Have mercy on me

I'm really struggling right now.

I don't want Grandma to die: or to live without her.

But the thought of her being in pain is almost worse. The thought that she is in pain and just can't tell us makes the bile rise in my throat. It feels callous to say, but I'd rather her die and be free of pain. To live the life she has been living; carefree, loving, wild (for 85).

So what do I do? How do I feel? Does wanting her to die so she is free of the pain the easy way out? Could she rally and live life again like she wants to?

I don't know.

I feel selfish. I just keep thinking about "me" and my feelings, thoughts, life, whatever. But Grandma dying affects so many people. She has impacted so many lives. She has lived so many lives. But I can barely think about me; thinking about everyone else makes my head spin.

Death is scary, because of the unknown that comes along with it. It is scary because of the massive change it brings and chaos that generally ensues after. It is scary because it is dark among what we see as light. It happens around us constantly, but we are shielded from much of it because it does not personally touch us. However, when it's long fingers curl around us and wrap us within it's cold folds, we cannot escape. Things take a turn and a dreary outlook descends, enveloping all that we consider ours.

How do I live a life without Grandma?

Your life is essentially a transition from birth to death

I was asked to give a presentation to freshman students living in the residence halls, about transitions and coming to terms with them in college. I thought I'd share the quotes I shared with them, along with my notes for my presentation. Hopefully you gather as much inspiration from them as I did.

“It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past”

When Jennie asked me to come in and speak to you all about “transitions” and give you some inspiration to go along with your vision boards, the first thing I did was start scrolling through my own Tumblr and Pinterest boards, scouring for things that had resonated with me during my own transitions. I like to think of them as my “evolving” vision boards, to sort of help me guide myself through where I am currently, where I want to go and also serve as a reminder of where I once was.

Now, my vision boards are full of quotes. You can see that I started this presentation with the quote up there and I promise, they will only become more inspirational as we go along. Quotes are one of the ways that I’ve found solace in my own transitions, and as I said before, find balance where I am currently and guide myself.

A lot of the problem that comes with transitions is this idea of unsteadiness. That while you are in transition, you are in flux, in limbo of sorts. That you are no longer a girl, not yet a women, if we want to channel Britney. But the thing that people forget a lot (and that I’ve been guilty of many times myself!) is that the transition itself is part of the journey.

You cannot just give credence to where you started and where you ended – the real journey is the middle, the core of your existence as a human.

DISCLAIMER: I like to have a disclaimer in my presentation, lest you all go back to your rooms and tweet about how this chick came in and made some sort of weird presentation about how to handle the transitions that come with being a college student with no qualification to do so. I could give you my resume and job experience but what really matters is that I’ve been here.

I’ve been where you are sitting, probably on those same couches, and I get it. Or at least, I get the feeling of being stuck in-between and not knowing where to go. And I get it enough that I want to share my experience as a third party outsider,

So my first “point” is this –

Honor the space between no longer and not yet. – Nancy Levin

Okay, so lets start with this. Think about how you would have identified yourself before you started school at Northern.

My list includes – swimmer, student, dancer, daughter, friend.

Anyone else want to share there’s?

Now think again – which of those are things that still apply? What sort of identities do you have now that you might not have thought you had then?

I’m still a student, daughter and a friend – but I’m also a feminist, a writer, a published author, an amateur photographer, a dog mom, a runner, etc.

Now – what sort of things do you WANT to apply to you someday? What sort of transitions or changes did you have to go through to be those identities?

We spend all of our lives working towards these “end” goals, but forget to honor the pieces (and the transition) in between them. You cannot be a college graduate if you don’t go through the period of time where you are a college student, just like you will never have a significant other if you don’t work on creating a relationship with them beforehand.

The grey space in-between is what matters – not just the beginning and the end.  You are born and then you die – but what about the life you’ve lived in between?

Which brings us to our next point

Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

So there is a lot of science behind this that I do not totally understand but here is the gist of it – you whole entire life you have ben socialized to be someone.

Whether or not this person is who you actually are, remains to be seen. However, you are literally socialized from birth to eat what your parents eat, behave like they do, believe what they believe, etc. From there, you eventually become socialized by your schooling and lastly your friend groups as you become older.

So by the time you are “on your own” and in college – the majority of who you think you are is not actually who you are.

So you are stuck roughly 8 hours away from home, in a tiny room with someone you just met, and you start to have realizations.

Maybe you decide that you don’t actually like country music but just dealt with it because your friends like it, or that you don’t actually want to eat meat because of the way animals are treated. A

nd that my friends, as simple as it seems, is how you start unwraveling the way you’ve been knit so you can start re-knitting yourself the way you were meant to be.

Now, granted these are pretty “light” realizations. A person could experience a whole range of realizations, from political beliefs, to religious beliefs, from your sexual orientation to your gender identity. The thing is, just like shirt or a carpet edge, once you get the strength to pull out one string – the rest come so much quicker.

Once you decide that it’s “okay” to un-wravel the version of you that was created by others, you’ll be able to more fully appreciate the transition into who you want and are meant to be.

Whether that means becoming a English teacher instead of a history teacher, or deciding you don’t want to conform to gender norms in your dressing any longer – you’ve got to honor yourself and do what feels right to you.

Which again brings us to our next point --

You don’t owe people the person you used to be. You don’t have to talk to people who are speaking to the old you. If they want to drag old you out, and you’ve already left that person behind, they don’t get to talk to you. When you’ve gone from weakness to strength, you don’t owe a show of your former self to someone who just can’t wrap their head around your change.

Now that you are taking the steps to un-wind what once was, and transition into who you want to be – you don’t have to stop for anyone. Not your mom, or your dad, or your uncle, cousins, little siblings, older siblings, old friends, new friends – whatever.

You are no longer who you were three months ago and that is okay. Your transition from “high school Emily” to “college Emily” is literally something EVERY student goes through and to be honest, is a big part of college. Your learning outside of the classroom, as you learn about yourself, plays just as big of a role in your future as what you learn inside of the classroom from professors.

So – again, people will be mad. They will say you’ve changed (like it’s a bad thing) and that you aren’t fun/cool/nice/whatever anymore. To be honest, I’d be more concerned if you were the same. If you hadn’t had new experiences and learned a little outside of your own quiet, sheltered culture of high school.

Which brings us to this

The only constant in life is change.

People change, seasons change, time changes. The only constant is that you have a body and a brain and even then that can change.

And finally

So this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you it’s not scary. Well, it is. But fear is natural, fear is good – it just means you’re growing.

I'm with her

I'm with her

because no person other than myself should have control over my body. They should not be able to touch it without getting consent, nor can they tell me how my reproductive systems should be used.

I'm with her

because everyone should be able to have access to healthcare. Nothing is scarier than almost dying, then almost dying and then almost being killed by the mountain of debt you accrued to live.

I'm with her

because I am against hate. I am against the fear of the unknown that breeds the hate, and I am against the hate that is there because of people's differences.

I'm with her

because people died to protect my freedom of speech and no one should be able to silence me just because they don't like what I have to say.

I'm with her

because even now, a woman has to prove why she is more qualified to be president than one of the most unqualified men in the country because of our sexist attitudes.

I'm with her 

because I'm not worth 70% of man, so I should not be paid 70 cents to a man dollar.

I'm with her

because everyone should feel comfortable leaving their house, dressed how they want, holding hands with who they want, going where they want.

I'm with her

because she can help us start working towards a better future.

I'm with her

for more reasons than can be written, for more feelings than can be shared through one random blog post amid the millions on the internet.

I'm with her

for my mom, for my grandma, for my family, for everyone and everything that is important to me

but most of all

I'm with her 

for myself.

Because I deserve more.

Let me show you

All these social media profiles shout out at me to "DESCRIBE YOURSELF. WHO ARE YOU" but then cut me off because I have many words to describe myself than they allow.

How can 190 characters describe over 8,760 days of life?

How can five sentences be enough to talk about more than just the superficial things such as my education in a classroom? What about my education through life? My education through living and breathing and just straight being?

Keep shouting, social media -- but I can't fit myself into a tiny box. I don't WANT to fit myself into a tiny box.

I'm not JUST the 50 words I can fit into one of these profile descriptions. I am much more, much much more than can be constrained by space limits dictated by someone unknown entity across the country.

I need more space.

I deserve more space.

I am not going to trim off the "real" parts of me to only show the socially acceptable bits in a profile. I am much more than my job description, my education, my hometown, my current location. I have ideas, dreams, likes, dislikes, wishes, goals, wants, needs, desires, whatever.

If I'm going to tell you who I am, I don't want to shy away from the muddier bits, the harder times that have helped shape me. I don't just want to tell you the pre-packaged acceptable version of myself.

If I'm going to show you who I am, I want to show you with words that sting and bring forward more of an emotion than "She's just another millennial, lost among the pixels".

If you want to know who I am, social media platforms that you are, give me the space to actually be me, not the space to be who you want me to be.

Esme Grace

 

I know I've had too much coffee when my stomach is spitting bile over something I have to do in three weeks.

I also know that after been PROFOUNDLY absent for the past year, I've just overloaded the internet with my internal ramblings.

Which includes today the fact that my anxiety is magnified by coffee, which is also incredibly apparent today.

I thoroughly wish I was the type of person that could thrive on chaos and change, to take life by the horns and make it mine.

I know thoroughly that I am the exact opposite of that type of person and it is so deeply embedded in my DNA I will continue to be this person for the rest of the lives that I live.

I find comfort in the repeating patterns of hours and expectations. I find comfort in a schedule and knowing what is ahead.

There is so much unknown in the world. Between wars and death and sudden life-altering mishaps and accidents, I find that by being able to control what I can lets me take on these tsunamis of changes with a little more grace. And by little, I literally mean little.

Why don't you take pictures anymore?

So, after not writing for months, I seem to be finding my words again.

In one vein, it's a blessing to finally free these monsters that have been embedding themselves in my cellulite the past....well, long awhile.

In another, I'm finding it hard to come to terms with other things I've been actively trying to bury while I've been not writing.

For today, our introspective blog post will focus on my mother's favorite question:

Why don't you take pictures anymore? 

It's a refrain I've heard over and over the past year-ish and one that I've never really been able to answer. I generally just sloughed it off, using the casual, usual excuses:

I'm tired.
I'm busy.
Work is hard.
School is hard.
Esme won't sit still. 
My battery is dead.
It's winter outside.

Whatever.

However,  as I wrote my snarky-Instagram caption today, I started to really think about why I've been absent from behind my lenses as of late.

So here it goes the short list of why I haven't been taking photos.....

• I would hate to take away the significance from someone else's photography when they are 10000 times better than me just because I think I take decent photos
• everyone takes pictures now, and I hate comparing myself to other people (see first reason as added reasoning)
• I'm tired of just being the bitch that everyone assumes will just take the pictures all the time. 
• I'm tired of feeding into this "picture-perfect" mentality that social media breeds, so rather than focusing on life we focus on achievements, who did this, who took a better picture of the same freaking bush
• I'm sad that I'm part of the problem when it comes to continuing the cycle of "picture-perfect" social media feeds, and the non-attainable lifestyles we yearn to have. 

But what it really comes down to...

is that I'm realizing I'm tired of missing life while trying to remember life by taking a picture to impress people that I was there/it happened/whatever.

I can't even talk about how many sunsets or beautiful conversations I've probably missed, framing up my next Instagram post or Tweet. I've joined the herd and become too focused on the capture and the sweet endorphins a "like" gives me, that I forget about the serotonin that comes from clearing my mind and just simply soaking in the life around me.

I don't want to remember Esme only through the pictures I have of her -- I want to remember sitting with her on the couch or playing with her Lamb Chop.

I don't want to remember my family only as artfully captured life-style shots. I want to remember my brother's laugh as he forced us to drink terribly crafted cocktails and my parents dancing in the kitchen to whatever song comes on the radio because I was there, drinking those awful concoctions and practicing the moonwalk.

I want to remember sitting in camp, playing card games for hours and my grandma's dorky dance when she wins (as irritating as it is) because I saw it so many times, not because I have a boomarang file of it on my phone.

I want to remember my cousin's excitement when I took him to Dory and let him have a huge tub of popcorn and large pop and I want to remember it because it made my happy to do something special for him-- not because I got "kudos" on the internet for it.

Yes, photographs can help us remember these things but how can you remember them if the photos don't evoke the feelings?

If I take a picture, I want it to remind me of the fear I had as I let Connor take me into the middle of nowhere in his freaky looking Subaru and almost killing me.

I want it to remind me of the time that Justine and I had spent the whole day just screwing around, laughing until our sides hurt. I want to remember the burn of the pizza we ate after walking around Chicago all day and the feel of her hugging me as I drove away.

I want to remember my LIFE as it was through photos, not life how I chose to portray it through photos.

Photography was originally created to capture life as it is. Now, it's a way to create a fictional reality that we can all pretend we live in.

No one ACTUALLY lives in the pristine Instagram account you follow, with muted tones and perfectly turned down beds.

No one ACTUALLY laughs nonchalantly while sipping a mimosa with their friends at 1 in the afternoon.

No one ACTUALLY takes a picture that looks that good "just by accident" or that it was just "a quick snap".

So long story short -- 

I don't take photos or even post "good" photos often anymore (even when I do take them) because the photos that I take are meant to help me remember a life well-lived.

The ones that I don't take were because I was living a well-lived life.

Just a different shade of mess

The start of a new school year always makes me wax poetic. Regardless of the fact that I have no school supplies to purchase or syllabi to read, something about the fresh page start of another school year makes me nostalgic. It makes me yearn for the simpler times when a new school year meant seeing old friends again and learning new things, not another tally in the countdown until death.

Not to be morbid or anything.

It's just the older I get, the more I realize how precious life is.

The more I realize how precious it is to use life wisely, the quicker I am to become paralyzed by the fear that I'm not LIVING enough, that I am not USING my potential.

Which leads to me wasting life watching dorky sitcoms and harboring resentment of my first-world problems,

which eventually leads me to reading another upsetting story about a person's life who is cut short/ Kardashian drama / whatever,

 which then makes me feel like I'm wasting the quality time in my life to do something meaningful.

I know I'm not the only one, but sometimes it feels like it. In a world where life is glossed to the highest sheen before been placed benevolently on social media, it feels like I am alone in my dirty, dusty window display. I yearn to have the carefully curated Instagram accounts that feature muted photos that are perfectly posed yet I am the person who posts the blurry photos that no one cares about that are over-saturated and useless. I search endlessly for gripping phrases to resonate across the pixels that tether me to my "friends" only to be disappointed when it fails to go viral.

I know I am not the only one who lives in a world that is not perfectly saturated in rainbow hues but delicately muddied from movement, but it sometimes appears that way. I feel like I'm trapped knee-deep in quicksand, hoping to hold onto my front of "ease" and "happiness" while all the while working my ass off to hold it all together, to not get lost in the riptide of our generation.

So this is my proclamation into the internet -- that you are not alone, whoever you are. Your existence is not only vital to our electronic eco-system, but it is just as exquisitely imperfect as mine. I beg you, please don't forget that.

While you hop from perfectly manicured social media account to perfectly manicured social media account, remember that underneath those shiny veneers, there are people just as cracked and human as you. Their blood flows just as sluggishly, through veins laden with their hopes and dreams. They just happen to wear their existence in a different shade of mess.