A Glass Half Full

Life is a crazy thing. Sometimes it’s unbelievably vast and complex and breathtakingly beautiful. And then sometimes that same life is unbelievably vast and complex and agonizingly lonely. The same stars in the sky are bright one night, and then dull the next. The same breeze can be refreshing in one breathe and chilling in the next. It's funny how that works. Almost like there is a comfort in what feeling you expect, and when you don't get it, a disappointment in the world's unwillingness to comply.

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So much has happened that I have wanted to write down, but I simply didn't have the collective brain power or time to put pen to paper.

Something strange happened; the switch came directly following Domus, but like I've mentioned before, I've been feeling really happy recently. Or at least I think that's what that feeling is. Part of me thinks it's just me feeling satisfied after a really long time- like the feeling of drinking a fresh, cool glass of water after a long, hot day's work- the absence made it all the more refreshing. Yet another part of me thinks that it's just how much I've changed after coming here. Maybe it's just the same glass of water, but half full now.

I was kind of dreading going back home for winter break. You know, family drama and all, didn't seem too appealing when I could ignore my problems and solve the rest of the world's instead. The first semester feels like it was all too long and all too short at the same time. Like I built a family and we've been through our own drama all in mere months, which is why it's so strange to go back to the place where the other chapters of your life took place.

I don't even feel like the same person that I was before I started Minerva. So many nuances on my outlook on life have changed, and I don't know if they should be attributed to me simply getting a chance to make my own mistakes without my mother hovering over my shoulder, ready to correct them, or to the people I have met who come from such different lives, but somehow managed to solve the same problem in a different context, and graciously share their map to treasure with me.

I also feel old. I know 19 doesn't inspire a picture of grey hairs or nostalgic memories, but I truly feel like I have lived so much freaking life, and getting a chance to look at all of things I have overcome, I just feel like I've carried so much on my heart for so long that I got used to the weight and didn't check to see if it was okay? My heart feels heavy- with experiences and memories and stories and people.

I always thought I could get away with not getting close to people. Afterall, most of the examples of relationships in my life didn't exactly end fruitfully, and thus, my outlook on that aspect of life has always been quite jaded. Starting off Minerva, where everyone was filled to the brim with a passion to MAKE FRIENDS was quite overwhelming, and for someone who struggles with reconciling with finality, I wasn't keen on building fragile relationships.

Interestingly enough, I found that the people that I tried hardest to be friends with, ended up not being my friends, and the people who I tried hardest not to be friends with, ended up being the people that I have texted or facetimed or called in the mere week that I have been back in Dallas. Now that I think about it, it makes a lot of sense: We always want what we can't have, and in the process, are blind to the privileges that we do have. The two people that most wanted to be my friends, became part of my few true confidants in this world.

I thought it was crazy. I thought there was no way that you could know someone, understand a person, in four months, let alone a mere two weeks. But no matter how much I hate first impressions, I think they hold a very accurate piece of truth in who a person truly is. No overthinking. No overanalyzing. Your first impression, for whatever reason, holds this eery essence of the person, and looking back over the last couple of months, I realize now that I fell in love with the idea of loving that essence- maybe not the essence itself.

In Rise of the Guardians, they called it the "center." Just how Santa's was wonder and Easter Bunny's was hope, I think everyone has some center that doesn't change. Sure a person may grow and change and develop, but I have no reason to believe that that center really changes throughout one's life. I've definitely seen people try to change it, and there have been several failures that I have witnessed throughout my life- notably in my father's case. But I don't quite feel sad about it.

I think the feeling would more accurately be described as "disappointed".

I feel disappointed that I can't either change that person's center so that they can stop hurting themselves and others around them OR that I'm incapable of sufficiently empathizing with that person enough to understand why they chose to view the world through this lens.

I mean I guess a part of me knows why, and also understands why, but cannot fully cope with the fact that even with this knowledge I can't help that person become more....I don't know...better?

Is a person truly a better person if they're no longer themself?

Anyway, my point is, more often than falling in love with a person, we tend to fall in love with the memories that we had with the person. This is a concept that has been rattling around my brain ever since Minerva forced me to watch the stupid Black Mirror episode on clones. The girl says to the clone of her dead lover something like: you aren't you, because there's no history to you.

And I guess she's right.

A lot of the friends that I thought would stick with me throughout the rest of my life, I don't necessarily miss them, but I miss the memories that I had with them. I miss the person that that person was in that very moment- not the person that they are now.

The few people who have actually stuck by -the ones that really matter- are the one's who I don't really have to talk to, but their mere existence satisfies something in my soul. A best friend who hates everything I love. A history teacher who effectively parries my sarcasm. A dance teacher whose face lights up when I walk through the door. An unexpected friend who literally travelled all the way to San Francisco to see me. And more recently I have realized, a mother who lives and breathes for my happiness. Haha and mails me a cake on my birthday. Crazy.

That is true love. Those are the relationships that matter.

And there are a couple of people at Minerva who excite me in just the same way, but a part of me is wary of investing my soul in people who may not reach back. I guess I'm just exhausted from meticulously building bridges in one direction, only to look up and realize halfway through that no one is building a bridge from the other end. The people who I thought would last didn't, and the people who I wanted to last didn't, but what I guess I'm learning from this is that friends don't last-

family lasts.

I don't think I have an interest in making friends. I want to build family- whether that be blood or otherwise. I came back to Dallas hoping to finally build my end of the bridge to reach my mothers- a gesture long overdue. I was also pleasantly surprised at the few who did reach back and the few who made home feel like home. It feels like comfort, and I don't really want to leave.

Being away makes you realize that, and honestly it's the little things that add up: the familiar squish of your bed, your things left in the exact place you left them, the sheer ability to simply walk into a room and feel like nobody else understands the way matter unfolds in that space better than you.

And it's not just the physical place, but it's also the little things that remind you that you're growing up, and that the people around you are also growing up, and that one day you are going to look around and wonder whether you miss the person or the their memories.

Or both?

The way my mom yells at me to wake up in the morning, or how her hands always have that leathery warmth to them, or how she always falls asleep to some movie that she'll never finish watching. Or the creases in her face that pull her face into that hearty smile. Or how she laughs from her stomach. Or how she worries and worries and worries that I won't be happy and how I worry and worry that she won't be happy, or how we both secretly fill our guts with each others happiness instead of our own.

I love her so much, but I don't know how to just say it to her face. I feel like as soon as the words leave my lips I'll just crumble at the weight of our relationship. We've been through so freaking much. She's been through so freaking much. And I know I never quite loved some of those memories but I think I can finally admit to myself that I love her.

It's been a good year. But more than the memories,

there are some people that I miss before they're even gone.