I LOVE to sing. I sing when I’m happy and when I’m sad and most things  in between. The only reason I didn’t sing around you guys was because I was afraid of all you musically inclined people calling me out on wrong notes. I sing under my breath around Sofiya a lot, mostly because I don’t want to annoy her. For some reason remembering the words and the notes and trying to find them all helps me calm down a lot, whatever I’m doing.

What hands on activities do you like?

I like to write, though I do that less now. It’s how I deal with pretty much everything, whether it’s a story or just getting my thoughts down. I like to draw, though I do that very rarely (I did it more in eleventh grade). I love to paint but I don’t because I’m shit at it. I like to clean and organise things, believe it or not. And I love to play my cello (I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about that so remind me).

How do you show love for those you care for?

Mostly I try not to be a complete ass because that comes very naturally to me. I try to listen and sympathise and give hugs if I can, I try to remember and tell them about small things they’ve done that I liked or thought were cute, I try to encourage them toward whatever they’re striving for, and in some cases I try not to leave when they cry.

Do you have a hard time forgiving yourself?

Yes. I don’t think I forgive myself very often at all. The bad things used to stay with me a lot more than they do now but I have this problem where I don’t really forget, and I am afraid to let them go because I know what I’m capable of and I don’t want to keep making the same mistakes. Especially if the mistake involved hurting someone because those wounds leave scars and you can’t ever really forget.

What is one thing you accomplished by yourself?

I want to say getting better, even if sounds cliche. I wasn’t totally alone, there were people and hugs and kind words, but I’d like to think I eventually realised I didn’t need saving and that I had to do it myself. I don’t think I can give you specifics or tell you exactly what changed, but at some point I started liking myself a lot more, learned to give myself a break, and found a little hope.

Do you believe you are brave?

Maybe it’s condescending to say that I do think so, but yes. I am afraid of a lot of things and wary of more but I like to face those things and challenge myself. I want the experiences, I want to know. And sometimes what I want or my curiosity trumps the fear. This isn’t always a good thing and sometimes I make shit decisions because I want to know if I can do it, but lately I’ve been having fun.

How do people underestimate you most often?

I think I come across as ditzy because I like talking about hair and shoes and complain about my nail polish chipping. I think my shit grades didn’t help either, but believe it or not I consider myself a fairly intellectual person. Also everyone seems to think I hate them but I generally like people, and they underestimate my willingness to talk.

Would you rather be an elf, dwarf, Hobbit or wizard? 

First of all if you’re going to capitalise Hobbit, you need to capitalise all of the races. Second, I always wanted to be an elf because I thought they were gorgeous and sad and wise and the epitome of everything I wanted to be. Oh, Maarya, she’s seen it all, so tragic and beautiful and wise. I feel less this way now and I would probably want to be a Hobbit, except for their ignorance of the world. Maybe that’s what brings them happiness, but I’d rather be a sad Hobbit than not know too much about the world.

How would you like to be remembered?

I used to want to be remembered like Tolkien: a creator, an author, a founder, kindly, great. I wanted to make something that would last forever. But nowadays I don’t think that far ahead. I mostly want to be remembered with love, and not disappointment.

What is your favourite part of your personality?

Generally I’ve become a lot more restrained and I appreciate that. I also would like to think that I can read people and respond correctly to a degree, and while I don’t catch everything, there’s that. Also I more and more appreciate that I am not an anxious person and can take most things in stride.

Would you ever want children?

Yes. One is enough for me, but yes. I really, really do. Maybe it’s Hadia’s influence, but if that’s what having a child in the house is like, definitely. I think it’s an incredible opportunity to become a better person. If you do it right, you can learn and grow with them. And the feeling you get when they learn to crawl or talk or take their first step is one of the best feelings in the world and I don’t know what else could compare. And sometimes they tell you they love you or say good night as you tuck them into bed or are the only ones who laugh at your jokes and your heart and all the ice around it melts and everything is okay and I want that.

What is something you are proud of about yourself?

as for saying the United States is a rather self centered nation and you responding with "so is every other country," I'm not sure about that. Not every country has been the economic giant the US was for the past however many decades, and I'm not sure how much of me saying that is true on a global perspective or from me being an American

Also, about literature or things in general, yes, Christianity is stressed in Western writing, but then saying that everyone should be somewhat familiar with Christian stories really doesn't ring well with me. Yes, the United States is probably still predominantly Christian (I don't really want to look up statistics right now), but that doesn't mean that it's steadily growing more diverse and it's really important to include other things. I mean, okay yes, we're taking an English lit course, of course our booklist is going to be like what it is. That still doesn't mean it's not dominated by white male authors. And in some cases that's okay, that's still something worthwhile to learn, but

One of the things that really struck me in basically my one college interview was the importance of a global perspective and just how different it is. The interviewer and I talked about things and it was really really apparent even to me that my own view on things, while I think he did find that I was decently intellectual, was rather limited. He'd basically say really intelligent things about ideas or conflicts or whatever from basically a more global perspective that I'd never even have considered. My focus, and it's not something I say particularly proudly, is pretty concentrated on US affairs, and since I live in the US, it's not bad that I'm concerned about things that go on here. It's bad that I don't consider other events in the world nearly as much.

This may or may not be getting into an entirely different issue, but the fact that you said specifically that everyone should be somewhat familiar with Christian theology really did bother me. Yes, if you're studying western literature, that would be a good thing. Even so, even if that's the subject you're focusing on, it's still really really important to look at things globally and that's not even looking at oh there's so and so problem in so and so country. I think a lot of it is empathy or sympathy or whatever and trying to understand what it actually is like living in whatever kind of conditions people of other areas live in (I'm mostly thinking cultural). It's mind boggling just how different things can be in ways you wouldn't expect and I'm not saying this directly to you and I'm pretty sure you already get this idea but a lot of the time you can know something and not fully understand it, and I know I don't fully understand it but

I think I just found what you said a bit narrowminded, maybe, not best word, even under the clarification that other mythology is important too. And it's not like I don't find it interesting and I'm glad for whatever bits I learned in lit. 

Another thing I remember to mention, there was that one post going around of Time magazine covers over the years or months or something in different countries. The United States had different covers for certain topics of things over seas changed to US domestic issues.

Disclaimer: thoughts are kind of jumbled right now, sorry if it's hard to make sense of

also that this might be another semantics issue idk