I have Depression. I can’t control it – I don’t know when it comes and makes me depressed. My depression started a couple of years ago, and I’ve noticed a pattern for when it comes. Every two months it suddenly hits me. Sometimes it comes out of the blue, or sometimes something triggers my feelings and it happens. The trigger can be really simple, but it can be a big deal to me.
When I am depressed I feel really lonely and nothing seems interesting, it is very painful. To forget the pain I make myself busy by participating in activities and doing projects on my own. When I am not depressed I am very happy, I laugh at stupid jokes, hum along to my favorite songs, and blast music in my room and dance with friends. I forget how I felt when I was depressed, and I have a great time.
I think the only solution to solving my depression is time. I need time to process things. I hope that time will actually solve it, and until then I will keep myself busy.
The charming who get turned away before they can flash their brilliant smiles. The forgiving who are given nothing but punishments for the actions of others.
The aspiring doctors, teachers, or parents whose lives were cut off or thrown off course.
The eloquent whose thoughts will have to be shared in diaries instead of at universities. The confident who get put down until they would rather stare at the ground than at a mirror.
The brave – the ones who perilously fought for their country, who can’t receive their medals or see their families after a long, hard battle.
The humans who are treated like less than they are, and much less than they deserve.
This is for all those in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya who have faced injustice, not just from every-day Islamophobia, but blatant xenophobia from the leaders of a so-called “great” nation.
After I got accepted to a few colleges, I started to become extremely lazy. I just want to be done with high school and I don’t have the motivation I used to have, due to the fact that senior grades don’t affect the chances of being accepted.
I don’t know if I am simply becoming lazy, or if I have senioritis. Senioritis is a word I hear a lot these days. The definition is: “A crippling disease that strikes high school seniors. Symptoms include: laziness, an over-excessive wearing of track pants, old athletic shirts, sweatpants, athletic shorts, and sweatshirts. The only known cure is a phenomenon known as Graduation (Urban Dictionary).”
After reading the definition, I am pretty sure I have senioritis. Previously, I never knew it existed, and I am surprised I have it. I have 130 more days until graduation and I hope my senioritis does not affect that time. Instead of just thinking about college, I want to appreciate the last days I have at this school, and as a high school student.
There are many online trends. Some are funny, like the Hollywood sign vandalism, while others are, frankly, destructive, like the popular “transformation” pictures.
Photo Credit: @transformationfeed
While scrolling through my phone, I came across an Instagram page called “@transformationfeed” which has nearly 1 million followers. The profile is filled with various before and after pictures. Some showed people growing older, more muscular, gaining weight, and, most popularly, becoming thinner. Each photo is flooded with comments about how inspiring these people are, how they wish they could look like him/her, or how they wish they could lose weight.
This page, and its many variants, are just another outlet for people to become obsessed with changing their physical appearance. Little girls/boys will see these photos and want to be older, because that’s the only way they’ll look attractive. Some will see the drastic weight loss and want to lose weight themselves. Obviously this desire will happen anyway, but pages like this just scream that changing ones appearance will make them “inspirational” or “lucky,” among other things.
Photo Credit: @transformationfeed
Of course, these stories are inspiring. And of course, I’m glad these people reached their goal weight, grew older, or fought cancer. However, I don’t like seeing pages that promote unrealistic expectations. These stories spark feelings of discontent, unease, and make those who can’t gain/lose weight feel even worse.
Now, it must sound like I’m complaining, but what if instead of posting before and afters, we just post afters. We just post pictures celebrating the current beauty of these individuals. We just have an account celebrating people of every size. “All bodies are good bodies,” says an article in FEMmagazine.
Donald Trump is now our president. (I know, I wish it wasn’t true as well.) So far, both the climate change and LGBT rights pages have been taken off the official White House website, Trump has ended Obamacare, the Senate has officially elected a bunch of offensive, racist, and unqualified men to Trump’s cabinet, and it’s only Friday night! Oh, he also literally adopted a new slogan straight from “The Purge: Election Year” – the slogan “Keep America Great”. Yeah, I’m really wishing Trump actually took this “weekend off” like he said he would right about now.
First, let me touch on the whole Obamacare fiasco. Without Obamacare, we do not have an affordable health care plan in place. And, I really doubt Trump has been cultivating his own, considering that since November 7th, all he has been doing is hanging out with Kanye West, hate-tweeting, inciting the belief that racism, prejudice, and hate crimes are now “justified,” and, probably (definitely) getting spray tans.
I mean, should the first things Trump does in office be to terminate Obamacare and end awareness for climate change and LGBT rights on the White House page? We already had to listen to Three Doors Down and look at Trump’s orange pallor this morning. All of this in one day? It’s simply too much to handle for someone who isn’t the spawn of Satan.
But, just remember, we now have a President who is a “television personality” and an unofficial cast member of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”!
So adulting is hard. It’s not what you imagine when you’re a little kid. Yes, you are able to stay up late and you don’t have to listen to mom and dad. Yes, you can eat whatever you want, but with that also comes having to buy your own groceries – because guess what? If you don’t buy those groceries, you won’t have any food to eat. If you don’t do that dirty laundry, you won’t have any clean clothes. If you don’t set your alarm clock the night before, you will most definitely sleep through your 8am class (luckily that hasn’t happened to me yet, just my roommate, every Monday and Friday.)
There are so many things that I used to take for granted when I lived at home – there was always food, cleaning supplies, and cold medicine, and everything was just at my fingertips. Now that I’m living on my own I realize how truly lucky I was. So, thanks mom and dad.
I’m three weeks into college (when this was written) and I’m incredibly sick. And no I don’t mean homesick, which is surprising since I’m living in Massachusetts, across the country from California. But the kind of sick I mean is high fevers, throwing up, stuffy nose, headache, dizziness and cough, also known as a chest virus, also known as the flu. And it sucks. Trying to navigate through two different busses to get to class while making it to work on time and rushing back for soccer practice is enough to handle, and then to add being sick on top it is far from fun.
And to those who are about to go off to college, let me tell you, the first time that you get sick away from home is terrible. It might not seem like a big deal but when all you want to do is lay in your own bed but you can’t because it’s 3,112 miles away, it becomes a big deal.
So today, after not really being able to breathe for about a week, I finally went to the health center. I only got lost in the building about three times before I finally found the student health center. After my appointment, I was prescribed some medications that would help. Of course these were insanely expensive, and as a college student that’s an issue.
I can’t wait until next month when I have to pay my credit card bill.
Never fear though, while it might seem like I’m hating life right now, I’m not. Even though my family is far away and I low-key can’t really breath or taste anything, I have another family taking care of me right here. My teammates and friends are constantly checking on me and bring me tea and saltines, the perfect (cheap) get-well combination.
I don’t cry often, or at least not as much as people assume I do.
Before I turned nine, my tears had no depth. I would cry because I couldn’t get the Barbie I wanted, or because I wasn’t allowed to eat the chocolate bar I craved. It was like I was standing on the shore, only to get my chubby feet wet. They would be salty tears of defiance, and yet, they were noticed more. No one ignores a little, pig-tailed girl with puffy, wet eyes and a solemn face. People would rush to my side to be my hero and save me from my sadness.
In the summer before my fourth grade year, I truly cried for the first time. I was curled in bed and the breeze made the leaves on the tree in my backyard hit against the window with a soft thump. A mountain of blankets weighed down on my crackling shell of a body. My mom was angry at me, and I was convinced that she undeniably hated me. Even though that wasn’t the case, my cheeks seemed tattooed with the streaks left behind from my crying fit, and they stayed like that until the morning.
Only after that night, did I realize that I can only sincerely cry alone and wrapped in many blankets. It’s an odd revelation, but one that I will testify to for the rest of my life.
When I sat in the first row at my mother’s funeral, I was the most anxious I had ever felt in my entire life. I felt like her closest family and friends were watching me like beady-eyed hawks. My legs were neatly crossed and my black, lace dress itched in ten different places. I tried to focus on my aunts and uncles speaking about their beloved sister, but could only think about the choir show I was missing. My attention only perked up when my sister went to speak.
She stood with her right foot tilted ever so slightly inward. You couldn’t see it because of the podium in front of her, but throughout my entire life she had done it whenever she was nervous. She greeted everyone with a half-smile and red eyes, and you could tell that she was trying to make my mother proud. My grandma was holding onto my skinny wrist like it was a treasured jewel. I looked down at her black shoes and fixated on the curvature at the front. Then I heard my name. My sister had water welling up in her eyes and looked to me to turn the attention away from her. I wiggled out of my grandmother’s grasp and walked reluctantly to the stand.
“Um, I miss my mom. Not a day goes by where I don’t miss her and I loved- uh, I mean love her always and for-” my voice cracked.
All of a sudden, tears gushed out of my eyes as if someone turned on a hose. I ran away from the microphone and sunk into my seat, and wished I could evaporate. Those tears weren’t of evident sadness, but rather were a scapegoat to leave the gaze of all those gloomy visages. After that moment, I wasn’t sad but embarrassed. It is such a normal thing to cry at a funeral, especially the funeral of a parent, but it was one of the most fake and shallow outbursts of emotion I have ever experienced.
Photo Credit: www.pinterest.com
After that, I couldn’t cry for months. My body was no longer capable of that type of emotional release. Whenever I do cry, it is of exasperation. A way to rid myself of pent-up frustration.
Some say that teenage girls cry about everything. When we break a nail or have a split end, it is as if the world is falling apart. Even when the world is crumbling around me, I pretend that I’m standing in a field of daisies, a defense mechanism I’ve created for dealing with my emotions in public.
And with all that said, people still think I cry all the time. But I guess that’s just what a girl’s gotta do.
How do babies choose their families? Is it a game of chance – the roll of a dice, or a pick from a hat? Or is it the stork, who flies down and delivers each baby bundle to warm, expecting hands?
Photo Credit: previews.123rf.com
Sure, babies are genetic. We’ve all heard about the birds and the bees. Each family will have a child made up of an assortment of their genes (with the exception of adoption, donor insemination, etc.) But I’m talking about what’s inside. Look past eye color, or skin tone. Everybody has a soul, or a spirit – whatever you want to call it. Everybody has something inside, something intangible, that makes them truly them.
And how does each soul end up where it does? In some families, all members fit together like puzzle pieces. All their spirits fit in and work together, and it is clear that each soul is meant to be there. But in other families, souls just clash. One might belong to a puzzle depicting a mountain, but the other to a valley. They clearly don’t fit together – so why did these contrasting souls end up together?
Is the work of some greater force, with a reason for bringing certain souls together? Is it an occurrence under the pretense that everything happens for a reason? Or is it just that game of chance? Maybe souls land where they do for a reason – through a complex, calculated plan that is fueled by purpose. Or maybe souls just float around, and wherever they happen to land is correct. For some, it is where they are meant to be. And for others, it’s not.
When I was five, my mom bought a silver iPod with bulky, rounded corners and a perpetually dirty screen. I would always listen to her vast array of songs while sitting in a shopping cart at the grocery store or in Walmart. On special occasions, like my birthday and Christmas, she’d let me pick songs that we could buy the music videos for. And more times than not, I’d pick a song by Taylor Swift.
Back in her country days, Taylor Swift was a drama-free, curly-haired bundle of joy. I thought she was just the coolest anyone could get. However, as she got older, (and I as well) my opinion of her changed.
I grew up with my sister constantly educating me about different aspects of feminism, from the everyday struggles of women of color to how to have inclusive discussions about class, race, sexuality, and gender. So, when Taylor Swift proclaimed herself a feminist, I was excited to see what a person with her following could inspire. To my dismay, her “feminism” did the opposite of inspire.
In fact, recent studies have shown that when a major celebrity calls themselves a feminist, it makes people care less about feminism. Feminism has become a hot topic of discussion over the past few years. When a celebrity talks about feminism, it usually is just to build their image, not to bring awareness to its issues. Even if Taylor Swift is a feminist, some things she does demonstrate outdated views in equality, as feminism changes every day.
For example, while her “girl squad” may promote girl power and sticking together, to many in Hollywood it is just like a high school clique. Stars, such as Miley Cyrus and Chloë Grace Moretz, have spoken out about it. One such star is the Disney star, Rowan Blanchard, who said, “The ‘squads’ we see in the media are very polarizing. Feminism and friendship are supposed to be inclusive, and most of these ‘squads’ are strictly exclusive. It makes feminism look very one dimensional…’Squad goals’ can polarize anyone who is not white, thin, tall and always happy.”
Mostly, this band of models and singers is just a way to uphold Swift’s pristine image. I mean, if Swift were really about girl power than why would she use her group of friends to diss other women, like in the “Bad Blood” music video?
As a women who believes in empowering other women, Swift is in plenty of celebrity feuds. With a list including Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, among others, she can’t just be an innocent girl getting bashed on. Naturally, people are going to disagree on social media, but the fact that remains is that Taylor never really owns up to her mistakes, and yet she still has a pristine image in the eyes of many.
Finally, she doesn’t have the best track record with treatment of people of color. The reason she invited Zendaya and Serayah McNeil (two very successful women) to be in her “Bad Blood” music video, was probably because she had recently been called out for only having white friends. In her “Shake It Off” music video, she had black women twerking all over the camera, but no black ballerinas. Of course there would be black girls twerking in her music video, but generally that form of dance isn’t seen as very classy, as opposed to ballet. Ballet is graceful and fluid, and there are plenty of black ballerinas that could be included. In Taylor’s “Wildest Dreams” video, which is literally set in Africa, there was not a single black person. While these examples aren’t very apparent and could be skewed in many ways, they reflect the microagression that people of color experience on a daily basis.
With all this said, I really hope Taylor’s feminism grows in the future. It’s been quite a while since she’s been on tour or released new music, so maybe she’s taking the time to think of new ways to help educate the masses about inclusive feminism.
And to those who are about to go off to college, let me tell you, the first time that you get sick away from home is terrible. It might not seem like a big deal but when all you want to do is lay in your own bed but you can’t because it’s 3,112 miles away, it becomes a big deal.
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