The other day, while in the midst of bliss and happiness, a sudden wave of sadness hit me. This seems to happen a lot and I'm undetermined if it's a minor form of depression or just a product of my pms-y monthly cycle.
Regardless of it's origins I got sad and this time it was about death. I've always been a person that isn't afraid of dying. If anything I'm excited and curious about death because then I'll finally get to find out where my spirit will go. I'll finally solve the mystery that the entire world seems to constantly be at war with. It's a compelling concept but I'm extremely selfish when it comes down to who's the one that's doing the dying. Although I'm nonchalant with the idea of myself dying I'm not so keen with the idea of people that are currently in my life passing away. No one ever wishes to lose the ones you love and along with that the idea of being alone has kind of always frightened me. I've yet to experience what it feels like to lose someone close to you and I'm not particularly excited for my first. When you're so used to seeing and talking to someone almost every day or just having the comfort of knowing they're there and then just one day they're gone? That frightens me. But, it seems like I might have to face this idea head on in the near future and my biggest fear now is that I won't be there to say goodbye since I'll be 12 hours away from home. My grandparents are getting older and lately they, mostly my grandpa, keep on talking about themselves passing on sometime soon. I've lived with my grandparents my entire life and my grandpa has always said that his mission in life was to raise me well and make sure I go off to a good college. Well, that time has come and I'm scared that since he did what he said he would do that now it gives him the chance just to give up on holding on any longer. I know that death is inevitable but I'm not ready to say goodbye just yet. I'm starting to realize I might have to say goodbye to my dog, Bruiser, of 9 nine years soon too. He has diabetes and I've recently noticed that his eyes are starting to get cloudy and there's a strong possibility that he can go blind soon. This doesn't necessarily mean that he's close to death but he's old and sick so it can happen. I've dealt with the death of pets before but this one is different. Bruiser is the family dog and we've had him now for close to 10 years. That's a very long time and I've gotten incredibly comfortable with knowing he's there for me to give unconditional love and share snuggles with. So if he were to just one day be gone I would be heartbroken. Then again my dog, as well as my grandpa, could go on to live for an additional 10+ years but I can't fully say that death isn't a possible contender. So I guess I just have to prepare myself for it. Even though I don't really know if there is a way to prepare for something as emotional and life changing as death because whenever I think about it I just get depressed. The only thing I can really think to do is just spend as much time with them as possible before I leave. Give my dog more kisses and my grandpa more hugs, just to show them how much I love and care for them. I really hope that I don't have to face death anytime soon but I can't just forget about it. I have to make every moment I get with those I love special because you never know when death is around the corner. Life works in mysterious ways. But everything happens for a reason. Those happenings just seem to suck sometimes.
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I never thought graduating from high school would feel this good. After 4 long years of hard work and determination it really payed off. I somehow managed to finish with a 4.1 GPA during the year that I thought I was doing my worst academically. Actually, that seems to be a running theme in my life this year. All the projects or tests that I thought I did my worst on ended up being my best and the things I was proud of and confident in were usually my worst. So what does does that mean? Do I just need to stop caring as much? It seems when I put little to no effort into something I get high praises for it. A great example of this is the work of art I submitted into the Palm Springs Art Museum. I really rushed to finish this piece and I was confused as to why my art teacher was really pushing me to submit it. I felt like it wasn't well done and I didn't feel like it was even close to being finished. But I guess his intuitions were right because it got in. And it even earned me a very much appreciated $5,000 scholarship. This same scenario happened with a poem I wrote. We had to write a poem in our English classes for the "This I Believe" writing contest, a contest that most of us had entered in the previous year. I decided to take the easy route and just formulate a poem out of the essay I wrote the previous year. I seriously wrote the poem in 5 minutes. I put little to no thought into it and really just finished it to get it done since I had procrastinated the deadline for so long. About a week later I come to find out I made it into the finals and had to read my poem in front of the entire Senior class. I was dumbfounded. So I'm still at a loss for what my approach to my work should be at this point but, I guess my experiences just go to show that everything doesn't need to be perfect to please others. I'm Virgo so I naturally want everything I do to be perfect. This often leads to me spending countless hours on one project when I have a hundred other things that need to get done. Leaving one thing being absolutely perfect and the others being done at a sub par level. So I guess instead of putting all my time and energy into one project I should instead learn how to evenly divide up my time into all of my projects. Even though they might not get finished looking incredibly perfect they'll still be good enough for whoever's grading it. I'll probably also gain back a lot of my sanity through this process as well. Graduation felt so "eh". The week of graduation was kind of crazy. In between grad-nite and trying to get a lot of last minute tasks done graduating was the last thing that was entering my mind on a day to day basis. Not to mention I was knee deep in sleep debt. Probably the reason why I've been doing nothing but sleep this past week! When graduation day finally came (June 1st!) I was really just ready to get it over with. All the seniors had to go graduation practice at 9am that morning and honestly I wish we went earlier. I live in the desert so at 9am it was hot. Luckily they tried to make the process as swift as possible. The only saving grace that day was going out to lunch with my grandpa. We never really get the chance to have one on one time together so it was nice to spend the afternoon with him. He acts like he doesn't know it, but I love him a lot. The graduation ceremony was long and boring. The speeches were great though. One of my best friends Sebastian, also our classes salutatorian, had a speech at the beginning of the night. It was really funny and he was able to roast our high school without being offensive. It made me proud to be such a good friend in his life. Did I mention he's going to Princeton? Like how many people really know someone who went there?Probably quite a bit, but I still feel special. Sebastian if you're reading this I AM SO PROUD OF YOU! Just for you to get an idea of how long this graduation was I got there at 6pm and didn't leave until 12am. 6 WHOLE HOURS and I was exhausted. The actual ceremony didn't start until 8pm but seniors has to get there early for I don't know what reason because we literally stood around and did nothing. We're going to back track a little bit. The days leading up to graduation, while being my busiest, were some of the best ways for be to start the beginning of my summer vacation. Which is also my final summer vacation while still being technically a kid so I'm glad I spent that first week with amazing people and great vibes. Grad-nite was not what I was expecting at all. Don't get me wrong I had a blast, but the entire time leading up to the actual grad-nite part of the trip park workers kept telling all of the seniors to not ruin the magic for the kids and to behave ourselves until they closed down the park. For those of you that don't know how grad-nite works a bunch of seniors from different high schools go to Disneyland for a day. You get there at about 1pm when both parks are still open to the public and then at around 9pm all the seniors have to go to California Adventure. They close down the park for you and there's dj's all over the place. It's just one giant party honestly. But I wasn't expecting it to be as big as a hormonal teenage party as it actually was. People were getting lit as hell. They didn't ruin the magic for the kids, they ruined the magic for everybody. Never again to I was to listen to Yiken and Ms. New Booty at Disneyland while a bunch of teens get "freaky with it". Now going somewhat back in order...
As well as doing a million things before my actual graduation date, I decided to take the time and write each of my friends very long and heartfelt letters. I had to write 7 in total. It was a lot of work and I shed many tears but in the end it was really worth it. I love writing to people because I feel like I can express so many emotions that I feel towards that person in just one letter. It's so much more meaningful then just sending text messages and it's something they can all hold on to for the rest of their lives... as long as they don't throw it away. To each and every one of you, Sunny, Viv, Julio, Sebastian, Taylor, Ben and Isai, I love you all so much and you have each had a vital role into shaping me into the person I am today. Did you know that we've all known each other since 2015? It's only been 2 year really but that's still a lot of time that we've all spent together. We have all grown so much since the first time we hung out and we're all now our own people. Some of us even now starting our lives as adults, me being one of them. I've been so lucky to have really close relationships with each and every one of you and I cherish each of them so incredibly much. I love you all and I'll see you guys soon. |