October 30th, 2019: "You are in a safe place to reshape who you are. You may experience this as your self-confidence supporting your ability to transform and resurrect yourself. Take yourself apart. Scrub your insides out. Then polish them. Your future doesn't care about your past, and neither should you."
Sincerely,
Scorpio’s Daily Horoscope
It’s easy to laugh at the amount of energy I put into believing that the stars have some sort of control over the course of events in my life. I know that logical people don’t believe that “the crazies come out during a full moon” or that your stress is heightened during a Mercury retrograde. In fact, logical people probably don’t even know what retrograde motion is. Then again, I wouldn’t necessarily peg myself as a “logical person,” and I’m not sure that I ever will. I would rather be skeptical, creative, maybe even a little in over my head, than I would to be confined to the barriers of logic. Maybe the planets know something we don't. Or maybe it's not the planets at all. Maybe there is simply a force, an energy, a person in the universe who is mapping out our lives, and protecting us at all costs. Until my questions are answered, I'll continue believing in the stars.
When this horoscope presented itself at the forefront of my zodiac app, it was the day of my 19th birthday. The age 19, to most people, is like the road trip of birthdays. Think about it— there’s nothing special about sitting in a car for hours on end, but once the ride is over, you find yourself in an exciting, new destination. To most people, there’s nothing special about being 19 either, but once it’s over, you’ve suddenly transformed from a teenager into a full-fledged adult. The year 19 is simply the road trip to 20. However, there’s something about road trips that I am undeniably in love with. Road trips allow time for self-reflection. They allow time for relaxation, recuperation, and they allow the opportunity to strengthen bonds with the people who embark on the journey with you. When I read this horoscope upon the day of my 19th birthday, I felt as though the year 19, the road trip year, would provide me with those very things. In fact, I think my horoscope said it best—
“You are in a safe place to reshape who you are.”
Two months after my 19th birthday, the year had ended. Not only the year, but an entire decade had come to a close. In this time of my life, it felt as though there was no better moment to reshape myself than now, in a period when even time itself was embarking on a fresh start.
I rang in the new year in the city of Chicago. Not quite New York, but to me, it was just as glamorous because a handful of my favorite people resided in it. When I booked my flight, I imagined flooding down the streets of Chicago, in a sparkly outfit, with a crowd full of my drunken friends just behind me. I imagined us shouting our hopes for the year off the edge of a tall building and hoping that some force in the universe would catch our dreams and muster them up into a sort of reality some time down the road. I imagined us laughing, and I imagined us transforming, in that moment, into the new and improved versions of ourselves.
The problem with reshaping yourself lies in the fact that so much depends on what kind of person you are in the present. You simply cannot reshape yourself if you don’t even know who you are before the transformation. At newly 19, I was still figuring it out. I had no real sense of who I was. I just knew that I was excited to meet the fullest version of myself. It didn’t occur to me that finding her would take time and effort.
When the ball finally dropped, I was not running down the streets in a sparkly outfit. I was in my best friend’s childhood living room, facing the TV screen, and screaming, “Happy New Year” to no one in particular. I turned to find someone to hug, to share my excitement with, but it seemed that everyone had already been paired, and for a brief moment, I had a scary feeling that the year would not turn out the way I hoped it would. I did not feel myself transforming. For a brief moment, all I felt, was alone.
The feeling vanished as quickly as it had arrived, however, when I felt both of my best friends grab me from opposite arms and pull me into a group hug. It occurred to me that the year could not possibly be lonely, so long as my best friends were there to continue pulling me into spontaneous group hugs. It was inside this hug that I decided I would put forth the effort to learn more about my present self and reshape her into the person I wanted to be.
“You may experience this as your self-confidence supporting your ability to transform and resurrect yourself.”
To be fair, I wasn’t entirely a stranger to myself in January. I knew enough. By the end of the month, I belonged to two magazines, and spent the majority of my time with a consistent cramp in my right thumb from the excessive typing and editing and typing and editing and typing and editing… The only way I knew to learn about myself was merely by trial and error. By the time February rolled around I was involved in so many clubs and organizations that I could barely keep up. I was like the glass slipper of college students—trying things on and seeing what fit. It made me realize though, I liked to be busy, and I liked the organization of a busy day. I liked to have my day filled from start to finish. Having no plans in a day felt like a vast waste of time—a vast waste of life.
Many of my trials fit, and many of them didn’t. Mostly, the ones that stuck were the ones that allowed me to be creative. I liked making things. I liked sharing my thoughts and feelings, and I liked the idea that I could make people think about things in ways they otherwise wouldn't. That was the one thing I knew for certain about myself-- I was a storyteller. Yet that had always been consistent. I didn’t have to dig deep for that kind of information because it had always been there. And still, I found that by exercising this skill, I was unearthing the deeper parts of myself that I had not yet discovered. And in these discoveries, I found a voice I did not know I had. Perhaps this was my self-confidence supporting my ability to transform. Perhaps I was finally transforming into the new version of myself...
Whether it was self-confidence or merely the euphoria of my newly busy schedule, it did not matter. Because by March, I found myself filling two suitcases worth of dorm room essentials in order to return home for what should have been a week-long spring break. I found myself shoving item after item into an excessive amount of luggage, because as I packed, something told me that the growing pandemic would keep me from returning for a very long time.
I did not enter my dorm room again until June, and the months in between, consisted of absolutely nothing. If I had learned anything from my first few months of 2020, it was that having no plans in a day felt like a waste of time-- a waste of life-- and it felt like all I was doing in those months was wasting.
At the start of it all, the only thing that reminded me of the goal I was working towards was writing-- the only thing that made time stop rather than waste it away. So, I did it quite often. At least once a day, I was writing in some form or fashion, but regardless of how I was writing, it always negative. Darker poetry pieces and pessimistic journal entries filled all of my notebooks to the brim. Being confined to my house felt suffocating as a writer—a writer who thrived off of experience, and people watching, and social interaction. And then on May 4th, 2020, I simply stopped. Not before writing one last journal entry, however, which read, in the messiest of handwriting:
I've spent the last 52 days (and counting) living, eating, sleeping, educating, etc. in my childhood home. Being back home has been bittersweet (more bitter than sweet), although at first, it was just plain bitter. So bitter, that I took to the internet to complain about it in blog form as if my readers cared about my (what I identify, now, as) first world problems. Even this journal is ready to commit a very hefty suicide from all of the un-lively entries I've been filling it with. I have been loving school and Life At Large so much these last few months, that I couldn't help but cry when they announced that the rest of our semester would be held online. It took me about 40 of these 52 days to stop complaining and come to the realization that this problem extends so far beyond my pity party, and that I am lucky to be as healthy as I am. I mean, I couldn't imagine having a sick family member or losing a job or having to work in a hospital right now. It makes my blog post seem so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. If not for the fact that I was quite proud of my writing in this blog post, I would consider rewriting it with the knowledge and understanding that I have now.
In light of my new-found free time, I've taken it upon myself to try and write a novel, and am struggling. I've said, "I'm going to write a novel!" so many times in my life before this. Cumulatively, it would probably add up to like 12. But obviously, I do not have 12 books published, so that either means that I am a liar or a self sabotager or both. When I was brainstorming ideas, I drank a solid 6 glasses of peach juice, rearranged all the furniture in my bedroom, had a full blown 15-minute conversation with myself, and ultimately made my pen explode for fidgeting with it so much. The ink STILL hasn't come off my hands. This happened on Friday. By 2am I had successfully created a very basic, very generic timeline for a novel, and soon after, I had written a full 3 pages. Which according to google, 1 word document page equals 1.75 book pages, so technically I had written a full 5.25 pages of a book. I am well aware of how silly it is to be proud of 5 pages, as I have written research papers that were double this length, but this is the farthest I have ever gotten in my promises to write a novel. But then yesterday, I stopped.
Here is where my struggle comes in to play. Every time this happens to me, I blame it on writer's block, which I have, until this point, rendered as my worst enemy. But a few days ago, I read an article that exposed the news (and very rudely, I might add) that writer's block is merely an excuse, and nothing more. I think I found it rude because I also found it to be completely and utterly true. Nonetheless, some mysterious force is still stopping me from continuing beyond my 5.25 pages. And by "some mysterious force" I am directly referring to myself.
The thing is-- and I mean this in the least cocky manner possible-- I know I'm a good writer. I've been doing it for so long that sometimes it's not even a matter of writing for an audience. Sometimes (most times), it's just a matter of writing because it makes me feel good. I think that I am a good writer because it makes me feel good, and at the same time, I think it partially makes me feel good because I know I'm a good writer. The two go hand in hand, I suppose. Like I hate to draw but only because I know I'm terrible at it. Yet for some reason, every time I start to write a novel I: 1. think of my audience until I can physically feel their metaphorical presence in the room with me, breathing down my neck, 2. feel vastly incapable of writing something enjoyable for *previously mentioned audience, * and 3. it stops feeling good.
I can clearly remember putting my pencil down after writing this. There was something in the force of my discouragement that made me feel like giving up, and after having faced so many months of disappointment prior to this, I simply decided not to fight that feeling. I stopped writing because it stopped feeling good, and just like a domino effect, everything else in my life stopped feeling good along with it.
“Take yourself apart. Scrub your insides out. Then polish them.”
I spent a lot of time in bed after May 4th. At this point, most of the world had begun to adjust to life at home. Students started adjusting to class online. Even toilet paper was making its way back into the grocery stores. But me-- I was far from adjusted. I was still holding on to the possibilities of a normal, pandemic-free life. I was still waiting for the classes and the internships and the travel opportunities I set up for myself before the world shut down. But deep down, I knew better.
"It'll be better by April," I would tell myself. And then April passed, and I was still stuck at home. "It'll be better by May," I would tell myself. And then my spring classes ended, and I was still stuck at home. "It'll be better by June," I would tell myself. And then my internship in my dream city was canceled, and I was still stuck at home. I felt like I was behind the rest of the world, and hardest part was that I felt as though I didn't deserve to feel the way I did. I knew that there were people in bad health. I knew that there were at-risk, essential workers. I knew that people were losing family members. I faced none of these things, and yet I felt as though the world was collapsing in on me.
Mental health is one ~temperamental bitch~ if I do say so myself. There were days when things would feel okay. But then there were days when I was... literally dyeing my hair purple... Not even an exaggeration. There was a lot of self-resentment built up in the months I spent in isolation, which ultimately turned into a severe case of low self esteem. I couldn't recognize myself. I was grasping at things that would remind me, even a little, of the person I used to be. I was changing my hair, and dieting like you wouldn't believe; just trying to feel like I was in control of something. And yet, I still wouldn't write. It was the one thing I knew would help me feel like myself again, but I refused because I had convinced myself that I wasn't good enough.
By the end of June, I had booked another flight to Chicago. Travel was limited, and considered quite dangerous at the time, but I remembered what I felt while I was there in January. I reminded myself that “the year could not possibly be lonely, so long as my best friends were there to continue pulling me into spontaneous group hugs,” and I booked the flight without a second thought. A week before my flight, the virus had multiplied in the state of Florida, and my trip was canceled. It was in this moment that I had officially deemed 2020 the loneliest year of my life—until I received a phone call on a random afternoon, from my grandmother, inviting me over for dinner.
I went without hesitation. It was an excuse to leave the house, and I certainly wasn't going to pass it up. I always loved going to my grandparents' house, anyway. These were the people who raised my mother. I lost my mother in the year 2000, when I was just a baby. I've never had any memories with her of my own, so since I was young, I've found myself grasping at every detail about her that I could find, to try and work up an image of her in my head. I'm still not sure if my idea of her is quite right, but seeing my grandparents always made me feel like I hadn't spent a single day without her. I thought about the way their house smelled during my drive... Kind of sweet, mixed with a hint of the way the church smelled on Sundays. It smelled the way I imaged my mother would smell.
When I finally arrived, there was a small notebook sat on the kitchen counter, and for a brief moment, I wondered if my grandparents knew how long it had been since I last wrote. I wondered if this notebook was their attempt to get me to start again. Yet my grandmother simply smiled an innocent smile, pushed the notebook across the counter in my direction and told me it was “just a little something she came across in the garage.”
I expected it to be empty, but when I opened it, I realized that nothing could have prepared me for the words written inside. The authors of this notebook were none other than my mother’s best friends, each of them addressing me in letter. Most of these letters dated back to 2001. Each began with a,” Dear Baby Kaitlyn,” and contained stories I waited 19 years to hear. Above all, this notebook contained a message that I didn’t know I needed... until I read it.
“Michele was always the most positive one out of us. She always felt confident in herself and didn’t put herself down like the rest of us did. We are always trying to impress. She was always sure of who she was and didn’t really harp on what other people’s opinions were. I know that her daughter will grow up to be just as beautiful, kind, unselfish, fun-loving, and adventurous as her mom.”
It was in these words, that I found the greatest lesson I have ever learned about myself. No opinion of me matters more than my own.
In a time where my self esteem and my sense of self had wavered more than ever before, I longed for my mother's advice. I wanted to ask her what I should do, and how I should fix it. Logically, I knew that she wasn't there. She couldn't provide me with this advice because she was gone. But I do not consider myself a "logical person" and I'm not sure that I ever will. I would rather be skeptical, creative, maybe even a little in over my head, than I would to be confined to the barriers of logic. Perhaps my mother was the force, the energy, the person in the universe who was mapping out my life and protecting me at all costs.
In my road trip year, I lost myself. I let go of my greatest passion and my strongest outlet, out of fear of my audience; fear of other people’s opinions. But as my eyes fixated on these words, I understood what my mother was trying to tell me. I understood that I was to take myself apart, scrub my insides out, and polish them clean. I understood that I was supposed to create a fresh start, and find my passion once again.
“Your future doesn’t care about your past and neither should you.”
In two short days, I will turn 20 years old—a full-fledged adult. While my road-trip year will turn, in that moment, into an element of my past, I couldn’t possibly forget the transformation it carried me into. My mother lived a life of confidence, and I plan to do the same.
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