Balancing Acts

Recently, I watched Z, the mini-series on Amazon about Zelda Fitzgerald. Excluding certain characters who remain rolling in their graves from terrible handling (sorry, Bankhead sisters), the series is great. Christina Ricci and David Hoflin are radiant, embodying to the breath and brow every bit of Fitzgerald Flair.

Zelda Fitzgerald is a wily one. From the moment we meet her, she is buoyant, careless, and self-aware. She is a fearless individual who pursues whatever course of action fits her taste of the day.

Sometimes, this leads to recklessness. Zelda’s c’est la vie approach to her life is admirable from a viewer’s eyes, but it leads to deterioration in her familial and romantic relationships. Her spending habits rip apart her marriage, and her endearing self-centered actions in Montgomery as a teenager estrange her from her family.

Do we not sort-of glorify people who go after everything with reckless abandon?

There’s motivational posters all over classroom walls, Pinterest boards, and tumblr feeds about living like there’s no tomorrow, going after what you want no questions asked, and taking what is yours, “seizing the day.” It’s a subliminal goal we all have, to have everything we want, but one we hold as a nice but unrealistic goal. So when someone, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, breaks out of the mold, we applaud that person. From personal experience, though, either side of this is not quite as clean as it seems.

Settling for a lesser goal because the number one seems impossible is defeatist. I have never believed in anything but the one career goal I have always set for myself, because I believe it foolish to train for anything with less than 100% of my effort and attention. I do not compromise on this one goal. But I can afford not to compromise, because it really does not affect anyone else but myself. It would not affect the world if I became an actor; the world would keep turning. No one’s life or livelihood depends on me becoming or not becoming an actor. If I want to, I can dedicate my entire life to the practice of theatre, without compromise, and a puzzle piece will not be missing someplace else in the economy.

But in matters of things which do affect other people, it is a dangerous game not to compromise. Zelda and Scott live in a black-and-white world, in which there are only ups and downs, never happy mediums. Though it is wildly happy when there are ups, it is devastating when there are downs. Both people are highly ambitious and love each other very much, but they pursue their desires with such reckless abandon that it endangers the love they have for one another.

I remember watching a video of Eartha Kitt. I love her, but I didn’t quite agree with the premise of what she said. An interviewer asked her if she would compromise with a man in her life. Kitt laughed hysterically, and quipped: “A man walks into my life…and he wants me to compromise?”

It is in her that we find the admirable egoist mind. The kind where there is no such word as “compromise”, and everything is exactly as you want it to be without conflict. But just how possible is this? How can you go on with life and never be faced with a situation in which you must give up something in order to have another? This is a problem I had with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, as much as I loved it – how plausible is absolute selfishness? In my opinion, as implausible as absolute selflessness.

How do we balance the firebrand desire to know what we want and take it with the need to be sane? Do we compromise more than we don’t? Is it the other way around? Is it different for everyone? How do we find the happy medium between ambition and stability?

 

Daffodilly

One of my favorite photographs is one I didn’t take. It was taken by someone I will likely never meet of someone I know well. They have a flower on them in the picture that seems so much brighter near their face than it would have in the ground next to five hundred other flowers. I wondered how this could be; the flower’s dead when it leaves its spot, is it not?

But for some reason this photograph makes it look alive. The color of the person’s eyes, their hair, the golden light of the background – it all looks clear. All because of that little floral diaspora.

The uproot didn’t steal away the wonder I saw in that bud. Ripping that flower away from its roots for some reason allowed it to maintain its dignity in the face of death. I love it when there are massive forces at work in the tiniest of phenomena. It gives me hope that being gutted and lost yourself does not spell the end. Perhaps that flower was dying. But the picture it starred in is more than likely going to last forever.

I think roots are temporary things. They’re not like chains that bind us to any one place, nor are they like string that is easily cut. They’re the stems we need at first, but we’ll be fine without them eventually.

via Daily Prompt: Roots

Sorry, Friedrich.

A key figure in my life told me their favorite color was grey. I never met anyone before whose favorite color was the one regarded by most as dull.

I’ve never associated grey with tombstones, cigarette smoke, or depression. It’s been a much more glittery color in my mind; I think of skyscraper beams, rain-slick city sidewalks, and silver jewelry. It’s not necessarily a “me-against-everyone-else” mentality. But I oppose the conditioning that many receive to think of anything as dull or devoid of poetic potential. People’s attitude towards the color grey reminds me a lot of the common view of existentialism.

I’m a fan of the existentialist philosophy, but perhaps not to the extent of Friedrich Nietzsche. I do believe that there is no real rhyme or reason that we exist in this sphere, regardless of any religious beliefs I may have. Even a pure love of my God does not, in my opinion, imbue me with my purpose for being alive on a spinning rock in space. Nor does it assign inherent value to anyone else. We are all wandering in a sea of fog.

But the most commonly misunderstood philosophy bears resemblance to the misunderstood color, here: the lack of clarity in our lives and lack of pigment in our colors does not indicate that we are destined to live sick and sad lives.

I think of existentialism and the color grey as canvases on which we may paint. I may not see an intrinsic meaning of life, so therefore, I may make my own in whatever way I may see fit. If I think that my life’s purpose is to adopt more dogs than anyone in the world has ever adopted, and love every single one of them, my prerogative is philosophically not up for argument. It is mine, and mine alone. It’s how I navigate the unknown. Grey is unimposing but a perfect accent color, as it allows brighter pigments to appear even more so in contrast. It is a foundation on which other colors may build.

And why do we associate white with purity, renewal, and hope, when a light grey can be just the same? White is the blankest color there is. It does not offer the contrast of grey because it is not as dimensional. Grey is just as capable as reflecting the brightness of new colors as white. Why is black a symbol of emptiness, of the despicable and indecipherable? It is the best color on which to draw; when you write with white chalk on a black board, the chalk dust clings to the board when erased like it’s the ghost of what you had tried to say. Black, white, and grey are all poetic in their own right, and each is deserving of value.

I’d like to look back on this post a long time from now and note the irony of assigning value to things in the same post I talk about existentialism.

via Daily Prompt: Gray

Avid

The first book I remember reading was in the first grade. It was the same year I met my first love.

He was a dark-haired boy with nerdy glasses and a weird talent. I think he had family issues – he didn’t talk a lot and looked slightly ruffled at all times. He had green eyes (like his mom, I was told). I liked him because he was extremely loyal and brave. He was good to the core.

He also had a strange scar on his forehead, shaped like a lightning bolt.

…It was Harry Potter. I had a fat crush on Harry Potter.

That first day I picked up The Sorcerer’s Stone, I opened a door that thankfully never closed. From then on, my games on the playground got more and more imaginative. My unfortunately bowl-cut head was filled with daydreams of wizard school, magic, and friendships and love so strong they could overpower the worst of evils.

I’ve been an avid reader since then. I don’t remember every book as vividly as that one, but there have been times where I have felt that same level of amazement. I think there’s a little six-year-old in all of us who yearns for these worlds. But that six-year-old isn’t naive in this thinking; they are quite wise. To believe in the magical is the most important lesson I learned from being an avid reader.

via Daily Prompt: Avid

Lucky

I recently took a sweet road trip with my momma to my future college, Oklahoma City University (Go Starsky!), for an orientation day. To keep an 8-hour story short: any and all apprehension I had at the beginning of the year – of leaving home for a place I didn’t know, of nervousness for the people I’d meet – was aptly obliterated. I was thrilled to receive my packed schedule and the busy years ahead of me, and happy to meet my future classmates (and roommate!), who were all lovely people. My class size is fairly small, fortunately, and I’m hopeful for a great four years with the group of people surrounding me.

At the end of the day, my group went into the “Living On Campus 101” seminar. The Vice President of Residency at OCU spoke first, and one thing he said threaded together much of what has been happening in my life recently: “This time will be one of tremendous personal growth for all of you.” In context, he was talking about parents leaving their children at college to be adults. But in my mind, I connected it back to the important, strong relationships I’ve crafted this year, some of which have been marked by struggle and much emotion.

I realized in that moment that I wasn’t nervous about the growth. I was so excited about it. This is what I’d been pining away for throughout middle and high school: a time to put into practice who and what I think I am. I’ll be busy as Hell, and I can’t wait for it. I’m bursting at the seams with drive to improve my craft, and at the same time, I am learning how to accept where I am, and who I am, one moment at a time.

But I’ve been plagued by a lot of negative emotions regarding leaving. I’ve forged some tight bonds over the past years with people who have brought much joy into my life. I’ve never quite had a core group of friends, but I feel like now I’m beginning to understand what that’s like. Much of my emotions that are negative have focused on the fact that we only have till August to spend much time together. Before that statement, I had been scared of losing these friendships, of falling out of contact, of forgetting each other. But when that man said that thing, I realized that we will all be changing. There will be much growth for all of us. I asked myself, “Do you think it would be fair to try and maintain all of your relationships exactly as they are while you’re all changing, shifting, and growing?” And I said…well, no. Not at all.

This answer didn’t make me sad. It actually brought me some long-needed peace. I am no longer afraid of losing relationships, because they’re not things to be lost. We are all people who follow our own paths, no one else’s. I look forward to the time to be myself and mature in ways I never have, and I look forward to them being able to do the same. Something I knew but never accepted was that being apart doesn’t mean losing care. It means maybe you lose contact for a while, but come back together someday with much to tell each other, and perhaps an even stronger bond than the one you had before.

A problem I’ve had this last year is living years ahead of time. It culminated in losing many moments, friendships, and great times that were important to me. It only came to me recently that I have very little time left of peaceable irresponsibility. I don’t have any obligations to anything. I am free to live in my youth for a few months more before I metamorphose for four short years.

Recently, a concept that I have fallen in love with it mindfulness. I read about it in a book I loved, which was not even about mindfulness. It mentioned the practice of meditation, and the measurement of human happiness. Happiness is an ideal many strive for and leech off of when it arrives, so as not to lose it. Then, they struggle to avoid negativity, sadness, anxiety, and other unpleasant emotions. The practice of mindfulness espouses acceptance of all these emotions, on every end of the spectrum. We should not try to hold on to happiness and escape depression, because then we rob ourselves of the time we have with both. To experience them fully, we must acknowledge that they happen. We must not try to prolong or shorten one or the other for fear of unhappiness; both are valid, and both are vital.

As such, I have tried to be more mindful of how I feel. It has been a struggle, to say the least. Naturally, I want to escape the uncomfortable emotions that come with leaving home: nervousness at losing contact with friends, preliminary homesickness for my family, fear of being alone, nostalgia of childhood, sadness at all good things which end. But I have tried to accept that I feel these things, rather than run away from them. This has only been happening in the past few weeks, mind you, so I’m still pretty crap at it. But there have been moments where I have simply sat back and observed how I feel. I take a moment to focus on breathing, just breathing, and allowing whatever thoughts I have to pass by like they’re floating in a river. It’s helped me feel more balanced. I don’t tip one way or another on the emotional balance quite as much now. My natural state is just present, observing whatever is happening around me. It’s difficult to maintain, and will probably take a lot more practice, but I look forward to the challenge of trying to be really, really alive.

I know I’m not at college yet, but I’m already a hippie. Sorry, mom! 😉

It’s been a long, at times very difficult, year. But I’ve come out at the end a much more rational and much less anxious person. Some of you have given me some succinct advice over the years which I ignored: “Chill out.” I always thought intensity was a part of my personality, the part that made me special and likable and a great worker. But what I didn’t know is that I was conflating my work ethic, drive, and passion for obsession and unhealthy behavior. Separating the two and diminishing the one has made living life so much easier. Thank you for that tough love. 😉

To close this post: I’m not sad anymore that I have a home to leave behind. I’m grateful that I have a family and many beloved people to say goodbye to, because some people aren’t that lucky. If you’re reading this and you are one of those people, I wish you well in everything that you do. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday, and maybe we will only remember fondly the great times we had as young adults. I’ll carry the joy I found with y’all always, and I hope I’ve allowed you to do the same.

Y’all Haters Corny – Why I Really, Really Love Beyoncé

I recently talked to a teacher who I admire. It was the day after the glitzy Grammys, and one of our first topics of conversation was Beyoncé’s performance. I think it’s a prerequisite for living in any part of Houston that you have a type of reverence for that woman, so if there’s any kind of dissent, pop culture myth holds that the Beygency is out to get you.

They expressed the feeling that Beyoncé is self-important to the point that it is arrogant. I thought about what she said, and I replied that I liked Beyoncé for precisely that reason. After explaining it, they told me that they saw my point. No hard feelings! The Beygency hasn’t gotten them (yet 😉 ).

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that many have that same feeling towards Queen Bey. But I think that people miss the point of her artistic brand when they think this way.

The reason I don’t like, but love, Beyoncé is that she promotes an extreme image of self-deification. She is successful through this image, and by positive association, makes the idea of self-love and confidence a good one.

So, backstory.

A combination of stressors made me feel very low-energy in the past month and a half or so. Nothing horrible, just a continued lack of oomph. Long story short, I ended up downloading the entirety of Lemonade, Bey’s most recent album. I had four songs off the album just from sprinkling purchases here and there, but after a while, I put my money where my mouth was and spent the rest of the $11.50 to complete it.

And was. I. Shook.

I listened to the album sequentially, following along all the hills and valleys with Beyoncé’s masterfully crafted narrative and all of her twisting, bending, varying styles. I got mad, I laughed, I cried, and I came out at the end feeling both like smashing car windows and doing more productive, less criminal things like dancing for joy. The only other times I have felt like that with music are when I’ve listened to musical theatre soundtracks. Lemonade, to me, is a perfect blend of concept album and theatrics.

The common thread throughout the album was Beyoncé’s waxing and waning self-assuredness. With the initial discovery of Jay-Z’s infidelity, she jutted her chin out and stuck up a very decisive middle finger to this man who was clearly not worthy of the scuff on her Louboutins.

Towards the middle, around the end of “6 Inch”, she admits for a moment that the hard work she is doing is distracting her from the heartbreak she is facing, but not to the point of eradicating her sadness (“come back / come back / come back”). “Love Drought” and “Sandcastles”, a song rivaling the best Broadway ballads, explain the “waning” part of this self-respect spectrum. Beyoncé finally admits to the heartbreak tarnishing her personal image as a woman on top.

But after “Sandcastles” comes “Freedom”. “Freedom”, featuring another talented storyteller, Kendrick Lamar, is my favorite song on the album, and now on my “top songs of all time” list.

The pounding, warlike drums and the decisively focused lyrics (“These tears gonna fall away, fall away / May the last one burn into flames”) are an extremely powerful call to arms, entirely focused on Beyoncé, with a few references to the source of her hurt (“Love forgive me, I’ve been running / running blind in truth”). The subject of the song is not Jay-Z; it is Beyonce reawakening her self-assuredness like the absolutely gorgeous freakin’ phoenix she is step on me oh my GOD. 

My favorite lyric is “I’mma keep runnin’, cause a winner don’t quit on themselves”. Combined with the just awesome organ, take-me-to-CHURCH vibes in the background, this lyric killed me, pulled my soul from my body, decorated it in gold rhinestones, and put it back in to resurrect me. I wanted to leap out of my seat and dance like one of those blowup noodle things outside of car dealerships. I kid you not.

Then “Formation” came on at the end (I had no idea it was the last song – what a perfect choice), and that sealed the deal. It is all about self-sufficiency and having a spine made of absolute steel.

The reason I express so much love towards this album is partially, yes, because it pulled my head out of my butt. The other is that a basic prerequisite of loving Beyonce is loving yourself.

I could not appreciate any of this amazing narrative in full if I didn’t understand the process of self-doubt growing back into confidence the way Beyoncé lays it out. If I never figured out, “Hey, she’s super successful and famous and she loves herself – so that’s kinda cool, I guess I could do that to,” I couldn’t fully go along with her artistic creative process. When you listen to the album, it doesn’t even have to be about someone cheating in your personal interpretation; any circumstance that throws you deep into your feelings of self-pity and hate can be compared to the one Beyoncé mentions, because the journeys are parallel. Just make Jay-Z a metaphor for your own personal situation. Kewl.

Throughout her narrative, there is an undercurrent of self-confidence that grows like heat in your stomach when you’re excited about something, coming to awesome fruition in Formation. This is the reason I love Beyoncé!

She offers an extreme example of self-importance, as my conversational partner said. But by offering this, she displays that you can be successful while loving yourself. In fact, I think she is the prime example: I would dare to say that she is the most highly regarded female pop culture icon of our generation, and one of the most well-respected performers in pop overall. And, uh, for good reason – the woman has a mind-blowing sense of showmanship. I’m attaching an example at the end of this post so you can see for yourself what I mean.

I love the fact that she is almost over-the-top with her self-importance, in the same way I appreciate that Kanye West does the same thing. It is a very smart image to have, because it automatically draws attention to you as a public icon. However, whereas Kanye tends to have an arrogant image, one associated with negativity and crudeness towards other performers and people, Beyoncé’s image is a positive one, associated only with her talents, personal history, and wild success.

I wouldn’t necessarily go to the extreme that she does, as I feel it’s more a smart tactic to construct an image that is not necessarily realistic than it is her actual personality, but I feel that most people can take her Out There love of the self and moderate it to where it fits them. Adaptability is key.

 

I feel my most capable when I remember who the heck I am, and I am not ashamed to say that I am proud of myself. That was something encouraged by the media I consume, an instance of my role models actively teaching me something constructive. I love Bey and I thank her for helping people love themselves.

So when you listen to Beyoncé, I encourage you to really absorb the message she promulgates: love yaself and don’t be ashamed of doing so. Thanks for reading!

And, as promised, here is the song that literally Slayed Me. 

-MacK

 

You have to have a valley before you have a mountain, right?

“There is only one person in this room who believes you’re not capable of doing this. And it’s not me.”

These were words stated by a beloved teacher last week, in a moment I crucially needed them. I am going into what feels like a Herculean part of my life.

Since August of this year, I’ve had many last-minute milestones tossed into my path. But there is this shroud of doom over it all that it will come to an end, or especially the fear that I am ruining it all right now.

I’m auditioning for four very prestigious schools starting in two weeks, piled on top of a new job and school. I have never doubted my ability as a performer until now. I am intimidated by the thought that I will be thrown down with reality. I have lost touch with the little girl who dreamed it and made it so.

I keep getting told: your self-esteem, self-trust, and self-value need work. I understand precisely, clinically what each of these terms mean. But how am I supposed to achieve all three in two weeks, while I’m still perfecting my repertoire and trying not to panic?

I went back to the beginning and looked at these words again. My self-esteem is knowing that I am worthy of respect. My self-trust is knowing that all I can count on is myself, and that is enough. My self-value is knowing that anything and everything I am is not just sufficient, but fantastic.

I have joked about my confidence for a long time. But my lack thereof has been deeply felt these past few months. It isn’t something you comfortably talk to your family, friends, partners, or even teachers about. But I feel like I have ripped the curtains off the window and let the light in. Here’s why:

I don’t need anyone else’s praise or input to have faith in myself. I used to think that every aspect of my personality was a cool-looking shell constructed from other people’s opinions of me. Now I know that it’s unhealthy not to know exactly who you are.

It’s true that when I was little, I was dramatic, funny, plucky, and ‘extra’. That was without anyone else’s description – that’s just who I was. Now, I am all of those things. I do have a taste for the flamboyant, and that is an integral part of how I interact with the world. I love to be a little over-the-top, but I have a gauge as to when it’s appropriate.

Without nostalgia, I want to go back to being that kid. I was completely free and uninhibited at age two, when I thought I was the coolest without any kind of arrogance or self-importance: I just thought I was pretty neat, and people were neat.

Most often, I have so much anxiety that I am annoying or that people think I’m stupid. I am intelligent; my personality doesn’t negate that, and I don’t need anyone’s measure to know it. Niche facts and bare knowledge doesn’t necessarily equal intellect. My own personal intelligence is how I can quickly analyze and explain my interpretations of media, of phenomena, and of people. I can wear bright blue heels and also be bright. As long as I believe it to be so.

And thinking I am annoying makes me so; do I talk a lot? Absolutely. And I am constantly striving to let other people have air time so I can listen to them and hear their stories as well. It’s one of my biggest flaws, and a step I need to take towards being less self-centered. But I think everyone’s concept of annoying is different; if your concept of annoying lines up with my personality, then we’re just not compatible people. We’ll find someone else to be friends with. It’s not that big of a deal, and yet I am the only person who thinks it is. I’m literally the only thing standing in the way of my personal peace.

There is no standard to which I should hold my life; everyone is different. The only thing I should hold myself to is whether I am being kind. If I am treating everyone in my life with love and with respect, and I am receiving that in return, I am doing the best I can. That is the only instance where I should define myself by who I am to others.

I am trying to do what seems like the impossible right now; re-discover and re-examine the confident person I have in me. She was there not too long ago, but somehow she got a little lost or distracted. I don’t want to be sad about feeling that I have lost some part of me I can’t get back. I want to feel assured that whatever step I take is going to be the one in the best direction. To find this, I have to re-define what it is I love about myself. I am tired of feeling there’s a bar I can never reach for interesting people, and that there will always be someone else who surpasses me in ways I can never achieve. I am the only me there is, and that person is worthy of success.

I will remind myself of this as I go to audition this semester, and as I choose where to go afterward.

Thank you for reading. 🙂

Hmmph.

I just made a mistake in my behavior towards this person I’m interested in. When I tell all of my friends about said altercation, I ensure them through several “savage” takedowns that I am much too good for this puny, irrelevant guy whose intolerance of my immature behavior is clearly NOT the cause of this downhill slide. I also know that this behavior is extremely arrogant and a compensation for my deep-rooted insecurity.

Overconfidence is the cheap Forever 21 cologne of personality traits: it looks and smells like a good idea, but it wears off, and does so fast.

The core question I ask you is this: Does joking about your own arrogance cover for insecurity?

I have noticed that young people’s humor is rather caustic. Our jokes are based on our common experiences grappling with the world around us, which moves much faster than our parents’ worlds did and offers even less comfort. More often than not, these jokes are about failed relationships, friendships, or ambitions.

Most times, we deal with them by overcompensating with arrogance. “he looks like a weasel anyway”, “he’s a loser and you deserve so much better lmao”, “*snake emoji”, “#WasteHisTime2K16”, etc. They’re relatable. There’s nothing wrong with sarcasm! I love it!

There’s something wrong when it becomes reality.

Those ideas start to bleed into your personal thinking as soon as you toe the line between being silly and being serious. Sticking your nose up at the rest of the world when things don’t quite go as planned is a self-absorbed tactic to stay “above it all”, rather than ground yourself in the reality of what is not working and how to fix it.

The problem is not that you can make a jab or two as a joke, because your intent is clear when you’re joking. The problem is when the jokes aren’t jokes anymore – they’re your philosophy and shield you from reality.

First off, this thinking allows our self-definition to come from our relationships. When these relationships fail, we may take to our twitters to subtweet or @ them with spiteful sarcasm or by being “savage” (which is more often than not just being mean).

So, like everything else, social media is a double-edged sword. It’s a catalyst for that sardonic arrogance noted above. When the pressure to have a (literally) picture-perfect life is increasing, a coping mechanism becomes necessary when you feel you don’t live up to the standards set before you by the selective filter of these sites, or when your real life does not live up to them.

Here’s one way about it: Chill out on thinking you need other people to be happy, and you won’t need to compensate for your loneliness with spite.

By staking your happiness on the actions or love of other people, you’re losing an amazing opportunity for self-reflection. Why do you feel out of place in your circle? You continually try to please people and feel your efforts are fruitless. More often than not, you are wrecking your own happiness. This is a lesson I am still trying to apply.

See, focusing your whole happiness on others is like staking your ability to breathe just on the existence of your lungs. Do you need your lungs to breathe? Well…duh. But more importantly, there has to be oxygen. Life is lungs and you are air; you have to breathe deeply to make it count.

The other important thing we sidestep is insecurity. We avoid them because they’re icky. We didn’t eat brussels sprouts as children because they were weird, too. And then one day we suddenly became grownups and realized the nasty stuff isn’t all that nasty once it’s finished. Does that make sense?

When we neglect insecurity by deflecting the blame, we let that underlying self-loathing continue for as long as we delude ourselves we’re just better than everyone else, and if they disapprove of us, it’s clearly something wrong with them. There was a period of time where I felt so excluded from every group I wanted to be a part of that I shut myself off to them and convinced myself that they were just terribly mean people.

The truth? I never considered I could be at least partly a source of the problem. My insecurity and anxiety nearly wrecked some good friendships. I had convinced myself that I was so socially incompetent that I had to try so much harder than anyone else to make friends; I was horrified to make a mistake. Shortly after I made an epiphany: No one can tell me who I am, only I can do that. Once I accepted that, every mistake I made from that point on, every open-mouth-insert-foot moment, every slip of the tongue became easier to apologize for and move on from. I don’t expect perfection from my friends, and they don’t expect it from me. We’ll all say cringeworthy things from time to time. It’s nothing to bawl over or wreck your life for.

I eventually had to face my problem head on. It’s an ugly gnat I have to swat away, and sometimes it feels more like a wasp. Insecurity fixing isn’t a one-and-done, but it’s also not a Sisyphean task. Consider it like a common cold.  That cold is dormant. The symptoms might flare up, and they might be horrible just as easily as they might be mild. The people who continue to overwork themselves while sick are the ones whose work suffers. Those who know their body isn’t feeling well and rest to make it better end up healthy and happy.

So what is the message here? When you feel yourself taking shelter in self-elevation and arrogance, stop and find where your humility and humor became hatred and your confidence disappeared.

We’re challenged every second in how we will live in the next one. Deliberately make that next second one where you lift your head high, but not so you can’t see the rest of the world; lift it so you see it a little more clearly.

Open Letters

A new segment for brain block! I’ll write something long soon. 🙂

—

October 9th, 2016

—

Dear 16-year-old me,

Good. Luck.

Sincerely,

Your 17-year-old self

–

Dear Shakespeare,

Thank you endlessly for the laughter and tears you have caused me over these past strenuous weeks. I am inspired to trudge on by your words and the dream that I may say them someday.

Sincerely,

The girl who thought Romeo & Juliet was stupid all the way until freshman year and is now sucked into a vortex of Old English and bought socks with your face on them on Friday.

–

Dear friendships,

Thank you for reminding me through your lightness of heart but seriousness of affection that careful selection of you will give a meaning to all the love songs you might not fully understand yet.

Sincerely,

A former recluse!

–

Dear 17,

Are you a kid? Are you an adult?

We just don’t know!

Sincerely,

Confuse?

–

Dear Big Fish,

Your lyrics have touched my heart like no other musical. I am not easily impressed, but the words:

“But when you tell my story, / And I hope somebody does, / Remember me as something bigger than I was”

have stuck in my brain like no other. Your message of selflessness in love and that nothing is really larger than life inspire me every day.

Sincerely,

The person who tried very hard not to ugly cry in the back row. (Whoops!)

–

Dear poetry,

My recent reads convinced me
(Though not without a fight)
You’re not as hoity-toity
As I thought. So you were ‘write’.

Sincerely,

Thanks Mrs. Hopson for Showing me the Grave Error of my Poetry-Judging Ways

–

Dear Houston October,

Right now you’re being “Fall Lite“. You are the Ben Affleck Batman vs. Superman Batman to the Dark Knight Christian Bale. Get your act together.

Sincerely,

I AM TIRED OF ANYTHING ABOVE 80 DEGREES

–

Thanks for tuning in. Like I said – article soon!

 

 

instead of my name.

iOS 10 was taking forever so I started typing.

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve posted anything, but since becoming a senior in high school (I knooooowwwwwww that was only four weeks ag0), many, many thoughts have been swirling in my head.

In lieu of the one requiring much more research and detail to be completed later, I’ll spend these….23 more minutes I’m waiting on the download (!!!) to articulate the less strenuous one.

It all began in high school speech class.

We were told to bring a song with a positive message in to show to our classmates, so that we may glean the message from it by listening (part of our unit on the topic). One kid brought in a song about taking everything one day at a time, not growing up too fast, slow down, etc. You know the type. Bo Burnham has probably made fun of it somewhere.

Our teacher and some students agreed with the message. Many of us did not.

The ones who did agree said that the prospect of paying bills, having a full-time job, and being 100% responsible for themselves were the factors that prevented them from craving independence. This is a logical point – we have spent 18 years being (in the luckiest families) financially dependent on our parents, and not having to worry about what the opportunity costs in our lives are.

The ones who didn’t said that those factors were exactly what they wished for. They desired more than anything to feel like a whole person, supported in all ways by themselves alone. This is the side I felt closely aligned with.

When I spoke up, what I said seemed to resonate across the room with the kids closer to my age. “From the time we are very little, we’re somebody’s something. We’re X’s daughter, Y’s student, Z’s sister. We are getting to the point where we want to be a person separate from those labels. I have a name that isn’t in reference to someone else.”

Thinking through history, haven’t many people chafed at the same concept? Maybe they didn’t at the time, but it’s peculiar to look back upon figures in history and dig up people in the figures’ lives whose achievements were just as bold or interesting, but less publicized because they weren’t the aforemented figure. Did I say figure?

Theodora (Empress of the Byzantine Empire). Justinian’s wife. Theodora was just as significant a ruler and manipulator of culture as her husband. Yet the only reason I know her name is through the others in her life (and Wikipedia). Why? Because her achievements weren’t important enough?

Who decides what’s important enough to talk about, anyways? The Justinian code was massive, sure. But in the Nika Revolt, Theodora spoke so eloquently that she literally rallied the troops to settle the mass mutiny. Is that not worth discussion? We forget about her in the public school matrix of memorization: names and dates and eras, oh my! Individuality gets lost in this swarm. We don’t get to stop and breathe long enough to take into account the many beautifully coordinated, but distinct, moving parts of the past.

We are tethered by epithets to other people and stripped of our identity. Imagine the sister who is only known by her sibling’s achievements. How must she feel when called by their name? “Hey, you’re X’s sister, right?” What do people care what she has to offer when the only thing they hear and see of her is the connection to someone seemingly more important? What about someone’s wife, whose only place in the room is the one beside her husband? Who are they, really?

I love being someone’s sister, friend, best friend, cousin. But I don’t love that to be all I am.

Peer pressure is made exponentially easier by this identity loss. Cliques, like raindrops on a window, coalesce. These groups are one mass of indistinct forms with no personality, through no fault of their own.

I am so glad we got to talk about that in the class that day, because it made me realize there are young people who feel the same way. We struggle so much with who we are in adolescence because we have no chance to be someone separate from others. Our parents, our friends, our siblings, our teachers, our coaches, our loved ones, our boyfriends, our girlfriends, you name it, they all tell us who we are. But what if I really don’t care what I am in reference to you?

Being defined by others is being a thesaurus instead of a book. Maybe there’s a brief definition of you in there somewhere, but you’re full of vaguely connected words. Who’d read a thesaurus for fun? What can it offer you? What new passions are hiding in its pages? They’re all just words.

In a book, each word connects to form a story. Like a vernacular quilt. You read books when your heart is broken to mend it; to gain some perspective when you’re on your high horse; to make the world around you and your place in it a little easier to rationalize. Books and people have beating hearts. You can fall in love with a book, because their words are special.

I want mine to be written in a series of words that I select to represent me, not by words others place on me to make me easier to identify. Identify me as MacKenzie, not as someone’s friend, Mr. So-and-such’s student, or the Mellen family’s first kid. Just my name is enough.