Youthful Life: X

"Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it." Kevyn Aucoin I am striving to feel, speak about, and share joy more often . In a world shrouded in darkness, doused in melancholy, and bludgeoned by critique, where is my joy? I have found myself giving voice to the gray when in reality most of my day are spent either mundane, or somewhere just north of contentment. I'm in homeostasis, an equilibrium if you will. I'm existing, and doing quite alright if not pretty well. I've become so used to articulating the moments that feel like less than without giving due process to their relational foils of happiness, joy, and peace. What's the impact? It creates a skewed perspective that is unrealistically monotone instead of bright, warm, and vibrant. I h

"My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude” Warsan Shire Find someone, meet someone, be with someone - we live in a society that deems us incomplete lest we have someone else. I don't subscribe to that ideology. I believe in wholeness. I believe in additions not completions. I believe in co-creation not achievement. Togetherness is not the opposite of singledom. People are often "together" but distanced and isolated nonetheless. The more I move through life I have come to realize that what people want, need, and desire in others varies - drastically. For some, the quest for their one true love, their perfect match, soul mate, if you will occupies them. It seems effortless.  For others, it's people that may not "fit" together but put in the effort to make it work. For others still it's a sort of crowd-sourcing, so that their "someone" is not their everything - it's sharing different kinds of

" Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend."  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.  I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm spent. I have spent the entirety of my life being "amazing." My modus operandi has long been going above and beyond, being awe-inspiring, doing the most, etc. So long as I can remember I have been performing. Maybe it's a caricature. Maybe it's a program. Maybe it's a life stoked in expectations, real, perceived, projected, and internalized that has run rampant. I have been putting on a show. I have been entertaining. I have been portraying the character that has been expected of me, or rather who I have thought I'm supposed to be. I am a person simultaneously whole and categorically broken. I am a soul betwixt and between worlds warped by social pressures, entrenched in a constant battle to be worthy, emboldened by a yearn to be enough. This strive to prove my brilliance, my value, my