to humans.

We Cling.  Humans Cling.

We cling to music—

The changing notes, the poetic lyrics, the connections they bring. 

We cling to poems, quotes, writing—

We cling to the inspiration and the desperation, we cling to the raw emotions the author hides between, behind, and around their words. 

We cling to art and nature—to light and sunsets. 

We cling to vivid colors, the reds, the blues, the pure brightness of light. 

We cling to the beauty, the story our eyes piece together. 

We cling to the air that crawls across our skin—

the sounds that embedded themselves into our brains and became memories—

the tastes that finds our lips and leave us wanting more. 

We cling to the unknown—

The stars, the wishes we tie into the sky, the universe

The long nights when we trust the stars with our secrets. 

We cling to the memories—

the laughter that hurts our stomachs, the leaking, salty drops of sadness that poke at the back of our eyes and eventually find their path to our cheeks, the spontaneous adventures that continually feed our souls. 

We cling because we desperately do not want to be alone. 

Our souls crave company, they crave love, they crave understanding, they crave a bond with other souls.

We cling. 

We yearn to know if our mind is slowly wasting away and falling apart.

We want to know we aren’t going crazy.

We wish we had answers, we wish we knew how the synapses in our brains worked, we wish we could explain what makes each of us different.

We cling and hope and pray that someone else out there know exactly how we’re feeling.   We cling onto any little bit of emotion we can find in hopes that one day we will find the words to express the bulging pile of thoughts that cling to us.

We cling because we long for someone to explain the things we can’t.

We cling. Humans cling.

to my mom.

When I was little you taught me how to tie my shoes—you taught me that the bunny runs around the tree, once, and then it jumps through the hole. 

You taught me that a penny is worth 1 cent and a nickel, 5 cents and a dime 10 cents and a quarter 25 cents--and how the green paper is something that you can use to buy all of the coolest trinkets from the good, old dollar tree. 

You taught me that the cookie dough is better than the actual cookies

And you taught me that even when someone was mean you treat them how you wish they treated you because everyone deserves to be treated kindly. 

Mom, you taught me so much.

When I was a teenager you taught me that knowledge and personality were the most beautiful things about a person.

You taught me that sometimes boys are mean, but who needs boys anyways.

You taught me that working hard in school will be hard, but it will also make real life a lot easier. 

You taught me that I should make my dreams a reality because what is the point in having a dream if you don’t at least try for it.

Mom, you taught me so much.

Now I am graduating.  In 24 days I will be out of high school.  On March 2, 2015 I became an adult.  At the End of August I will be moving out and living on my own.  I am starting college.  I will be an EMt, CNA, Phlebotomist, and I will work in the hospital.  I will eventually go off to medical school, and I will reach my dream of being a surgeon.  I’ll travel and hopefully I’ll aspire to everything I can be.  At some point you’ll give me away to the best gentleman I can find, and someday I’ll teach my daughter what you taught me.

Mom, you’ve taught me so much… but I’m still learning More 

I'm not who I once was…

I decided I wanted to be a surgeon five years ago.  I was young, innocent, and quite naïve about all that the career entailed.  But I knew two things for certain—one, blood, the bright red fluid that the little muscle in your chest squeezes through your body, intrigued me and two, I wanted to help people.  Surgery seemed like a way to do both.  So I started taking medical classes. I filled up my years with classes that focused on anatomy, medical procedures, and how to save a human life. A short four years later years later I landed an opportunity to be an intern at the hospital and thanks to special connections and the knowledge I had picked up throughout the years, I became more than an intern I became a project for Respiratory Therapists, Echo cardiographers, Nurses, and even Surgeons to teach and mold into a potentially amazing ________________ (I’m not quite sure where the path will take me yet).  But when people ask me about the joys and the horrors I’ve seen, sometimes they are too gruesome or too miraculous to share, but I will always remember.

I remember the call for a code; running down the stairs; and watching the cyanotic man flop onto the table, almost as if he was boneless.  The adrenaline rush began, his life sustaining muscle had failed and whether he lived or died was in our hands.  We pushed the Epinephrine and the Atropine and we sent jolts of electricity through his body in hopes that we would remind his heart that it was supposed to pump blood through 4 little rooms and then to the rest of his body.  In between reminders, we were his heart.  We compressed his chest and in return his chest squished the muscle enough to sent blood through his body.  His heart didn’t work so we were his heart.  He wasn’t breathing so we were his lungs.   I took my turn filling in for his heart and when the time came to switch I stepped back.  Minutes later a voice came over the radio, there was a certain horror that filled the room as the voice said, “come out of the hospital or I will shoot myself”.  With that, those of us just waiting for a miracle ran to the locked doors.  Sure enough there was a man, standing, with a gun to his head.  A feeling of impending doom spread through the ER.  No, we were not going to walk outside—he could easily shoot us.  But he could just as easily walk into the room and kill us.  So we called the police and we waited for the inevitable.  We talked to him through the radio and told him not to, we tried to save his life but we weren’t going to sacrifice our own.  In a flash he was gone.  I stood with my face inches from the glass and watched as he pulled the little trigger that sent a bullet into his brains and out the other side.  I watched the splatter of red body soup.  I watched the man, who seconds ago was standing, fall to ground—crumpled and contorted in a way that human anatomy usually wouldn’t allow.   I heard a nurse scream and a gasp that escaped from my own lips.  And just like that, any innocence I had left dissipated into a memory.

Why did this happen?  What would cause a person to feel the need to end their own life?  Was it drugs?  Was it a chemical imbalance?  Was it an unknown, untreated illness?  Who was he?  In all honesty I wondered why I was okay—How could I just move on?  Why was I smiling and laughing later that day?  Am I heartless?  If I can handle this, do I have a breaking point?  I don’t have much to say about these thoughts, other than I had these thoughts and occasionally they are triggered.  Sometimes they flash through my head as quickly as the bullet went through his head; and other times they tend to cling to the synapses in my brain, forcing me to think about the infinite amount of answers for any one of these questions.  These questions come with the memory; they are etched into the grey matter of my brain alongside many other memories.  You can’t choose what knowledge and memories carve their way into your brain.  Our brains are an independent muscle; they are stubborn and are not easily persuaded.  They are limitless but their stubborn minds create limits.  So we fight against the limits.  Our hearts and minds collide with one another’s thoughts and we go to war.  Our body becomes a battlefield and soon we are a mess of frustrated, leaky eyes.  War is a strange thing.  It tears us apart only to leave us to rebuild, stronger than we’ve ever been.  It throws out twists and changes that we learn to adapt to and before long we are a new person.  We strive for greatness and when we fall short during our first try; we fight until we make it.  Our brains set new limits that we fight to break again and again.  Maybe that is how we move forward.  Maybe the fight fuels our dreams forward.  Maybe the fight is how we reach our potential.

Eventually I’ll go off to medical school, I’ll continue to break my limits, and I’ll engrave new pathways and fill them with knowledge and memories.   I’ll conquer that independent muscle that lives in my skull, or at least I’ll keep fighting.   What if we could conquer that stubborn muscle? What would we become?  Would we grow stronger? Or would we stop growing all together?  What would our limits be?  What might we become if we evolved and could win the battle against our brains; if we took control and remained limitless; released ourselves from boundaries all together; if we emerged from the battle with no reason to fight again; if we cut our own path, carried our memories, and completely filled our brain matter.  What would happen if we followed every thought or dream we had?  What would change if we were completely in control, if we became what we fantasized about for all of our childhood years, what if we were in control and became creatures so brilliant and so fascinating and so utterly amazing that no one thought would ever evolve…

What then?

I am.

Did I spent six days a week surrounded by horses and children with disabilities, getting dirty and dust covered, baking in the hot sun and freezing in the cold winters, coming home covered in smells you only find at a barn, using equine therapy and teaching children how to ride, and falling in love with horse back riding and the beasts themselves?

I did.

Did I fall into a big group of friends that spent weekends together watching movies, going to dances, playing games; did I discover my love for the medical field through first responding at school; going on calls to wrap ankles, calling the ambulance, and finding any possible way to practice medicine?

I did.

Did I start going to every football game, wearing school colors, expanding my circle of friends while discovering my love for education and all of the wonderful things it offers; did I start my first minimum wage job, cleaning at the rival high school; get my driver’s license, go on my first date and decide how I wanted my future to go?

I did.

Did I experience my first real heartbreak, realizing that some monsters are so big there is no way around them; fill my school schedule with required classes that almost killed me off, stay up till midnight to keep up with homework so I could have a social life, start a new job caring for an aging gentlemen, learn that a new drug was just on the horizon, and decide that boys aren’t worth all of the trouble they cause?

I did.

Did I decide to make every moment count and begin adventuring every day; did I learn to balance the life of a high school kid, a college student, and a put-together adult with a successful career; while going to every high school event I could squeeze into my life; did I decide it was okay to be alone, and that sometimes the silence is nice; did I learn that life isn’t perfect but it is a exhilarating adventure?

I did.

Am I getting ready for graduation, working towards my many dreams, and having all of the adventures that come with it; am I trying to avoid failure and heartbreak, while I strive to reach my fullest potential and continue learning that adventuring will set me free?

I am.

living magically.

So this month in English we started a wonderful little thing called magical march.  Basically our assignment is to remember the things that make our stressed human selves, be happy.
 and we began be talking about what it means to live magically.

To live magically means to be yourself.  To be comfortable in your own skin and to stop caring about the harsh judgements of the world.  Living magically means escaping the stress of grades and of being imperfect, and finding the simple joys of life.  To feel. To travel.  To love.  Living magically slips past the reaches of society.  Living magically is when your reality is suddenly better than your dreams.  When you're living magically you feel everything, you stop disguising your emotions and you become real. You feel freedom, you feel empowered, you feel extraordinary. You contemplate the simple treasures of life and well as the most complex ideas.  You are not scared of failure, in fact you embrace it and you become a soul unlike any other.  You become yourself.

Living magically does not come easy.  It is a constant battle with the expectations society pushes on us. But as we do it, we grow stronger and soon we become a force to be reckoned with.  We become someone who is beyond the reaches of limits. We become limitless.

18.

and somehow that day crawled by without me realizing the reality of it.
I have officially reached the age I've dreamed of since I was a child.  I have reached adulthood.

3 weeks ago I officially reached the age of adulthood.  In someways my entire life changed… but then again I feel like I have been an adult living in a child's body for sometime now.   I have finally reached that age I have longed for.

What a lovely time period it has been.  I have made new friends just to add to the old ones.  I have hit the reality of how truly wonderful my life is.  I am exactly where I want to be and more opportunities have opened since the day of my birth.  

So no... nothing extremely excited happened on my birthday but in all honesty it didn't need to... my life is already an exciting adventure and this is just another wonderful piece of the journey.

February Fling.

Well- last Saturday I went to my very last girls choice dance.  and we ended it with a bang.   For the morning we decided that shooting each other sounded nice....so paintballing we went.  After we left, bruised and battered, we cleaned up and headed to our once in a lifetime- dinner experience.  

We spent the evening following the things little papers told us to do- whether it was compliment your date every time he took a drink or to snort each and every time you laughed. 

Dinner was followed by a game, a game called smurf.  Basically you take a verb-stabbing, dying, eating- and then one predetermined person asked questions and aims to guess the verb.  It was absolutely hilarious.   

Then came the dance, we danced, laughed, danced, and laughed more. Then the night ended with dessert waffles.  

I would have to say.  It was the best last girls choice dance I could've imagined.  I can for sure say this is one thing I am going to miss.