Today is a winding road that’s taking me to places that I didn’t want to go
Today in the blink of an eye I’m holding on to something and I do not know why
I tried

I tried to read between the lines
I tried to look in your eyes
I want a simple explanation
For what I’m feeling inside
I gotta find a way out
Maybe there’s a way out

Spring time is a WEIRD time. A LOT of things change with the forces of nature around us. For one thing, I can’t stop sneezing. And my eyes are itchy like crazy. This is also the time when I get the slightly mild eczema under my knees and around my armpits. (Attractive. I know.)

“I just don’t want you to make a mistake,” she says. “You’re older now. You can make your own choices.”

Yes. Yes I can. The more and more I “grow up”–wait, is that even the right word? The more and more I get older, the more and more I’m expected and reminded to take more responsibility over the choices that I make in my own life. But I guess I’m worried that that doesn’t necessarily mean that the choices I’m making in my life are ones that are better than some I would have made in the past.

I mean what if I really haven’t matured that much at all? What if I really haven’t “grown up” at all? I feel like I’m still making the same decisions. I feel like I’m still making the same “mistakes.” The only thing different now is that I have brand new justifications for it. The only thing different now is that I’ve found more excuses to justify my redundant, irrational(?) choices in order to shape it into something that is seemingly different.

(Is this even true at all? What if it all IS something new and different? At what point will I give myself more credit and actually start trusting in my own decisions without the need for constant reassurance?)

There’s a huge chunk of my life that I can’t share with her. She wouldn’t understand. Heck, not even all of my friends would understand.

But with all of this, do I even understand what the hell is going on now?

Things won’t change unless you change things yourself. And if the result is always ending up the same way, maybe there’s something that needs to be changed in the process, prior to anything else. We SO easily fall into a hole of comfort, doing what we’re used to. Can I really take on a challenge to do something DIFFERENT from my own habits? After all these years? Can I really BREAK FREE? … do I even WANT to?

It’s always for the greater picture. It’s always for the betterment of EVERYONE.

But I’m just SO selfish. I can’t help but to indulge in my OWN immediate priorities.

Is this how I want to live my life?

Is this how I was raised to live my life?

Does this go along with my foundational VALUES?

Do I even trust myself in my own decisions anymore? When did I start doubting again everything I’ve been doing?

Why can’t I just WANT to conform with how everyone else functions?

Why can’t I just WANT the things that people expect me to WANT?

Why can’t I just BE someone else?

But regardless of this confusion and blurry path ahead of me, I know that I’m enjoying every ounce of it. So why can’t I just come to terms with my present happiness? Why does this happiness make me uneasy and paranoid of this being the WRONG choice, of this being the tip of an iceberg of some huge detrimental part of my life?

Springtime draws out the ambition within us. It makes you believe that it’s a chance for you to revive yourself. It makes you believe that you can do anything you want—so optimistic that it’s almost a sense of false hope. It makes you take great leaps that you wouldn’t dream of doing any other time of the year. As a result, I’ve found it harder and harder to trust myself nowadays.

Hello.

A tremendous amount of… challenging… things have been occurring this whole month.

A lot of my past has caught up to me. And I’ve also been making a lot of revisions in my own life, slowly but surely. But mostly, my past has caught up to me.

It’s one of those situations where I really don’t have anyone to blame for myself, and although I still do not regret the things I’ve done, I simply know that I have to take full responsibility for the decisions I’ve made and for the paths that I’ve chosen. And I do. I never thought it would be an easy course, but I guess I never really considered that it would be a tough one either. That was the ignorance on my part.

More than ever, I’m truly beginning to see again how important it is to really live one’s life to the fullest. I’ve kind of lost sight of that ever since I’ve started working, living the mundane life. Although I appreciate the structure and stability that comes with my life now, it pressures me to max out my weekends as my only time for “freedom,” a type of STRUCTURED and PREDICTABLE freedom, even. But even that suffices at times. It really makes me appreciate and cherish the weekends.

I’ve been feeling stuck, and unable to really do what I’ve been wanting to do. I guess I’ve been reminiscent of my extreme freedom during my last two years of college. There’s SO much of the world to explore, and there’s SO much to see. I love the idea of exploring. I love the sense of NOVELTY, even if I deliberately set it up myself to seem like something new. I still LOVE that feeling.

A lot has happened. And I really can’t blame these things on anyone else but myself.

And through the course of it all, through EVERYTHING, I know now more than EVER that my friends and family are the one most central factor of my being. It’s times like these where I open myself up and I let them see my weaknesses, open heart, open soul, allowing them to judge and abandon me like some others have done in the past. But… they don’t. They stay right here. They stay right here. Unafflicted. They even laugh at me for thinking that they’d actually think of me differently. Unconditional love. I guess they really do know me better than myself. What can really surprise them at this point, right?

More than ever, I know they are the most important aspect in my life. I love you all, and I know you know it. You know I’d take a bullet and more for every one of you. You know that you all hold a (large) place in my heart where no one else would ever come close to replacing or even come close to challenging. I wouldn’t be who I am without you. I wouldn’t be where I am without you. And I wouldn’t be able to give you the love I do without the love that you give to me. I love you. I love you. I love you. And you know it.

Thank you. for everything. I love you SO much.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the outcome of life and how things will turn out.

Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that everything has its purpose and everything is meant to happen for a reason?

Yes. I do. But to a certain extent. I believe that every choice I make is the choice I’m supposed to make, guided by the ways of the universe. I might not realize right now exactly how my choices will affect the rest of my life, but I’m sure to believe that that’s how things are supposed to happen.

Maybe it’s because I was young and I chose to believe in fate as a sense of relief, a sense that the choices I make aren’t completely wrong, despite the negative outcomes that may occur. I guess it makes me feel like there is a greater picture beyond my minuscule being. I guess it makes me feel like there is a safety net below me. Every choice I make is supposed to happen, don’t stress about it.

A lot has happened in the last few days, and I know it is partially a consequence of a path I’ve chosen for the future of my life. Everything, slowly but surely, is slowly falling apart. This has been a pretty shitty year so far, in retrospect. Everything we know and understand is simply a part of our own brains. Everything we know exists in our heads–there is no proof whether or not this reality is actually shared with others or not. In that sense, we are all the center of our own universes.

I take these outcomes like a sign from the nature of the world. One by one, hit by hit, we’ve got to stand here and take it. We’ve got to take responsibility for our choices and our decisions. karma.

My only regret…

… is that my family is being affected.