Support

It comes in all shapes and sizes. 

In colors of violent brilliancy

and whispers as quiet as the night.

It comes at times when it's needed

and at others when you already feel right.

It is more than words, yet it is the easiest thing to give.

No ribbon or bow is required to pass it on to one another.

From friend to friend, lover to lover,

child to mother, stranger to his brother. 

She said," Wait for me."

I said, "How long?"

She said, "Did you see that?"

I asked, "Again?"

She said, "Come play with me."

I was no longer there to answer.

Sometimes the time will trick you.

It will stand still and convince you that you're moving.

You feel as though you've moved ten thousand paces when in reality you took one step back and have only set yourself behind.

Behind the place you've dreamed off and into a day that you never did.

You never noticed this back sliding because the ones around you aren't those who love you and they probably never did.

If and when you look up from the bottom of the hole,

remember at least that you didn't get there on your own.

So while you vow to not stay there

because in your heart you know you're good

look around for those who will help you and then be cautious of the wind.

Do not let them blow you from to and fro

to not let them tell you only the things they know.

Listen patiently and intently,

but then be true to the ever growing voice inside of you.

When it is time to leave, you'll know it 

because the whole journey is about you growing. 

It's just a blog, it's just a blog.

I'd like to go back to the beginning. The beginning being an indescribable spot, a fluctuation between multiple memories with the precise hopes of revealing it all. The beginning is the same as the middle, not to be confused with the whole. The beginning is what formed you, but also has very little to do with where you might end up. These are things I have taken for granted, masked behind the screams of feminist outrages. These are the topics no one is paying attention to because it is a time when the cries of hungry children and divided families are silent against the weight of the greed for gold and silver. I agree, the representation of a typical fantasy princess is as different from the head-strong, decision-making king as could possibly be. Polar opposites, as some might call it. The idea that a woman is much more than a great cook, master sewer or even multi-talented house-keeper is firstly not a knock to women who choose to do so. Someone has to do these things, obviously. The more kudos to you who have the stability of income with which only one working parent may be hands-on twenty-four hours a day, most days. However, this is to say that some women prefer to do other chores. I myself must be a current day, transgendered being because while my female nature knows the mystery required to do the dishes and scrub toilets another part of me wants to write a book and share some of my ideas with the big boys. I have been educated enough and seen a decent amount of the world to know that the dilemma and tragedy of undedicated and lost women and young-girls is, indeed, an epidemic. I wanted to know why and my only hope is that this piece will make it beneath your eyes, into your mind and out again of your very mouth. Spread the word(s), please. Let all the young people of this generation, male or female, know that they have been misled. Housecare and parenting does not a bad person make. Those are honorable and necessary in order for our society to continue developing with respectful and patriotic citizens. On another offense, please tell them that a good alternative to a failing economy is to turn on the image that the media has so recently and completely honored; sleaze-balls. Yes, sleaze-balls. People who have no other objective in life than to enjoy every second, without a thought or pretense as to how others may or may not be affected. In addition, in order to turn ourselves off to this image, through a tried and true method, I humbly suggest turning your eyes from the representations, if not only for the moment to look at whoever is around you and ask how you might help them, love them and in turn enrich your own soul that we each one of us most assuredly has residing in us. 

The problem with the argument I am presenting is that the tangents I could take are endless, so I will try to stay on the main road while taking side streets when only completely necessary or slightly beneficial. I think young people are lost. They are floundering and adults are too busy, too preoccupied, too angry, too hurt to take the time to correct what seems to me to be mortally wrong with our nation. Like, Stephen Kieman said in his book, Authentic Patriotism, I know problems exist all over the world, but if we cannott help our own people than we should seriously be considering the appropriateness of "helping" others, especially when half of our citizens and most others from around the world don't consider what we do as help. If, however, you are reading this and anything I say applies to your country and you feel you could be influential to people I only dream of meeting, than by all means, please help your young people too! I don't presume to know the state of youths around the world, much less throughout the United States. I only have my experience, a California born and raised youth to adult who spends her time tutoring kids who can't tell me a dream they have beyond the weekend. No dreamers, no politicians waiting for their age to match up with their ability and no awareness of themselves or others. It is truly a sad situation. I want to yell at the parents for bringing children into the world who only fear the night or to slap the school system for not inspiring more in a child than adequate behavior for lining up properly or for sitting quietly, mostly. Above it all though I want to plead and beg with the people who have become so disconnected from each other that seeing a child with no shoes sparks the comment, "I wonder if his family is even legal" rather than "that poor child, what could five dollars do for him?" What I'm wanting is compassion. Compassion because we cannot understand every situation, all we can do is take care of the here and now and I know that as a kid compassion and sincere love from an adult is what got me to where I am today.

That is just the beginning. I am not, as has been critiqued in the past, some hippie-flower person claiming that love will bring about peace and end all travesties. Instead, I'm admitting that I lost my way and had forgotten at age twenty-two how to try. If you don't understand what I mean, try making someone else's day and see how it alters your own. It may not feel like magic and fireworks the very first time, but trust me when it clicks, when you smile at a kid because they are looking at you and you don't know what else to do and then they smile back it feels like the day just got that much brighter. I loved Kieman's book, but I wanted to add this section if I could. Not everyone can come up with a sincere, life-bettering hospital system and I know that isn't the point of his book, so I just wanted to add this little piece. Start small. Start as small as you want to and I can't tell you much more because I'm beginning there myself. I do know that you will surprise yourself at how quickly your habits can change and how the good deed-doer will just ooze from your own mind and sneakily catch you off your own guard. Perhaps you could start with your own kid or even your family if you need to. Maybe you already show all the love to your family that can possibly be squeezed out of you? Than move on to showing the globe some love. For me, I imagine every trash I return to it's rightful spot, the garbage can, has benefited someone else's day. Maybe I am stretching my imagination, living in a daily fantasy where my neighbors appreciate my effort, but I'm not running back to reality. I like it here and I like to think that others started before me, so I'm not as lonely. You should join me, after all, it would be no fun to go on a journey completely alone.

Quitting

I realized this morning that my entire life, all 23 years, has been about quitting. I am, of course, the girl who learns through doing. Does it hurt to bang your head into the wall? Well, yes, it hurts him and her, but would it really do the same to me? *Five seconds later*, "indeed!" It does inflict pain. So, then I know. At least down this route I usually have first-hand accounts of circumstances that others bring up as topic fillers or gossip-bits.
Anyways, I wouldn't say that I am a quitter, just that I was seeing the world in that light and have only, just now, realized this. Instead of perceiving the transitions in my life as just that, as moments when change takes place in order to move me up or along even, I saw it as a step-back. I guess I'm thinking of life more as a yin-yang type existence now where the items of the paradox, whatever they may be, co-exist rather than pull in completely opposite directions.
The best example I have is my struggle to find a sustainable life-style here, when the home I've known is there. The schism between the two felt like a huge void that I was running from. In one plane I was the young girl, family-oriented and people-pleasing and confident in that role and in the other I was self-reliant,  education-grounded and free, in more than a few ways. In my mind, these two were black and white and I could not see that gray was an option. Most likely because when I went there I heard all the negatives of here and so I began to believe that my life-style choice had a hierarchy, one that I knew intuitively was "wrong" while the other just wasn't "right."
It took this year, a most unpleasant 10 months to be honest, to give me a new beginning. See, the old me would have said, "Time to start over. I'm done with blah, blah, blah." I'm trying something new now. I am building, rather than casting the entire model aside. In reality, that isn't how life works and, if it is, there are only so many times we can start from the beginning, which are actually ruins before we give up and hopelessness sets in.
The first step in my perspective-changed being is to acknowledge that I like the way my ground floor was built. (I'm speaking/thinking entirely metaphorically here.) Once I was able to admit that or to see that, once again, I started to see that it eliminates fear as to what I'll create next. That first level will always be there, so the more comfortable I am with it, the easier it will be for me to try new things and not worry so much about making the "right" decision or even about having the appropriate response.
One of the struggles I'm having with this new outlook is how to react when certain characteristics I have bring me down every once in awhile or make me feel guilty in a situation that another individual might never think twice about, but I guess I'm still learning.
I still won't regret any of the choices I've made, but I will remember my "growing-pains" and pray to God that I remember the lessons I've learned. The hard way, of course.