It's November of my sophomore year in high school. I just sat down and decided I should plan out my next two years with my course book. For the most part it is about cramming as many AP courses in as possible and figuring out what needs to be sacrificed to do what I really want (ie I will have to take honors physics as a junior then AP physics as a senior because bio or chem don't fit with taking AP spanish and AP english lit which are more important to me)

Yet I also look at my plans for senior year especially and I see a few white spaces where academic classes can't fit (block scheduling) and I wonder. I flip through the book and think well, that could be cool or that could be something I want to explore seriously by then. By then. It's a funny phrase. Because I know what I want now. I know what the colleges I am aiming for will want. Yet, what I am going to want. For my future. For myself. For my life. Well that's a whole new question entirely. Today, I see white spaces. I don't know what I will want to explore by then. I don't know who I will want to be. And, to be honest, that scares me. But at some point I have to have faith in myself and faith in my intelligence and self-awareness that I will make the right choices to fill those spaces when the time comes. So here I am. Yeah, I'm scared, but I'm going to get through it. I'm going to figure it out. And I'm going to throw myself head first into the journey. Head first. By then it will be time to risk. And by then I have faith in myself that I'll be ready to risk.

     I've been feeling like I don't belong anywhere lately. All the places I used to belong have changed or moved on or gone away. Tonight I had my first players rehearsal. These are the people I have emulated for years. The people (even though most of the originals from my brother's day have since graduated) who told me I was cool during the hardest times of my life. The ones who gave me something to look forward to, like maybe I could find somewhere I could be accepted as a real person if I just got through middle sect. Well I did. I got there. I did my first audition. I got put on my first cast list. But it hasn't felt like I thought it would. None of the new things in my life have felt half as good as I thought they would. All of the things I spent three years waiting for have seemed like a let down. 
      Tonight at rehearsal I looked around at the people I was with: many of them new, some familiar, some who I had never been exposed to as equals. I had one of those moments where you suddenly realize you're doing the right thing with your life. I was meant to be in that room. For the first time in what feels like forever, I got that feeling like I belonged somewhere. Like things finally clicked. I want to hold onto that feeling. That's what will get me through.
♥

    The day was hot and growing hotter by the second as the clock crept past midday.  I was sitting at lunch with my best friend, idly shifting my bracelets as we spoke.  I wore them all the time.  Each one telling its own story- a snippet of the things that are truly important to me.  Recently, however, their job description had expanded to covering the bandage that masked the healing cuts across the top of my left wrist.
     "What is the band-aid for?" she asked, jerking me out of whatever relaxed summer-afternoon-brunch-with-an-awesome-friend daze I was in.
     "Oh um, it's from the beach when we were swimming and I ran it along the side of a rock, it's fine," I replied with reasonable confidence.
      "But you had it on at the beach.  I remember because I saw it and was mildly concerned you were cutting yourself, then I realized it was on the wrong side,"
     "Yeah I know, um, it's a rug burn," I said quickly, and not entirely convincingly.
     "A minute ago it was a rock burn," she said edgily.
      "I know, it's a rock burn and a rug burn," I added in a slightly more convincing tone.
      "Darling, do I need to look under the band-aid?" her voice now threaded with caution.
      "No, I promise it's fine," I asserted.
      "Ok, well I guess I just realized that it's mildly shady that you wear bracelets all the time and you won't take them off at the beach without putting all of your bands on the one wrist.  Are you sure you don't need to talk about anything? Because you know I'm always here.
     "Yeah, I'm fine it's nothing," I insisted.
    We gently dropped the subject.  One of my greatest assets in life is that I am very independent.  I handle myself well and I hate it when people have to take care of me.  But, as it turns out, this is also one of my greatest flaws.  It means that I often don't ask for help when I really need it and end up in too deep. This may turn out to be one of those situations.  Right now, I am doing ok.  I am fighting the diminishing urge to self-injure and starting to understand my mistakes.  Yet I have learned recently that the main issue with self-harm and any addiction is that once you do it the first time it is easy to do it with half the motivation and twice the vigor the next time and the next time.  So, if I slip again, I know that I have to do the responsible thing and get help, even if that means swallowing my pride and sacrificing a small part of my independence, despite what my natural inclination may be.  Because at the end of the day, my need for safety must outweigh my need for pride.
♥