave. I chose to move forward.

I chose to leave, not here, but there. I chose to come back, to take that long trip home, alone, for the first time in my life. I chose to face everyday, with just me, for real this time. I chose to stay, and sometimes I believe that counts for something.

My plan was to lose them at a park, or a mall. I have skills, I can find a job as a grocers girl, or even at a soup kitchen. I can cook, I can speak English, there are a lot of jobs Americans turn their backs on there. I would find something decent, change my name, who would find out? I will start again, I've already put a worm in my sister's computer to delete all my pictures. My old ones will be nowhere to be found since I've taken them out of every album, all was set to go. I was ready.

But what I wasn't expecting was my heart. I began thinking about, and feeling for, my mother. This is hardly easy for her, starting anew in a country not her own. Leaving the protection of her father's name, her own name, the status she has been used to all her life for another everyday there, where it was too cold, or too hot, somewhere she was neither black or white. Then there's my stepfather, Papo. I am not his daughter, and he might have done some things that would make my father turn in his grave but he wasn't obligated to support me. He could've been evil but he wasn't, as I've seen. And what about my sister? She's still little and small, no matter how much she pretends not to be. My God, she still likes Barbie. Would I really pass all the weight in my shoulders to her, not withstanding the weight she already has?

Do I add a runaway daughter to my mother's worries? The realization of years' hard work wasted to Papo's? Would I even survive in a soup kitchen? What about the papers? Would pretending to have retrograde amnesia even work now with mass media coverage? Was running away really what I wanted? Plus, it gets really cold there in summer, imagine winter.

So, here I am. I went back. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere soon. But if one day, you wake up and hear, somewhere, that I'm missing, please know this, if you don't hear from me in six months something is wrong. But if you do, I am only on the other side of the woods.

I'll meet you again. Somewhere.

Escape Now Or You Will Never

I think it is easier to disappear here.

Ever since I was a child, I've dreamed of one day leaving. Of disappearing. Of simply vanishing from the life I've known. If there was any other way around it, I would not have chosen life. But it seems life chooses us.

I've never been happy.

Maybe it is because I expect too much. Maybe it is because I expect good things. By the time you read this I hope to be on my way to freedom. I hope to have already disappeared. I would've wanted to end things differently, but rest assured I am not dead. I did not kill myself. I am simply living another life, not this, with another name, not mine.

People disappear all the time. People are never found all the time, but people aren't always lost. Who knows I might come back, hopefully not to this. I am making my plans, and one day the name you call me will tell the world how you have come to know me.

By the time you read this I would've been long gone. By the time you read this I will no longer be the girl you know.

Goodbye.

You Want Shitty? This is IT!

Did you say it? I love you.

I don't ever want to live without you.

You changed my life.

Did you say it?

Make a plan.

Set a goal.

Walk towards it.

But every now and then, look around.

Drink it in.

'Cause this is it.

It might all be gone tomorrow.

----

And I have to wait for September?!

I'm Listening, Tell Me All You Know

There is something about silence that makes people uncomfortable. So, they become too loud. Try too hard to fill in what they think is a bad thing. I've been around people who never stop talking, afraid of what Silence will whisper in their ears if they let her. Sometimes, I catch myself being one of those people.

What would she have told me had I listened? Would it have been: "Go on child, let go it is finally time, it has been too long. It is over, you are free"? Or, "Find yourself, you are lost, find your own way back, stop waiting". It might even have been: "It's okay to cry now, you are not weak, stop holding on". I'm sure she's telling me to sleep, I have classes tomorrow. Then again, I am listening to Jess Penner's Here Comes The Sunshine, and yes, I might be crying a bit.

I don't know anything anymore. Am I in the right place? Do I want to go anywhere in life? Why am I here? Do I want to change the world anymore? Have I changed that much after just four years? Have I become one of those people who forget their promises to their younger selves? Am I too forgetful that I forget this? Have I become too much of the lion, and not the brave? Am I satisfied?

I want to move. To find the sparkles in my life, I know they're out there somewhere. I only need to find all the things I've lost in just surviving. I don't want to survive anymore, I want to live. I want to live! So, I will stop just saying it, just writing it, just thinking it. I will do it, just watch me world, just watch me God. I am moving. I am moving towards life again, and I love you! You know that don't you? I am running towards you, I am no longer afraid. Let's meet in the middle, and somewhere along the way, there will be sparkles.

God, I missed you.

Take a picture, lest I forget
How beautiful, this day has become
Leave me speechless, let me catch my breath
Yeah, I know better than to run.

(mmmm)
I was just lyin' under the stars
Thinkin' about what could be ours
When the sky started to change and
Can you imagine that... and 

Here comes the sunshine, here comes a new day
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ah ah ah)
I feel the sunshine, I'm in the right place
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ahh ah ah ah ah ah)

That faded photograph, that dapper smile
They hang so sweetly on the walls of this heart
I took you with me for a little while
But, it wasn't enough, and I miss you now 

(mmmm)
I was just lyin' under the stars
Thinkin' about what could be ours and... 
Here comes the sunshine, here comes a new day.
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ah ah ah)
I feel the sunshine, I'm in the right place
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ahh ah ah ah ah ah)

Here we go, we go, on then we're off again
I know, I know were gonna be, fine
Yeah we'll all be fine yeah

We go, we go, on then we're off again
I know, I know, oh

I was just lyin', under the stars
Thinkin' about what could be ours, yeah! yeah-ah
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ah ah ah)
Yeah we are, we are, we're gonna be fine
(we are, we are) (we are, we are)
Yeah we are, we are-are

Here comes the sunshine, here comes a new day.
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ah ah ah)
(ahh ahh ah ah ah, ahh ahh ah ah ah ah ahh ah ah ah ah ah)

Yes, I am singing!!! I'm listening now.