Category: confessions

Routine

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I have conditioned my cat.

Her treats stay in the top drawer of my dresser, along with folded clothes. When I open the drawer, the handle bounces against the wood, making a clanging noise. Each time I hear it, she comes running in anticipation of treats.

Now comes the balance.

I worry to open the drawer for clothes, for fear of her conditioning wearing off. If she does not get treats when she hears the clanging, she may begin to unlearn her conditioned response. She will stop running to me, and I will have lost my leverage.

If I want her to come over, I open the drawer. Though, if I open it for clothes instead of treats, I feel obligated to give her what she wants. I wonder if it’s mean of me to tease her – even if I don’t mean it. She doesn’t know the difference.

I now find her trying to open the drawer herself. One day she will. And that day I will move the bag of treats. And the conditioning process will begin once more.

Trying to get her treats

If you love them, let them go…

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At one point or another in your life you are told “if you love something let it go, and if it was meant to be it will come back to you.” It is a statement told to help someone usually adjust to the loss of something loved that is beyond your control. In theory it all makes sense, but you never want to have to tell yourself to abide by that concept.

I never really understood the meaning of that until I found myself fighting to keep someone in my life. Every day I would struggle to watch them drift away. I would think, how could someone that I love so dearly, and who claims to love me equally, simply fade away. I decided to simply let them go, because in reality, or as the saying goes, “if it was meant to be it will come back to you.” So that is simply what I decided to do.

At first, hours passed, the days, then weeks. The pain was real and it felt all so very fresh. like a deep wound that took ages to heal. Then eventually months began to pass, and I felt whole again, even without my dearly loved person. I accepted their leaving, I never understood it, but I accepted it and I considered that good enough.

I felt whole again, even though I was missing a piece. But after the hours, days, weeks, and months had passed a wave of emotions came back into my mind. I felt the need to reach out, to check-in, just to see how they were. But I had to remember that I let them go so I simply put it in the back of my mind.

That was until I received a message. The person who I loved so dearly came back. Did that happen because I simply let them go, or was it because it was indeed meant to be?

So maybe the age old saying isn’t wrong? Maybe if you really do love something and you let it go, it will eventually come back to you?

my real fears

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scary movies don’t scare me

for me it’s the psychological mine field that our minds lay out for us

the empty houses that feel a little too empty

emptiness that slowly sets in as you try to navigate your new found awareness for sound, or lack of

the wood creaking wrong under your bare feet

or the toilet flushing, water swirling and filling the bathroom with normal sounds, then suddenly the water sitting still, soundless

back to navigating the defining silence

rushing

but not trying to scare yourself more

to turn on as many lights as possible

but you still feel the darkness lurking behind the walls

in the walls

under the floors

or in your head

sometimes you get a tingling in you spine as you pass by the unlit room

urging you to turn and peer into the darkness,

but you know if you do you have hit the mine

and it will explode

but its not only empty houses that trigger the fear

walking home

walking alone

walking as a woman, alone

gripping your purse as adrenaline grips your body

being followed, but not really

feeling followed, but realizing they were just going on their way to wherever they had to be

felling helpless

in ways you know you shouldn’t

a friend making you uncomfortable

do they know what their doing

or is it in my head

do I say something or is this normal

these things scare me

the mine field makes me aware

but awareness makes me scared

makes me terrified

Image found in Pinterest

The Ups and Downs with Life

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As time went on, my emotions started to grow into something not so pretty. My thoughts and feelings followed me everywhere, even when I wanted nothing to do with them. I was trapped and claustrophobic. I would come home from school and sit in silence, and do nothing. My motivation was gone, my happiness was fake, and my mental health was non existent. Sometimes it would hurt to cry because the mental pain I was in.

Photo credit: Joey Guidone

I was getting better. I wanted, no I needed to get better. I talked with someone, a couple someones, and I worked on my mental health. I started feeling bursts of happiness and motivation. These feelings that I have not felt in a long time. I thought I was getting better, I thought life was treating me well. Until it was not.

This time I understood what I was feeling, and I wanted it to stop. I did everything I could to get better, and I knew it was going to be a long process with setbacks. I was kind to myself, as well as patient. It took a while, and I still have ups and downs, but I am getting better. It is a day-by- day process.

I am finally able to say that I’m truly happy with life.

A Culmination

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I present my Capstone this Wednesday. It is a culmination of my experiences in high school, and a chance to share a topic I am passionate about. For my “project,” I fostered kittens. Not only will I share my experience, but I hope to educate others on how to care for animals and why it is a community responsibility.

Fostering is vital to the life of every cat. The Humane Society is filled with kittens, yet nobody considers where those kittens were for the first eight weeks of life. Every kitten was either raised outside by their feral mom, or they were fostered by someone who sacrificed their time to raise a kitten.

Fostering kittens gave me firsthand experience with the issue of finding homes for cats. While I “foster-failed” and ended up keeping one of the kittens, I did not have room in my then five-cat household to keep another. I named her Blue, and we took her to the Humane Society where she was adopted.

I look forward to sharing my experience and enthusiasm with my school, and I hope to inspire others to foster kittens and save lives.

Image Credit: Hannah Shaw

Sick

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Gross…

The annoying feeling of being icky and sick, it’s not comfortable. Having your immune system compromised- coughing, throwing up, and sneezing- makes you feel miserable.

Being sick during COVID- 19, is horrible. You do not know if you have corona, or if it’s just the common cold. It’s a scary feeling for both you and everyone around you. They wonder if you have Covid and you have to tell them that it’s just a frog in your throat. Being sick during Covid just makes everyone on edge.

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Speciality Medical Dialogues

I despise being sick, it is the worst feeling ever. I got so sick one time that I had to go to the ER. The ER is the one place where I would never ever want to go back to. Although it is very clean, it grosses me out and the ER causes me to have shivers down my spine. The feeling of being around other sick people worried me.

Spring

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Each year, spring seems to be the most overwhelming season. School begins to speed up as we are faced with tasks each day.

Now that the pandemic is slowly returning to normalcy as more students come onto campus, we are catching up on what we missed. This, however, results in the cramming of a years’ worth of experience into a single month. It is enjoyable in its little moments, though when I look at my planner, the words begin to blend into each other as the pages are smeared with hastily placed pencil marks. I return to my planner hourly, adding both academic assignments and extracurricular events. It is covered with reminders, such as bring my costume for the musical, or drop off a scholarship application.

I enjoy each day thoroughly, though looking ahead can be overwhelming. The tasks for one day are manageable, though skimming the multiple notes and plans for the week can feel as though it all must be done that day.

Perspective is vital to managing a planner. I always note that I am living in only one of the days on the page, and it is not yet time to manage the others. This spring may be busy, though it is my last opportunity to experience high school. I plan to enjoy every day, as they are my final moments on this campus.

Spring
Image Credit: Alina Demidenko – iStock

Journalism

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Journalism can be strange. It is a new way of facilitating my love for writing, yet with emphasis on the most important element – storytelling. Instead of researching my topics online, I now must go into the world and obtain information from people.

The reactions differ – some are more than happy to tell their story. Others, however, remain reserved as you push your way into their schedule. I enjoy the social element of journalism. I have an intriguing conversation with at least one person per week.

Journalism has taught me how to reach out to people, even if you don’t know them. I understand the format of an interview request email, and how to conduct a conversation where I get the other person to say all the right things. In journalism, I am but the message man, bringing other people’s stories into the limelight. I have enjoyed this experience as it has shifted me away from academic writing, improved my social skills, and made me a better storyteller.

Image Credit: Nicole Schuman

Unspoken Words

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I can not even count the times I have wanted to reach out to you, scrolled through my contacts to find your number, went to type out a message I never sent, or looked at old pictures and felt an urge to speak to you again. But I remained silent and kept the words unspoken. I’ve wanted to tell you how much I’ve missed you in these last six months. There is not a day that goes by where I do not think of you… But recently you’ve been living in my mind much much more.

Recently everything has reminded me of you. I see images of us from a year ago to the date, hear your name in conversation, or see things we would have shared with each other and something tells me I must speak to you again. But instead, I keep the words unspoken, although there’s this feeling deep in me that we need to speak once again and that something will bring us back.

My unspoken words consist of these thoughts for the most part; you rapidly became the most significant person in my life, and for that, I’ll forever be grateful for, but the day we stopped speaking a little part of me began to crumble. You took a part of me with you when you evaporated from my life. You were part of my daily routine, we spoke every day from the second we woke up, to when we would lie our heads on the pillow each night. We shared some of our highest highs and lowest lows together, and always made an effort to check in and see how we both were feeling. You being gone felt like I was missing my other half. You were my person.

These unspoken words have given me the chance to reflect on how I feel, and what drove us apart. I understand why you had to leave, but I do not accept it, and if I am being honest I probably never will. But I am slowly becoming okay with that, with the idea that you are in fact gone, weather that be for now or for forever.

I still often wonder how you are doing though, and I check in on you from afar. I only hope that you are doing as well as you used to be, and you are carrying on. I hope you still have the call for adventure, and a sparkle of mischief in your blue eyes. But I miss you more than you’ll ever know. I miss us, our adventures, late night conversations, and most of all I miss my best friend. I hope we cross paths one day in the future, for you will always hold captive a large part of my heart.

Photo credit: Pintrest.com

A Page of Four Years

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February has brought about the time to create senior pages. I have spent time scrolling through my camera roll, searching for the perfect photos that can encapsulate four years of high school into a single 8″x10″ page.

I found photos of my friends. Photos of projects I had done in art class. Photos I had taken for AP World History projects. Sifting through hundreds of memories to find the most valuable moments has proven to be more difficult than I had thought. I have narrowed it down to about forty photographs, which, if I were to use them all, would be about a centimeter wide each.

While small on paper, many memories still remain as vivid as the day I experienced them. I remember carving pumpkins at my freshman Halloween dance. Is that memory less valuable than the time I hung my art in an exhibit? Do I feature friends, experiences, or accomplishments? What photograph will take up the most space?

As I sift through the photos, I imagine what words will be written on a page. I could write a classic senior quote, a thank you to those who helped me through school, or simply my name in a basic font.

I know my senior page will encapsulate my high school experience as I remember it. I just need to find what moment will serve as the biggest picture.

Yearbook
Image Credit: Josten’s Memory Book