It's my Birthday

...and I'll cry if I want to. Isn't that how the song goes? I think I remember hearing that song for the first time as part of the Casper soundtrack. Oh, good times...

It's true, tomorrow is my birthday and I'm turning the big 21. I've found that turning 21 receives various sorts of responses, and they vary exponentially, and vary drastically from reactions in past years. Two of the most popular responses are: 1.) Are you going to drink your brains out? You're going to have so much fun. 2.) Yikes! 21? Next thing you know, you'll be 25 and then it just goes down hill. 

I'm paraphrasing both of those, but you get the idea. Either way I'm not sure how I feel about becoming the big 21. I guess I have no real expectations for it. To be honest, I just want to be able to get into pubs to finally see those secret concerts bands put on throughout the year. 

I guess 21 also feels somewhat like a mid-adult life crisis, because I feel as if I have accomplished so much, but yet I've accomplished so little. I feel like such a success, but such a failure. Moreover I feel like I know a lot, but yet I have much more to learn.

For my age, that might be true, perhaps I know more than any sort of young adult should know, for whatever reason, but I recognize I know nothing at all compared to those who have lived life for 30 or 40 years, plus. I know my parents know more than I do, and my grandparents know more than that. 

I guess my point is that being 21 makes me feel like I'm stuck at a crossroads, which is really no different than I've felt for the past two birthdays, but this time something has changed. Something is just a little bit different. 

This time, I'm not scared. I feel empowered by my uncertainty of what the future holds. I feel excited by the spontaneity that life may bring me. I no longer feel defeated. I feel...remarkable, in the most tragic sense of the word. 

I know, one day, far away from now or maybe not so far away from now. I'll look back at this post and think I was completely awkward and utterly pathetic, but I think that's the point. That tomorrow my life doesn't change completely, but that it begins an incredible journey towards something better. A more mature, honest, compelling, hard-working, self-respecting: Nathan. More than that, I hope I dedicate myself to remaining happy, and doing whatever it takes to do so. 

It makes me Smile

As I reminisce and revel in my "past"--I put it in quotations, because it's quite ridiculous to even mention my past as my past, because it's connotation insinuates that I have a "past" worth mentioning when in reality, I don't, really. That's besides the point. I can't help but smile at a story I remember from when I was "younger"--the aforementioned blurb applies here as well.

I was working at our local amusement park with my best friends, who still live up to that title today: Gabrielle and Natasha are their names, and we were so excited to be working, not only would we have our own personal "grown-up" income, but we were working together.We were super excited!  We were ticket takers, so all we had to do was stand at the entrance of a ride, and make sure everyone had a stamp on their hands. Why we were called Ticket Takers never dawned on me...till now? Weird. 

It was a scorching summer in the dry-dead-heat of 110 in the shade of Utah. Although when I was 15 it didn't seem so hot, but now, thinking back...it was really hot. On a random day of the week I was scheduled to work one of the roller coasters. At this specific attraction you had the pleasure of standing in a box, literally a box. You'd think that because you were covered by some sort of apparatus it would be less hot. Think again. Not only was it hotter than an oven heated to 450 degrees, the heat also perpetuated the smell of cigarette butts, and the smell of pee from who knows where.

I stood at my post in the box and watched as person after person shoved the outside of their hand in my face as I gave them not so attractive looks. Until one day, a group of men. I repeat men. Not boys. Not guys. Men. Approach the glorious box with smirks, each one a different adorable smirk which is credited to their personality I would assume. There was three of them. They went on, through the turnstile. Staring. 

As I continued gasping for my breath in the heat of the dry air, and wiped the beads of sweat from my brow. The sun was beating on my back as it began to set, and as I stood facing forward, diligently keeping to my duties. I hear some rustling behind me, but pay no attention to it. 

It was at a moment when there were no patrons in my line. 

I looked...

on the ground sat a single rose. I grabbed on to it, and smelt it. It was refreshing and romantic. I couldn't help but smile, and I smiled the rest of the night.

Long story-short: eventually the men came back around and explained that they had left the rose, and got my number. It led to nothing, (there are details I'm not at liberty to share online) but I share this story, because it is so vivid in my mind, and it led to me think, why?

It's nothing really substantial or life changing. It wasn't something that forever changed my ideas or beliefs of anything. It was just a rose, some random man left at my feet. A man, I never saw again.

I guess for a 15 year old it was some sort of fantasy that had come true, and I kept that rose until it died. Smelling it, and holding it, and reminding my self of the fairy tale I was now living, and it lasted for at least a week. The bliss of...a land far, far away. Perhaps that is why I remember it. Not because I was in love, or because some man noticed me. Perhaps I remember it because like many fairy tales: it just makes me smile.

Now, at the age of 20 I find myself in a grown up world, where every adult tells me to never believe in those fairy tales. That Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Ariel, Cinderella, and Snow White were all stupid little girls who were created out of the mind of some shut in writer, who wanted to make things up. They are lies, people tell me, but I refuse to agree with them.

I don't believe that fairy tales come true. I am not that naive, but I do believe that I can create my own fairy tale, everyone can. We all can have our moments where every step is enchanting and every moment unreal, but it is in our imperfect lives that we must find those moments of happiness and adolescent storybook endings. I hope one day I find someone who will sweep me off my feet (and I will do the same in return) and we'll live in an uncharted kingdom. With acres and acres of land, and we'll have spontaneous performances of song and dance. We'll give each other roses, and true loves kiss, and essentially, someday:

We'll live Happily Ever After.



"Smile" :) 

The Story I'd Never Tell

My first "Love"
Give of your heart, and taketh of nothing till it is given back to you.


It was 2005 I had finally come into mine own skin (or so I thought), and all because I had experienced love for the first time. I remember when I first met Fernando (his name is changed for privacy purposes), it was in our choir class in 8th grade. He was very popular and all the ladies loved him. I didn't take much liking to him, at first, because he wasn't my type--as everyone called it.

I was dedicated to one thing and that was singing. So, I didn't pay much attention to anyone else other than the choir director: she was crazy. There's really no other sufficient descriptors other than she was crazy, which I found to be a normality among all choir teachers. Perhaps it's a requirement before one can receive their degree. Something like Crazy Tactics 1010, and you progressivly get crazier so you have to take Weird 2010, and Supercalifragiwhatothewhawhawho 3000 until you finally can graduate with Insanity 4052 which is obviously a thesis class in which you actually are insane, in a classroom.

Anyways, Fernando was my first love, and I knew he was my first love because he's the first boy to ever utter those three lovely short-breath phrases. Sigh.

It was a Saturday afternoon, late fall, very close to winter. Probably October. We had exchanged numbers, and he had called me fairly early in the morning, and we chatted all day. It was really quite cute, because I would have to go do something and then call him back. We would talk. Then, he would have to go do something, and then call me back. It went on like this until at least 11 at night. Which when I was in eighth grade was considered rebellious. I'm wild. I know.

Finally I said "Hey, Fernando I've got to get some sleep."

To which he replied, "oh okay. I love you."

I'm not sure what happened at that moment, but I did not catch "I Love You." All I heard was a mumble. So I asked him to repeat himself. To which he got embarrassed, and refused to repeat it. I egged him on to PLEASE repeat what he had said, to which he finally succumbed...

"I Love You." He said.

To which my first reaction was crusty, because I had been talking to him for A DAY? How could one fall in love with someone in a day, but I couldn't resist but to return the sentiment, and I went to sleep with the admonition that he and I were to be married the next day.

This happened Saturday, on Monday Fernando ignored me at every corner in the hallway. He refused to speak to me in class, and I virtually never saw him again. I had no idea what to do with myself. I was confused. I was taken aback, I was pretty much everything, but hurt, because being the 15 year old that I was I still believed in every fiber of my being Fernando loved me, and why? Because he said so...

In March of that same year, I decided enough was enough. He told me he loved me so why was he not constantly at my side? Also, I found out in January of that same year he had been romantically "involved" with my best friend. So, I said enough was enough. I confronted him via text message and I said, "FERNANDO how are you?"

He said, "Fine."
I said, "Do you like me, still?"
He said, "No."
I said, "Did you ever like me?"
He said, "No."

This is the point where my heart shattered to pieces, and I cried, and I died, and I fell apart.
I was as many would call a hawt mess. I remember specifically crawling under my bed, covering up in  blankets, and crying, hard.

Looking back at it all. I find it was ridiculous. I mean, "love" at 15? That wasn't love. It wasn't until many years later that I was reflecting on that moment in life that I found that I was never in love, or maybe I was in love, but I was "in love with being in love." I found out soon enough that this is not true love.

I mock myself at the silly things I thought when I was younger and this was one of those things, but although it was something that has become somewhat of a joke in the storybook of my past. It has forever changed the way I view myself, the way I view love, and how I view the world. That may seem a bit expansive, but it's true.

Fernando was the first man who said he loved me, and although he took it back faster than an Olympic track athlete could run the short-distance long jump. He still said it. He was my first, and sometimes I wish he were my last...

Secret Guilty Pleasures

As I sit here in my room writing this post I think of our guilty pleasures. I mean, everyone has them, but I don't think we realize they exist in our lives until prompted with the idea that they do exist within us. So, I'm taking it upon myself to write this in the utmost honest importance of telling everyone my secret pleasure, in hope that you'll look at your life and find those secrets which make up your happiness, but first...

Yikes. I must digress to tell you my absolute epiphany for publishing such a revealing secret which may leave me scarred, and ultimately vulnerable.  I find that I think far too much. My brain is constantly in overload. I've come to a point in my life where, for the most part, I can control the outrageous frenzy which exists in my cerebral interior. Sometimes such thoughts bring me to a sad place. I'm never really sure why, and I never really know when it happens (because it doesn't happen often), but when this does happen I've found that only one thing makes me feel better...

Dance.

:) It's true. I just pop my ear buds in and pump up the dial on my iPod to an awful decibel and dance (probably more like prance) around my room. In no time a smile appears on my face, and I've found that's because all my thoughts, the ones that roam rambunctiously in my head. They disappear, and for a moment they don't exist. It's me and the music. That's it.

A wise man once told me: "It's amazing what dancing naked in the mirror to 'Be Italian' from the musical Nine, will do for your self-esteem."

It was that wisdom which started my entire venture to begin prancing around my room. Although my self-esteem doesn't receive a boost, and I don't do it naked; the essence of the advice has forever changed my life.

Tonight was one of my dancing nights. 

So I say indulge in your greatest guilty pleasures, because life will get you down. Whether it's just for a moment, a minute, an hour, days or weeks, or perhaps you're one of those lucky few who has life beating you like an egg in a cake mixture every single day. Take a moment to steal that extra scoop of fudge swirl ice cream, or run those five miles on the treadmill, or perhaps it's something less tedious like reveling in a great novel or drawing the great horizon.

Whatever it may be: love it, may you genuinely smile while enjoying it, and may it rejuvenate you to continue your dance with life.



Song of Choice: Pretty Girl Rock by Keri Hilson

Through the Crackling Fire Pit

Stubborn feet walk the plank--
hot coals which burn the souls,
of feet and crave the pane--
from windowed glass.

Ouch,
I whisper.

Tears drench my face,
as they cascade--
from the plateau which are
mine eyes,
down to my feet.


Sssss...
the coals reply.

The symphony which plays
songs of farewell.
To this impassioned child
I bore, but now--
give away.


I run away.
Looking,
forward.
Only forward.

It still burns.

Are We Beautiful?

I've been thinking a lot about beauty lately. I'm not really sure where this idea evolved from, but I keep thinking about it. Perhaps, it's the tiny blemish I just developed on my left temple? Or the audacious capacity my nose takes up on my face. I guess, I just started to think: am I beautiful?

Who would want me with this awful scar on my face, or these brown eyes, or these crazy emotions I feel about being beautiful and what that means. I am destined to be alone, I thought. Then, I thought to myself, naturally, that I should compare myself to others. So I did. But rather than seeing other's imperfections as reason to heighten my own self-esteem I found those imperfections to be beautiful.

A mother and daughter who cashed-out at my register with their groceries; two stoic women with pasty complexion, pointy noses and glasses to boot. They looked like twin sisters. They are beautiful. A man who had too much sun as a child (as well as an adult), maybe he was a construction worker, or concrete layer. Whatever it might have been, his skin was burnt and dry. He is beautiful.

I think what I realized is that too many times we stand in the mirror to ask ourselves if we are beautiful and if we live up to the astonishment which are those unreachable beauties, which people (some people) have been cursed with what society see's as "perfect" genes.

I guess, in short what beauty is, it is more about what beauty isn't, and it isn't some competition where we must compare ourselves to one another. It is our fulfillment of taking what we have, and making it work.

Home

So school is over, and the summer has come. It's really always bittersweet when this time of year comes. I tend to forget how much this part of the school year hurts me, or rather, excites me. This year, especially, has been bitter-sweet due to many good-byes, but yet so many Hello's to new opportunities, and ideas, and hobbies. I have much I want to accomplish this year. This summer to be exact. I want to start running. I want watch lots of movies, and hang out with tons of people. I want to work. A lot, actually. Just get me some money, and I missed a lot of work last year I should make up for.

This time, last year, I was flying to London. A year ago, tomorrow, actually. I miss London, deeply, and one day I'll go back. I'm not sure exactly when, but I'm definitely going back. Although I miss it. I am so excited for this summer, and the future that awaits me. The horizon which I have set before me beams bright and sets anew.

Besides that, saying Goodbye this year was a lot harder than last year. Which is kind of unsettling seeing as this year; I said goodbye to strangers, and last year I said goodbye to my parents. The difference? I think the difference is that I know I was going to see my parents' again. I think I take that fact for granted far more than I should. I think that I'm going to see them more often than I see anyone else, both because I want to, and because I'm obligated too, but this year I had to say farewell to a bestie, and many goodbyes to all my house mates in Building 615.

I have come to adore all these people, and saying good-bye was really hard, but it was an ending to such a happy story, and such a great way to begin a new chapter among the novel I call "my life".

I'm happy I'm home with my parents now. The first night in my Queen size bed felt like I was floating on clouds in heaven. It was peaceful. I also missed my room, and dare I say; even my family.Although I'm back home and had to wish all my dearest friends good-bye...friends who have taught me more about life, and a myriad of other excellencies they shall never know that have changed my life forever--it's always great to find my way back to the place where it all begin, and I find it fitting that this is where I begin, again.