I’ve started to realize it’s the little things I change about my day that make me feel so much better.
I’ve started studying outside during my free blocks. Even when I’m not doing work, I just sit outside on my phone instead of inside my dimly lit, stuffy dorm room. It feels so much better having both the sun and light breeze against my skin, keeping me warm and cool at the same time. It’s more refreshing, though I’m not doing anything more than sitting outside.
I’ve started getting up early again. I get up around six a.m. now and, despite sleeping less hours, I feel more awake than when I’d sleep in until 7:40. I get up and force myself to go running because even if I’m tired in the moment, I feel wide awake for the rest of the day. I have time to go to breakfast, less time to rush to get ready for classes, and more time to hang out with friends in the morning. I’m no longer starving by the third class of the day or falling asleep by the fourth.
It’s a good feeling finally being motivated to do the small things that make drastic changes to how my days turn out for me and I’m appreciating every day so much more because of it.
I never thought those numbers could ever mean so much to me. I have five weeks, twenty-five weekdays, and thirty-two days left of my senior year. I will be free once those are all zero.
I will officially be done with school. I will be a college girl. I still can’t believe I am almost done with the four years I dreaded the most my whole life. The four years I wanted to be done are almost that: done.
I am a very different person from who I imagined myself to be and I know I am not done growing and figuring myself out, but I love who I’ve become and don’t want to change anything. I almost wish I could pause these last few weeks and live in them for a little while longer.
I can’t wait to get away from here. To start my life with no boundaries. These weeks are something that can’t go by fast enough.
I wish these weeks would pass by in the blink of an eye, but I wish I could look back on them and remember everything I am feeling now.
For quite some time now, I’ve been trying to find God.
It’s not that I feel I’m lacking something without being a member of a religion, I just find it fascinating how people feel so empowered by so many different faiths.
In some ways I’m jealous of those people, the ones who know whole-heartedly that there is some higher power out there to guide them.
I know a lot of people who are skeptical of religion and, in some ways, I am too.
But, I’ve come to the conclusion that good people don’t use the Bible or anything else to justify hate or harm. The people who make excuses in the name of God are hypocrites in the truest sense and are ignorant by thinking that just by adhering to a faith will guarantee a better life or afterlife.
I think there is so much we can learn from religious texts. Even if you don’t interpret them in a spiritual sense, I think that anyone of any faith or background can gain something from the lessons in them.
From my perspective, the main purpose of a religion is to give people a sense of purpose or fulfillment and to help them live the best life possible.
So if this is true, then I’ve found my god.
I find my religion in the wilderness. I find god in the trees and in rivers and mountains and the sunshine.
My god makes up everything that is natural and wild. It teaches me to live the best, most fulfilled, and positive life that I can.
I’ve always walked a fine line of being perfectly healthy and utterly unhealthy.
I never drink soda, energy drinks, or coffee. I don’t like donuts because they’re too sweet for me.
However, I do have impulses to eat any and all food in front of me without any self control to stop, especially when it comes to binge-worthy snacks like chips or cookies, though I rarely buy them on my own. I always got excited for random road trips where we stop at McDonalds for McFlurries or fries. I never liked vegetables as a kid. I liked the basic ones like corn and carrots, sometimes peas or green beans, but I would be repulsed at the sight of an avocado back in the day.
But, lately, something has changed.
My family always said it’d happen eventually, that I’d eventually start liking the vegetables. I’d always say no to them when we’re out at restaurants and laughed at them for thinking I’d change. Vegetables were disgusting, weren’t they?
But the last several times I’ve had fast food, I’ve felt sick to my stomach and just thinking about having it makes me sick. I bought snacks today, but just a couple bites made me put them back in the drawer and I’ve had no desire to bring them out like I usually do. I’ve said no thank you to ordering desserts at restaurants and haven’t had anything else to drink this week except water and half a strawberry lemonade.
Photo Credit: delish.com
Then, there’s the vegetables. Brussel sprouts have become one of my top favorite vegetables and I get excited for them when they’re at restaurants. Whenever I go home and my uncle asks me what I want for dinner, I get more excited about asparagus than anything else and lately I’ve had a strong craving for guacamole, something I used to cringe at the thought of.
I guess it’s weird. I didn’t imagine the day I’d like avocados – or any other vegetable for that matter – would ever come, but it did. It might just be my taste buds changing, but I guess it’s just a part of growing up.
“Easter-worshipers.” What does that even mean? Yes, we were at church on Easter, but, no, that does not mean we are Easter-worshipers. It means we are the scary C-word.
We did not go to a service to worship Easter, we were there to worship the day Jesus Christ did the unthinkable, unimaginable, impossible, and rose from the dead.
I did not sit in those pews to talk about the Easter bunny and think about the Easter egg hunt I would be helping out with later. I sat in pews to talk about and worship my savior.
Those people whose lives were taken from them did not go to church that day planning to worship Easter. They went there to hear about Jesus Christ and how he died on the cross for our sins. They were there because they were the C-words or at least interested in learning about the C-word.
The C-word is not a bad word and I am tired of feeling like it is. True C-words are the most loving people. We are taught to love everyone and forgive everyone like God does. Yet these past few years I have started to feel as though being a C-word is wrong and I am a horrible person. And this past week, holy week, has made me scared about my future as a C-word with all the attacks on C-words. The media can’t even say the C-word.
We are Christians and proud, so don’t be afraid to call us what we are: Christians.
I woke up under the stars the other night. There were so many and, though I couldn’t nearly see all of them, it reminded me of how pretty, plain beautiful our universe is.
I woke up on a slick rock in a canyon in Utah. I woke up a couple times that night, the rock was pretty slanted and not that comfortable, but I didn’t mind. Everything around me was too beautiful to mind being awake.
I woke up and my nose was cold. Aside from that, I was cozy in my sleeping bag, but the breezy fresh air made my face all cold. But, once again, I didn’t mind.
Photo Credit: farm3.staticflickr.com
I always forget how much I love camping. But then, when I go, I fall in love with it entirely. I love hiking for hours and watching the landscape change around you. I love having nothing to worry about other than making a good fire and finding water to filter. I love to not set foot into a building for days and I love waking up at night underneath the stars, being reminded of how pretty our universe is.
Of course camping can be stressful sometimes, like when the blisters on your feet are burning and you know you still have miles left to go or when you’re wearing all the layers you can possibly wear, but you’re still freezing in your sleeping bag. But, again, I don’t really mind those things all too much. The freeze-dried food, the soaked shoes, the farmer’s tan, it was all worth it once again. Because, the other night, I got to wake up underneath the stars in Utah and it was so beautiful.
School was hard today; long homework assignments on top of essays on top of tests on top of projects and, to make my day more stressful, I spent hours anxious and worried about fears in my head. To top it off, I skipped lunch to try and end a relationship with a boy without hurting his feelings, but it made the situation worse. By my last class period, my brain was throbbing wanting to explode and my anxiety was through the roof.
I wanted to lay in bed and cry, but I thought of a semicolon and put on my running clothes.
This is where my day started to change.
I asked an amazing girl if she wanted to run with me, I knew she had to run today anyway because she is training for a half marathon, so I thought we could run together.
She said yes and we set off for a five mile run.
After about two hundred feet, a sharp pain in my calf that I get often when I run started to scream inside my leg. My negative mind set began to kick in. I’m going to slow her down… This run is going to suck. You’re not going to be able to do this. You’re such a slow runner. This is why your coach isn’t proud of you. This is why you won’t make it to CIF.
Luckily, I made an amazing decision: I took a deep breath, cast out the negative voices, and just kept running.
My running parter and I talked about school and life and running. We talked until we both fell silent as we slipped under the spell of running: our movements connected directly to our breath, the pain became a faint feeling instead of an all-encompassing sensation, our foot steps made a clip-clop clip-clop rhythm. Our breathing was all our mind focused on and we became encompassed in the aura of running.
Breath in, step step, breath out, step step, breath in, step step, breath out, step step…
My breathing was like a conductor and my footsteps were the orchestra.
I usually run alone and it’s crazy how much running with other people can change your running experience. Even when we weren’t talking, I felt like my running partner was there for me. If I fell, she would catch me. If I needed to slow down, she would stay with me. If I wanted to run ten more miles, she would run with me and I hope she knows that I would do the exact same for her. If you are reading this right now, I hope you know how grateful I am to run with you.
When you’re in the zen of running, you go with the flow, you are supportive of your peers, and you are supportive of yourself. This is how I was today.
My legs felt strong, my mind felt clear. I was next to an amazing girl, surrounded by beautiful scenery. I was happy.
Once we got to our destination, we bought drinks, smiled, laughed, talked, and stretched out our aching muscles.
Running is an unpredictable sport. Somedays you’ll run a mile and your legs will feel like lead. You’ll be miserable, in pain, and want to stop. Other days, you’ll run ten miles and feel amazing, like you could keep going forever.
On bad running days, your brain will say “stop running,” your body will say “stop running,” but you need to find it in your heart to say “keep running.”
Runs like today are the reason my heart says “keep running.”
After bad workouts, bad races, and times where I want to quit, I will think back to the run I did today and think: “Runs like that are why I love running.”
I’ve written so many drafts trying to talk about this, but no matter what I write nothing sounds right. This is not something I can write in one sitting. The words have to be perfect.
It seems like no matter how many times I write it, it still sounds horrible. I can’t even write this post where I don’t say what the other post says.
I can’t bring up what is in the other post because just bringing it up is not right to me. Everything about it has to be perfect.
It will probably be the last blog post I write because that is how long it will take to perfect. The thing I want to say is probably one of the hardest things I have ever written. I don’t know how to not sound naive when saying it.
I hope that I can actually put it into words and that it is enough for him.
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