I don’t mean in the literal sense of going with a program affiliated with my college. Not for a set period of time with a specific set of courses.
I want to get on a plane and leave. Travel to beautiful destinations around the world I decide to go to right before I get there. I want to study the ancient artwork in museums and the architecture of the untouched, historical buildings. I want to go to small concert venues and listen to local music, but also try all the food the country has to offer without being a picky eater.
I want to meet the people who live there and leave being friends with them or at least leave knowing a part of their story even if I never see them again.
There’s a feeling called sonder: a sudden realization that each passerby has a life as vivid as your own with their own experiences, quirks, and interests. I don’t want to know they have them; I want to live them.
I want to be a tourist in the streets someone has grown up in their whole life, but, soon, find myself a local even only for a couple nights. I want to go to a small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that I may never return to, but is someone’s favorite place to go every night. I’ll learn a few words in every language of the countries I visit, a language that might be someone’s only language that I now have a very small understanding of.
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When I went to Prague and Vienna over spring break, my favorite part was the free time in the cities. Though we were always in the tourist areas, I sometimes caught a glimpse of what life was like for the people who actually lived there every time I walked into an ice cream shop or passed someone on the streets heading to work.
This world is so big. There’s so many countries to explore and I don’t know if I’ll even get close to covering half of it, but it’s also so small. It’s a ten hour plane ride across the Atlantic and a simple text message to talk to someone across the globe. It’s both incredible and horrifying, but I can’t wait to explore it all.
I don’t know much about you, but I can infer some things.
I think you are someone who cares about your belongings.
Like your copy of Spoon River Anthology, for example.
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I think you care about it because you stamped it twice – once inside the front cover and once inside the back.
Maybe you just didn’t want to lose it and for it to be returned to you if it ever did get lost. But, if that’s the case, how did it end up in a used bookstore in a town 3,000 miles away?
I would want to know which poems are your favorites, but it seems like you never read them. The pages are nearly perfect, despite being printed in 1962.
I wish I could ask you some questions.
How old were you when you bought it? How old are you now? Why didn’t you read it? How did it end up with me?
I don’t know who you are, but I want to say thank you. Your book that was originally sold for 95 cents is now my book that was sold to me for three dollars.
And now I have a story within a story, thanks to you.
I’m not sure if you still live in New York or if any of my assumptions about you were correct or if you’re even a person at all.
But just in case I was right, once I finish the book, I’ll send it back to you.
Since I’m currently training by myself, I get to decide where I run. I avoid this road as much as possible. But during cross country season, when I’m at the mercy of my coaches, most of our workouts involve the road in some way.
Going down is smooth sailing. Going up is hell.
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The road is more like a hill, a giant, mile-plus long hill. It’s on a constant incline and, as you get closer to the top, it gets steeper.
At first, I absolutely loathed this road.
I always hated it in the beginning, because it turned even my best runs turn into something that made me feel like I was putting myself through torture.
The road is sometimes unforgiving. The more you climb, the weaker your legs feel, the more your lungs burn, the more you feel like your brain is about to explode.
I used to fight it. Each day, I felt like I was preparing for this great battle, in which only one victor would prevail: me or the hill.
But, eventually, I started to realize that it wasn’t really a battle of physicality; it was more so a battle of wit. I learned to work with the road instead of against it and things started to make more sense.
I learned to take advantage of even the tiniest bit of downhill, to take the straightest line possible. I started to read the road, to take note of how it felt when I ran a certain way.
To this day, I still don’t like running it. But, I’ve learned how to do it properly.
The road used to be some foreign, intimidating beast that I thought I would never be able to understand. Now, I realize that it was really just an old, wise mentor for me, my very own Mr. Miyagi.
Last night, I was headed up the road on the bus and, as I looked out the window, I knew exactly what point we were at solely based on the glimpse I caught of the tops of the oak trees. It made me smile, seeing how far I’ve come.
The same miles of curving pavement that used to seem endless to me are now ingrained into my memory, including details down to which tree is positioned where on each corner.
The countless days of practice, all of the sweat-soaked t-shirts and aching muscles really did pay off, in so many more ways than for just my running.
If only I knew back then just how much I would come to understand the road and how much it would come to understand about me.
I’ve gotten myself in the habit of writing down my feelings.
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I’m not sure that habit is the proper term, though. I’ve found it’s actually quite therapeutic at times to be able to physically sort out my emotions into something that is easier for me to understand.
When I feel angry or sad or happy, my first reaction is to analyze and explain it and then eventually sort it out into something that is comprehensible or maybe even beautiful to some people, sometimes I try to feel things simply in the way they are.
There are times when I can write for an hour, without stopping, and the result will be something I’m proud of. But when I find myself struggling to choose the right words, I know it’s time to put down my pen and just feel it for a while.
I’m constantly analyzing experiences, people, feelings. I guess maybe it’s because I don’t like to be confused, so when I don’t understand how I feel or why I’m feeling it, I won’t stop thinking it over and over until I reach a resolution.
I like to understand how I’m feeling. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
But just like with my favorite books and songs, most of the time I just appreciate them for what they mean to me, even if I can’t fully explain why. And I think there’s something special about that too.
For the past week, I’ve been waiting to hear from my first choice college about whether I’d get in or not.
The answer I received was not the one I was expecting.
I wasn’t sure if I was expecting an acceptance. The acceptance rate is 46%, so I thought I had a chance. But, then again, I was an out-of-state student and my SAT scores were below the average.
I checked my portal every day hoping for an answer, but then I got an email.
An email telling me I was waitlisted and I don’t even know what to think of it.
On one hand, I still have a chance of getting in, even though the chances of ever getting off the waitlist at any school or program are exceptionally slim. I still had a chance and maybe that was enough hope to hold on to.
On the other hand, it felt like a slap in the face. You’re good enough, but not as good as the other students admitted, not as good as your friends who got admitted while you’re stuck re-reading the words from the email over and over again, telling you to change your plans, your fantasies of how the next four years of your life were going to play out are not going to happen. But, if they don’t come here, we might choose you.
I broke the news to my sister, my aunt, and any friend I could talk too. They all said it was okay and that maybe it wasn’t meant to be.
I hate when people say that and, in that moment, I couldn’t even think about agreeing with them, but maybe they’re right. There’s always an option to potentially transfer or the chance I’ll love the school I end up attending more than I thought. The U.S. is full of amazing schools and I have other top choices I’m still waiting to hear from. So maybe something will work out that turns out to be better for me in the long run, but I’ll just have to wait and see.
It was growing in a garden box at school, so I pulled a leaf off of the plant and ate it.
It was a nice, sturdy piece of kale. It tasted pretty good. I continued munching on it as I walked over to the baseball field.
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Kale can be a nice snack, if you’re into dark leafy greens. But, as many experienced plant-eaters know, raw kale is quite tough to chew.
My jaws were getting a little bit tired, so I switched over to eating a different leaf that I had also picked from the garden box. I’m not sure what plant this was, but it was softer and sweeter than the kale.
As I was chewing, I twirled the piece between my thumb and my pointer finger.
I started to study the leaves. The kale was dark and rough. It was much more aggressively textured than the other leaf.
It was at that moment when I stopped chewing, for I noticed dozens of very tiny, white bugs all along the sides of the leaves.
I swallowed my bite, then tossed the remnants of my half-eaten leaves aside. I decided not to dwell on it too much, because I didn’t want the thought of the bugs to take away from the otherwise positive experience I had eating them.
(I would like to apologize to the innocent lives I took that day. I didn’t thoroughly inspect the leaves before eating them, and that was selfish of me. To the bugs that once inhabited the kale: I am sorry.)
On a completely unrelated note, this morning my parents and I went out to our tangerine trees. It was time to prune them. After about an hour of picking fruit and chopping branches, my dad said to me: “This is a chore that very few other people your age have to do, but you have to remember that it just makes you more cosmopolitan.”
Though I didn’t really enjoy being outside when it was 40 degrees, I did find comfort in the fact that our work would provide more fruit for us next season.
I never realized it before, but I am so thankful that I know how to take care of citrus trees.
I live in a place where I am fortunate enough to grow my own food. I take that for granted.
I hope that I will always have this luxury, bugs and all.
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