Auld Lang Syne

I have never spent my New Year's away from home or family. You may call that boring. I call it lucky.

I was always told that you're supposed to start the year the way you want to end it. Particularly this year, I wanted to be home with my parents, because in all seriousness, how many more do I have of these moments?

May your 2012 be filled with awesome moments, love and peace. May your battles bring knowledge and strength, and may your successes create positive change all around you.

I'm on to you, 2012. I shall approach you cautiously.

Happy New Year! Be safe. Good health. Much love.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

I am broke. I am unemployed. But I am home.

Absence does make the heart grow fonder. And as much as I hate being away from all my family and friends, being away made me stronger. I know that I can live alone if I have to. I know that I can strive for things that some people only dream of. I know that I can survive.

I arrived at home two Thursdays ago with a care package waiting for me (thank you!) and seafood. =] I also arrived with a horrible allergic reaction to the antibiotics that were prescribed to me for my eczema. =P So many lessons learned this semester.

25% complete. 2 more weeks of vacation, then back to the daily grind.

Hold On

...No one can change your life except for you...

...Just open your heart and your mind...

I loved this song when I was a kid. And I don't know... I've been feeling a little nostalgic for my childhood. Psychoanalyzing it now, I see why I liked this song... 3 girls singing in a group... 2 skinny girls, one big girl who happens to sing alto--but that's never here nor there.

...You got yourself into your own mess...

I just wonder, you know... it's just amazing, the human spirit. How a song, a person, a thought could facilitate perseverance even though everything around you seems to crumble. I've been away for 2 months now and I found that new things seem to inspire me--adding to the collection of hope that I now possess. As my friend, PhD to be, stated, "Wherever you are, you have a right to have a place called home." This place will never replace HOME, but the posted pictures of my friends and family on my walls, the weird and often inefficient meetings with my core team, and the idea that I can make a difference with the information I'm learning makes it easier to swallow the distance.

It gets easier. It really does. But only if you continue to hold on.

...If you hold on for one more day... can you hold on? Can you hold on?

Please Forgive Me

It's almost 1am, Central Time. I'm a day and 7 hours away from my first midterm. I am 200 pages deep in my readings for Wednesday's classes and still not done, but this has been gnawing at me for the past 2 weeks. 

I kind of wanted to talk about forgiveness for the longest time. Two weeks ago, the gospel (and therefore the homily) was on Forgiveness. God forgives everybody, but yet, we as humans don't. Are we saying that we're better than God? The Deacon goes on to say that, "It doesn't matter if the other person is sorry." Recite the Lord's Prayer... remember the words... "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." The other person caused you hurt, does he not cause you more hurt if you don't forgive? Our job is to save ourselves, not the other person. How can you fly to heaven if there is so much heaviness in your soul? 

But I dismissed the whole forgiveness thing. I am bitter. I don't want to forget. 

Today, during my dinner ritual--eating dinner while watching an old episode of X-Men (I'm going through the old cartoons), I almost choked when I saw the title: Bloodlines. It first starts out by some anti-mutant vigilante finding out that not only does he have a mutant father (who he knows about), BUT he has a mutant mother and half-brother as well. He goes to destroy his new-found family to regain his mutant-hating status. The second half of the plot line was that Nightcrawler finally gets to confront the mother who abandoned him. At the moment of truth he says something like, "I pray to God that He will give me the strength to forgive you, then I will pray to God that He give you the strength to forgive yourself."

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.  ~Wayne Dyer

I wonder if all the negativity that happens around/to me is because I refuse to let go of the negativity of my past. It has made me who I am. Can I accept the past without condoning the distasteful way that I was treated? Can I release the negative energy and still keep the strength that it gave me? I don't know... but I'm going to try.

Being accountable for myself and my actions and reactions, I can only change me. I can't change the past. I can't change the FUCKED UP people who chose to bully a shy kid. I can't change who I'm related to. But I sure as hell can make sure that the kid in the shadowy corner of my soul gets a little light, she deserves at least that much. 

Do I dare give myself a Forgiveness challenge? Maybe. This time in my life is all about transformation... I guess I should transform the mind as well as the heart.