So Inclined.

1. I am home with my family.

I have been readin my old journals, I brought the last 4.

They start in late July.

I am trying to figure out how my life got this way.

2. I JUST WANT TO BE BRAVE.

3. I want to paint things.

I want my little brother to think he is smart.

4. I have a cat named Cutie. She is snoring on the bed. Corey named her when he was 6. Corey is on a mission now. He is 19 and almost to Nicaragua. This cat is old and ROGUE. She scratches at the door and we let her out, knowing she'll probably pick fights and come home with bald spots. I'm pretty sure she always wins. Sometimes we joke that she will never die. I always feel bad because I mostly ignore her, even though she's a survivor and I love those.

5. It is strange to come home, to think of all that I was doing last Christmas break and be shocked, again, over the changes. I will never predict my life.

6. Littering is a huge turn off for me.

7. I miss my friends. I've been too absent.

8. I have sat on my old bed for hours, writing out words that need to be recorded. Because I'm not so good at writing about actual events. I have pages and pages of how I felt about what was said, with no recollection of the original words spoken. Tonight I exhausted my memory until I could preserve it.

9. I believe in taking breaks from things that are hard. Breaks from homework and writing papers. Breaks from cleaning the house and breaks from thinking about money. But there are some things I will never walk away from. Some things I cannot justify breaking, not even for a day or two. Mainly if I love you. If I love you, I will figure it out. When it's hard, I will not step away.

10. I watch my little sister live. She wants her driver's license so bad she could tackle an army of crabby DMV employees. She wakes up early for seminary and can't watch the first thirty minutes of a movie without fallin asleep. She makes scrapbooks as Christmas presents and takes care of little Brad and cleans the counters and is tired from constantly standing up for who she is. She goes to parties and turns her music up loud. She is always sore from track or soccer. She won't date the boy she's liked since middle school because of the nasty things he wants to do with her now. This girl never stops. I know she is fighting so hard. Does she know?

11. I am so young in my learning. I am so bewildered with how big life is. Four journals ago there is a page filled with one fat question mark. I made it out of oil pastels and then explained that this mark of punctuation personifies my life.

I say "I am not ready to be adult and play multiple choice." 

I look at that page and read about all the paths I was considering. I read about cryin with my best friend Katie over what to do. I read but I know how it all turns out. I know that those questions resolve and then evolve to new questions... to the ones I'm writing about tonight. I know my life evolves in this way.

* * * * *

These are the first eleven things that came out of my mind.

I read over them and realize that even my random collection of thoughts remains centered on this idea that one must KEEP GOING.

I believe in forward motion.

"I chose and my world was shaken.

So what?

The choice may have been mistaken.

The choosing was not."

--Stephen Sondheim

It is in these periods of my life, these eras of choice and forward motion, where I feel most alive. Even if it creates a struggle, even if I am racked with complexity, I am creating my future. And so, I find myself more fulfilled than I would be in a period of indecision, of stagnant calendar weeks, of horizontal silence. Because surely if I am not reaching up, I am sinking down.