Balance

Soo it's a new year, new semester, and with that comes the possibility of a new me. Of course, I say that (at least to myself) every semester, and so far it's had no visible effect. However as we all know, "I got a closet filled up to the brim/With the ghosts of my pasts/And the skeletons" (Boys Like Girls, "HeroHeroine"). I just don't know. I started this semester off really well, feeling very in control and sure of myself. Slowly, oh so slowly, that confidence is ebbing away. I don't know why. Maybe it's just the perpetual state of my being. Maybe I'm destined to be alone and sad my whole life. Not that I'm ever actually alone, because as much as I complain about my life in general, I do have family and friends who love me. And as much as school stresses me out, I do well. I just want to be able to move on, and yet it seems like more and more I'm living in the past. It's like that quote from Kite Runner, about how you can't bury the past because it constantly manages to claw it's way out. That, in a nut shell, is my life. Like the squirrel above, it's a constant balancing act - of pleasing people and keeping myself happy; of acknowledging my feelings without succumbing to them; of passing myself off as happy but asking for support when I need it. It's perilous, but it has to be done. Otherwise I fall, and unlike that squirrel, I'm not sure I have the strength to keep getting up.

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People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. ~Thomas Szasz, "Personal Conduct," The Second Sin, 1973

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Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. ~Dr. Alexis Carrel