Julia

Dear Boys Who Think Catcalling is Flattery, I'm sad to inform you that you're very misguided on how to get a girl's attention. You see, there is nothing cute about hollering, "Looking good, girl!" from across the street when I get out to pump my gas. There is no need to repeatedly whistle, yell, and loudly declare "oh, the things I'd do to her." Because that's the whole problem, isn't it? There are so many things that could happen, so many possibilities. But rather than introducing yourself nicely, or simply saying nothing at all, you yelled obscenities at her from across the road. At night. When she was alone. You intentionally made her feel vulnerable, and powerless. The only thing she could think was, "What am I supposed to do if they try something?" The world we live in today is misinformed on the treatment of women. By default, you fall into that category. You made her feel scared, you made her feel nervous, and you made her fake a phone call in hopes that you would get the hint and stay across the road, where you belonged. There is nothing attractive about yelling about her body, or commenting on her appearance. There is no need to make her feel helpless. Maybe you don't know any better, I don't know. But next time, please, think before you speak. Think before you call out to a girl in the middle of the night in a world that is very ignorant on rape culture. Please try harder to be charming, not forceful. Sincerely, The Girl You Didn't Realize You Alarmed

Julia

I have a feeling I experience this loss of myself so much simply because I’m a teenager; I am a mold of all of the efforts that have been put into making me a decent human being, but nothing is set. I am capable of change. Sometimes, I let this get the best of me. But whenever the days roll around that make me feel like the rain will never stop, that I’ll never be myself again, I remind myself that I am ever changing, and that is okay. If we never changed, how would we make progress?

I have always noticed things, things people generally pay no mind to. Since I was a child, I have always been the one to notice the little things that no one bothers to look at. It doesn’t matter where; in movies, in settings, in conversations. Somehow, I notice the things that no one bothers to catch. Being the only person in the room to notice the small things has always bothered me. As an individual, I generally focus on two things in conversations: the way someone’s voice sounds when they talk, and the way they look at who they’re speaking to. For this reason, I am fairly good at picking up on emotions. However, I’ve always been bothered by the fact that I seem to stand alone in this. No matter what I do or who I ask, it seems that I am the only one who notices, which leads me to wonder if it even happened to start with. When reflecting with my friends on a situation, I always ask them how the person looked at me. Were they pleased, happy, mad, sad? You can tell a lot about people by their eyes, if you bother to pay attention. But my friends usually reply something along the lines of, “I don’t know,” and change the topic, which frustrates me to no end. As an over thinker, I need every single detail to justify a scenario in my head. I make something out of nothing; I’ve always been guilty of it. But, this is due to how observant I am. I’ve found that it is always better to notice and take it than to miss everything happening around you. I beg you, pay attention to what is happening around you. Watch the movie more closely than you ever have; you just might notice (after the 200th time of watching Twilight) that Bella Swan wore Hunter rain boots before they were cool. Pay attention to the person who’s talking to you; sometimes their face says more than their mouth can. Just whatever you do, be observant. Don’t forget to take in what’s around you. I promise you’ll be better for it.

We can't always be the people we want (or need) to be, therefore no one else can always be who we need them to be. You can feel all the things in the world for someone; you could love them more than anyone. You could understand them more than anyone. You could want them more than anyone. But sometimes, the people we want aren't always the people we need. Sometimes, we have to recognize that you can't force happiness, regardless of how much you want someone, or how much someone means to you. There are some people who are just so comfortable that they feel like home. Knowing they exist gives you a purpose within itself. Sometimes there are people who have known us our whole lives, and have seen us grow, and therefore know us better than we know ourselves sometimes; they can guess how we feel just by the set of our lips, they know how we take our coffee, and they always know when something is wrong. But despite all of these things, they still aren't the best for us. The most important lesson you could ever learn is that you are your own most important asset, and you have to make the choices that work best for you. Some people never work, no matter how long or hard they try. For your own sake, accept it and move forward, knowing that better things have the be coming.

Here lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about choices. More importantly, I’ve been thinking about the choices we make and how they determine the people we come. Personally, I like to think that every choice I make impacts me positively in some way. I also like to think that people can be redeemed for the choices we make. But more importantly, I recognize that our choices do not always make us the people we want to be, and that is okay. As humans, we are inclined to seek perfection; it’s just in our nature. We want every choice we make to turn us into a better person. We want to be better for every single choice we make, and while we can try, it’s unrealistic. We aren’t always right. We aren’t always wise. We can’t possibly always make the best choice. But that doesn’t make us bad people; flawed judgement does not equal a flawed person. Rather, our flaws shape us in the ways we need to be shaped. I like to think that I’ll one day be the person I need to be, regardless of whether or not that’s the person I want to be. I like to think that, for my experiences and my troubles, I’ll be better. One day, I’ll be who I need to be.

Lately, the concept time has been weighing heavy on my mind. I’ve never minded time passing quickly or slowly, simply because all time is all time. However, in the past two years, time has picked up substantially, and it’s been a bit hard not to notice. This week, I did two things that I should not be old enough to do: I got a new car, and I received my senior ring. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel 16; I don’t feel old enough to even be driving. In fact, there are days where I feel 8 years old, and where all I want to do is hold my mother’s hand and let all of the trouble and conflict and stress pass by me. But I can’t, because, somehow, I’m sixteen, and I’m responsible for myself now, for the most part. Getting my senior ring further proves this; in two years, I won’t be a high schooler laying in bed blogging for an English class. I’ll be a college freshman preparing for her finals, and that terrifies me. I spent a while being indifferent towards time; my attitude was essentially whatever happens, happens, because there is no slowing it down. There is no speeding it up. However, now I realize that isn’t the point. The point isn’t how quickly time comes or goes. What matters is what we do with that time. Knowing how fast my high school years are flying by, it means more to seize the day, and to do every possible thing I can for the sake of having stories to tell down the road. It seems completely illogical to sit aside, not doing anything worth doing, all because time is scary. Time is absolutely terrifying; there is no denying that. It keeps going, regardless of your willingness, and that is sometimes a hard idea to wrap your mind around. Because we can’t be exempt from time, we have to live as fully as we can. We have to seize every day, we have to be willing to break barriers, to leave our comfort zones, because one day, we will regret not doing these things. I don’t know about you, but in twenty years, I want to have stories to tell my kids. I want them to know that I lived. I want a Last Lecture of sorts, only I want to be around to tell it, every single day. 
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“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.” -Kurt Vonnegut

Ideally, a relationship works by trusting the person you love. You trust them to make the right call; that is all there is to it. There is no forcing them to do anything. The goal is that you both leave in the morning and head to school or work or whatever, and you do what you do, and then you come home to the person you want the most. That’s it. You don’t make a person change their job, their education, their plan for your sake. Relationships are not about fundamentally shifting someone, or about tearing them down. There are no ultimatums. Love is not about control. Instead, it is about compromise, and there are a lot of people who could take a lesson away from that.

When I was thirteen, the family truck was passed down to me, and I would like to add that it was against my will. I didn’t want a truck that was as old as me, and quite frankly, I didn’t trust anything that had been a first of my sisters, who is nine years older than me. But despite my protests, the family truck ended up in my driveway, and it stayed there for a while. I tried to avoid driving it, and I whined every time I had to, but eventually I gave in; that’s when I realized that’s when it wasn’t as bad as I had initially thought. It was ugly, no doubt. It was red, loud, old, and it had obviously been through the ringer, but in the end, it beat walking. My friends gave me a lot of crap for it, but they always managed to feign innocence when they were in dire need of transportation. And so that’s what I did; for three years, I took my friends everywhere under the sun. After a couple of rides with my best friend, we decided that my truck needed a name, and that Rudy was the best fit. From there, Rudy and I were always on the road. Summers were spent driving aimlessly, while winters were spent on a lot of hot chocolate and soup runs. Springs were full of rides to the river to swim, while fall was full of driving through piles of leaves just to watch them fly everywhere in the street through my rearview. Despite the fact that my truck was horrendous and embarrassing for a while, it was the best thing I’ve ever had, because it gave me the best times I’ve ever had. The most important moments happened in that truck, with important people. It took a lot of people a lot of different places; God knows it took me a lot of places I probably shouldn’t have been. But at the end of the day, despite the drawbacks, it still gave me two important things: comfort that my time was always well spent in that truck, and memories that can't be taken away no matter how much time passes.

As humans, especially teenagers, we often forget the be grateful. My generation in particular is pegged for never having to work for anything; the way everyone sees it, my generation gets practically whatever we want, which isn’t a complete lie. However, due to this sense of entitlement I’ve noticed in my generation, I’ve found that we are not longer grateful. Somewhere along the way, gratitude got lost in transition. 
 Teenagers are often hesitant to show their thankfulness in fear of looking weak; I’m guilty of this. We fear that when we show our emotions, we will be torn down, and so we build an armor of apathy. Again, I am guilty of this. However, it is important for us to recognize that nothing is guaranteed to us, despite what we think we deserve. Nothing is given to us without effort, and it is important to express our gratitude for the individuals who worked so hard for us to have the things we needed. Emotions aren’t a weakness, people: Embrace them.

In my sixteen years, I have never understood people who are content to say, "Well, maybe this is how things are meant to be," and just continue living despite all the negative things that are happening to them. As I get older, this is something that frustrates me to no end. All anyone ever talks about is how they want to be happy, and how life is really just about being happy in general. Some people won't be content until they have a six figure salary, while some people won't be content until they have a family; either way, everyone needs a purpose in life. So for someone to say, "Whatever happens, happens," honestly angers me. Don't get me wrong, I understand being laid back. I understand being calm and easygoing. However, I don't understand letting the course of your life be controlled by chance. People are so quick to say that they want to be successful, but when they start that journey for success, time wears them down. As time goes on, it gets easier and easier to lose sight of the end goal, until finally, it is simpler for the person to just stop, take a look, and say, "This seems like an okay place to stop trying. It's close enough to the goal." People compromise their dreams and aspirations for the sake of comfort, and that has always driven me mad. Some of the best experiences of my life have occurred when I was outside of my comfort zone. When you leave your comfort zone, that's when things start to really start to happen. There are a lot of things in life that are out of our control; the course our life takes is not one of them. That is why you should never be content to take what life hands you. Instead, work hard and demand what it is you want. You'll be more grateful for the chances you took to get it later.

I am notorious for misplacing my trust in people. There are some people in this world who just feel comfortable, like maybe they were always meant to be wherever you were, and for this reason, you trust them. I'm guilty of it. They're warm and they interesting and they know how to make you laugh, so you trust them, hoping they do the right thing with it. Yet, they don't; instead they make you wonder why you ever trusted them at all. So you leave, feeling defeated, but telling yourself that you'll learn from it, that you'll grow from it, and that you'll never let it happen again. But you do. You always do; this is something I've struggled with, and only recently figured out. The key to people is that you cannot expect a thing from them. When I place all of my trust and unrealistic expectations into someone, whether they be a friend or a guy I like, I am going to get hurt. They will do the wrong thing, or say the wrong thing, or push me away. Why? Because they are HUMAN. They are programmed to miscalculate, to make mistakes, to make choices that might not be right. They are just as human as I am. People are going to hurt you no matter what; it is not intentional. It is just human nature. We hurt the things we love because we are unsure how to handle them due to our fear of loss. People you trust will hurt you. Maybe it'll be because they're scared, or they're hurt; it doesn't matter. What matters are the lessons you take from the experience. The most important thing you can do is take the things that hurt and turn them into something constructive. Take the ugly and turn it into something good. I promise you'll be better for it.

In life, we are given endless chances to prove ourself through the choices that we make. Every choice is not life or death; deciding that I will skip one day of school because it's cold and rainy and mucky won't make me fail, and it likely won't impact my chances of attending college and becoming a lawyer. Choosing to eat the last cookie I promised my brother won't ruin either of our lives. However, it is my personal belief that, for the most part, our life choices define who we are, but more importantly than that, they teach us who we are. From time to time, we make the wrong choices. We trust the wrong people. We love the wrong people. We do the wrong things. There are some days we are just completely and utterly wrong; does that make us bad people? Do our choices make us the villains in life? No. Doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things, being the wrong thing--none of these things make us bad people. However, every choice we make, whether it be positive or negative, impacts us in some way.

I chose to begin this post the only way I know how, which is with a quote (thanks for that, Ms. Pharis). A lot of times in life, we are discouraged because things don’t happen, or if they do happen, it’s never in the way we want. When things don’t go “right”, we become frustrated, because we thought that it was meant to end differently. I’m guilty of letting it get me down; I think we all are. However, I chose this quote because I think it speaks magnitudes about attitude. It is so easy (almost too easy) to let life get us down. We wake up, and we lose all enthusiasm for the day. We relish in the fact that it will soon be over, and we will be back in our beds, safe and comfortable and oblivious to the bigger point of life. Every day we are given can be what we want it to be; as Jonathan Carroll (author of the quote) put it, each day is “versatile.” Knowing this, it seems ridiculous to let life get us down. Knowing that the day holds whatever we want it to should give us all the more reason to be brave, to break boundaries, to do the things that are unthinkable. Instead, we sit around, and we wait on something good to come our way, whether it be sent by Fate or God or Karma or whatever we put our faith in. As humans, we are far too pleased to sit idly, waiting for the good things we “deserve” to come to us. I have a bit of a newsflash for anyone who supports that notion: as John Green put it best, life is not a wish granting factory. If you want something, take it, or make it. Don’t let life trick you into thinking that waiting for it will make it worth it; everyone knows the best things in life are the things we work for.