Change(verb): to become different in essence.

I'm tired of my box. I'm tired of the traveling the same path. I'm tired of the same future and the same past. But most importantly I am tired of the present.

I'm ready for change. I'm ready to cause my life to "become different in essence." I'm ready to feel the blood rush through my veins with newfound strength and for my pale skin to blush bright with love. I'm ready to stop being a people pleaser.

I have reached a unanimous and dangerous conclusion that I am what most people call a people-pleaser. I plan my future, choose my activities and make my decisions because it is what you--my readers, my peers, my family, my teachers--want for me. Through the years I have lost the ability to decide for myself and I am ready to regain responsibility over my own life. In taking on that challenge, however, I plan on losing my ability to compromise and sacrifice unless you--my readers, my peers, my family, my teachers--prove that you, too, are willing to make the same or equal sacrifices to me. And not the same as in "same or equal" facilities for blacks in the South post-Civil War, but actually equal. And so help me God, you'd better be ready to prove it.

I think that the reason most people struggle so deeply and inwardly with change is because with change comes vulnerability, unfamiliarity, and that necessity of building up again from ground zero. With change comes responsibility and uncertainty.

But personally, I am done being a people pleaser. I'm done make my decisions off of your objections and opinions. It's my turn to decided what is best for me.

What is best for me is change.

Bring in the new and enlightened yet vulnerable and uncertain me.

I feel like this should end with some kind of final word, like cheers or Amen or hallelujah. And since I am officially following my own heart:

Cheers.

Better than I have ever known any other truism in the world, I know this: there is no better place to be than home. This place isn't necessarily always your house. For some people, home is school. For others, home is the ocean. For me home is a feeling. It's that feeling of being so loved and welcomed that my heart could quite possibly explode.

Yes, that's right. Explode.

You know that feeling when your dating someone and you pretend to like things they like just because you know it will give you something to talk about? Like, when I was dating CJ, I honestly made myself believe I liked the music he listened to, the sports he played (lacrosse), the classes he liked. That's when you know that your in lust.

But then there is the opposite. When you don't have to pretend to like something that you don't, because you and that oh-so-special someone like all of the same things. Or in quite the opposite situation, you and that someone are so different that you click well.

And that's when you've found home. It's when you don't just hang around your someone to be with him/her, but also to be with his/her family, because you know how welcomed you are into their home, their hearts, and their lives. It's when you're so meant to be togethere that you're someone-special's dad comes up to you and says "So when you two move to college together, have you put any thought to where you're going to live?" It's when you know that everything in the world is in sync; when all is good, and all will never be any less than good.

They say home is where the heart is. For me, heart is where the home is and all it takes is one simple sentence to make others feel like they're at home too. All you have to say is "You're always welcome here" or even "We enjoy our time with you." A smile is contagious, and so is love.

 "Love brings happiness; happiness brings love." And that's all it takes to make a little change in the world.

Everyone knows the feeling. You know, the day you think to yourself "My God, today could not get any worse." And then as if things weren't bad enough as it was, it does... it gets worse. How do you continue on through the day when it has become an exponential decay--it starts out alright until it slowly gets worse, and then suddenly it plummets into a monsterous black hole? Why do days like this happen? Is it the fault of the universe holding an invisible cloud over you so the rain just keeps coming, or is it your own fault?

The bad days, yes, sure they come, but then they go. And even when you don't feel as though the rain will ever end, it has to at some point. Life isn't a lake that will overflow and drown the town. Life is like... a rainbow. Man, that sounds cheesy, but really, just hear me out. The bad times--the rainy hours--they exist, yet the beauty of the following rainbow makes up for it all. The rainbow is hope, it's the motivation to keep moving on. And dammit it's hard to make it through the rain, but if you yourself keep the thought inside that the rainbow is soon to come, then I promise you'll make it through.

Even the sun has the days that it just can't shine as bright, and trust me, those somber days will appear periodically through your life, but it is up to you to not let that day turn into weeks or months. Don't remember the rainbow when it's too late. And not only is it up to you to keep the bad days short, it's up to you to not let it spread. Yes, they say that smiles are contagious, but so are frowns, and that isn't the kind of feeling you want to be spreading throughtout the world. Bad days, they happen, but it is in your power to make them good. This is the one point in your life where you can prove your omnipotency and show the world how capable of changing bad into good you are. It all depends on your outlook of things. A very famous cartoon character, Ziggy, once said "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses." Now that's one I haven't heard before. It proves that any situation, even something as displeasing as a thorn can be turned into good with the right attitude.

In the movie Castaway, just for those of you who haven't seen it, (See it! It's amazing!) the main character played by Tom Hanks is the sole survivor of a small plane crash. He spends years and years on a deserted island, making due with a few packages that washed ashore after the crash. He even tries to commit suicide by hanging himself off a branch on the edge of a cliff. Once he's rescued years later, he says:

"I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone.I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring? "

In this quote, Chuck Nolan (Tom Hank's character) realizes in his suicide attempts that life is always worth living but it is constantly changing. You've just got to keep breathing, and tomorrow the sun will rise and give you a fresh start.

Maybe you think a lot of what I've said today is a load of bull crap. That's fine, I'm not asking you to conform to my ideas (and I'm sure you all know my feelings on conformity), but I'm asking you to try to accept them. I don't know the exact quote but I know there is something out there about how smiling, even when you aren't happy, will eventually wear into you and make you happy. It's like if you call yourself something enough times like stupid or fat, you will eventually become that thing. So maybe if you tell yourself enough that you can be happy and try to look at the positive side of things, then that will happen.

I'll leave you today with this: