Discard It

Five years ago today I graduated from high school. To some that may not seem like a long time, but it may help put things into perspective by saying more than one fifth of my life is wound up in those five short years.
It's funny to think how time won't go fast enough when we are younger. We impatiently float through our childhoods and say that once we get away we'll make something of ourselves. Some of us make it and some of us don't. Then there are those who still work at becoming something remarkable, yet fall far from the mark. I can identify with this last group. And now, time feels like it's flying by too quickly to allow me to catch up and fix my mistakes and - after this past semester - my failures. I can't give up because I'd be making waste of this time I've spent; time that I've used learning more about who I am than about what I am here to learn. I'm a work in progress, but I rarely feel like I'm making any progress in my work.
I'm aware that if things don't turn around soon I will have to admit defeat and start the long process of paying off my debt. I'm aware that if things don't turn around that I'll think of my time here as unproductive rather than taking pride in holding two degrees. I am aware of the potential for failure. I'm painfully aware of it all, but spending my time wallowing in regret won't get me anywhere. I'm aware. Now all I can do is prove to myself that I can overcome these failures. Doing so will only teach me more about myself.
I left high school knowing I was smart although I wasn't able to prove it. I'm in much the same boat today although my grade point average serves more as weight against my claim of intelligence than for it. So many people have said I may not be cut out to be a doctor, but they are not only calling my ability to make my dreams come true into question, they are allowing the made-up idea of fate to cloud their vision and belief that I can do it. I believe that outside of saying what someone's ultimate fate was, the only fate that exists is in the plans we make for ourselves and the random experiences we take part in along the way. Any person who says I can't make my dream come true can go to Hell. But sadly, I am the person with the longest history of questioning whether I can do it.
If I am to succeed I can no longer question my future success. To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite movies, I should spend a small amount of time embracing the sadness and regret of my failures and then discard them, never to pick them up again. I hope every person who reads this reprimands me if I am seen wallowing in self-pity or regret. I'm done with it. All it does is keep me from the full, successful, happy life I have planned and fated myself for.

Keep me in your thoughts.

"You have five minutes to wallow in the delicious misery: enjoy it, embrace it, discard it... and proceed."
- Kirsten Dunst as Claire Colburn in the movie Elizabethtown.

Fear

I have to be at work in less than 6 hours but I can't fall asleep. As usual, my mind can't be still. My brain is running a perpetual race to nowhere. There are a lot of things I need to be open and transparent about. The thing I supposed I should confess is that I am afraid of everything. I'm afraid of success. I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of being noticed. I'm afraid of having no legacy and never been remembered. In other words, I'm afraid of everything.
My biggest fear lately is that I'll be a nothing; an unremarkable, invisible, forgotten blip. I've allowed my negative inner monologue to be self-fulfilling. I sometimes think "If I don't work hard enough I'll never amount to anything." Then when I sit down to work my fear of failing sidetracks me and prevents me from getting any real work done. Even now I think my fear and anxiety about work tomorrow is preventing me from going to sleep. I'm seeing someone about these problems, but I'm not out of the woods.
I've always had fear problems. I've always allowed fear to rule me. I don't want to place the blame on anyone, but my parents are masters at being ruled by fear. The fear that rules them most is the fear of money. At my age, that fear is immobilizing. I wish I had never learned that fear from them.

One thing I'm still afraid of is telling people what I think. I have some influences in my life who tend to bring me down. They depress, annoy, and disturb me. I feel defeated when I'm around them and that feeling doesn't go away easily. Something we do is throw someone's negativity on other people in order to get rid of it. Talk about vicious circles. It's a wonder the world isn't in shambles. Come to think of it, it isn't far from it. So, I may have to tell these negative people exactly what they're doing and how they're bringing me down. I may have to tell them I'm not going to be around them anymore if they don't change. It will hurt, but I desperately need change. I have lacked real positive influences for quite some time.

I'm enrolled in school this summer, but if someone told me to leave on a trip somewhere and could promise I'd be permanently changed for the better, I'd drop everything and go. I have two years of college left, totaling seven in all. After that I have 4 years of medical school. Other than this prolonged, self-imposed education I've planned out, I have nothing going for me. I have no love life. I have few friends. I have almost no social life. I have no mentor. I don't have much money, but I've got debt to counter any loose dollar I find. I have a fear-based barrier preventing me from falling in love and that prevents me from feeling attached to anyone.

I may sound pitiful, but I'm not looking for pity. I'm looking for change. This is the only life I've got and I've only got so many chances at getting it right. There are still beliefs and personality quirks I've got to work out, but I like to think I'm making an effort to live a full life.

Actually, forget the previous paragraph. It's garbage. I try so much to justify where I am in relation to my goals. I can't justify it. I can't blame my learning "difference", my circumstances, or anyone else. I only have myself to blame for my problems. If there's anything I should be angry about that hasn't totally been my doing it's that I have lacked the intellect to recognize what is happening and am just now trying to pull myself up out of this hole I've unintentionally dug for myself.

I remember feeling invincible as a little boy. I wanted to take on the world. Somewhere along the line I forgot that fear has no control over me but what I give it. I can't subject myself to the what-ifs if all they're going to do is prevent me from achieving success.

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.”
- Fulton Oursler

I'm no Christ figure, but many of us victimize ourselves this way and we don't even see what we're doing until we start to run out of time to fix it (if then). I'm going to do my best not to continue to place myself between the two thieves anymore. I hope you all find ways of overcoming your fears. If you don't, they will rob you of everything.

Don't let that happen.

Room to Breathe

The spring semester is over. I'm trying to avoid looking at my grades. This semester was really difficult. Right now I'd rather believe I did well because I did my best.

Anyway, it's nice to have a little room to breathe. I don't have to be in class or wake up by a certain time. I'm trying to be up reasonably early though. Sleeping the morning away makes me feel like I've wasted an entire day. I only work weekends right now and that's helpful. My weekdays are my own for a couple weeks. Summer school starts June 2nd and I've already enrolled in my phlebotomy course at Moore Norman. In August, I should be to say I've successfully completed six hours of college credit (5 of those with "A" as a grade) and a certification course. I can't begin to say how much I've needed a few successes in my life.

Along with my academic progress this summer, I've dedicated myself to exercising and lifting. It's time I got in shape. I owe it to myself to make that happen. The plan right now is to lift in the mornings and be active in the evenings.

Also, I've found a way to get help with my learning "difference" and am actively pursuing the help. I have to talk with a bunch of people about it and go through quite a few tests, but I'm facing the problem and working to overcome it.

So, I have some room to breathe but I'm using it to better myself. I'm not going to sit still and allow myself to under-perform. This is my time to shine and I intend to do so.

I'm still searching for quite a few things, but I won't get them without some personal growth. I need an adventure and since Norman doesn't have anything to offer in the area of adventures I've bought OU football season tickets. Take that, mediocrity!

Write me! I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Don't Get Married

I hear people talk about how they want a family and not to be alone. I don't have a family of my own, but I know what it's like to be alone. I don't mean to be spiteful, but the family I came from trained me to be alone. We (actually, it was one person) cut out an entire half of our family and we rarely see anyone from the other half, save my mother's sister and brother-in-law.

My parents have a tense relationship and I often feel that they would be happier divorced. They don't say words as hate-filled as their tones towards each other communicate. This is why I have lately felt that marriage may not happen for me. I mean, I used to think that I would one day have the perfect marriage by avoiding all the mistakes my parents made, but in my experience most of the miserable people I know are married. They're miserable, and to be quite honest, I'm miserable enough alone. Why burden myself with someone else's unhappiness when I know I won't feel any less lonely?

I have a theory that I believe to be accurate; a theory that devotion to another does not have to be sealed by something as trivial by today's standards as a marriage license. People are signing prenuptial agreements to keep from loosing their things when they get divorced. These days people are planning their divorces before they get married. What's the point in getting married then? The gays seem to be getting by just fine without it so why do the straight people in the world need it? There are no such things as devotion and commitment. I wonder if there ever were.

The church so readily gravitates toward the institution of marriage yet we only use marriage because those who lived at the time the Bible was written used it. You don't see people slaughtering their livestock in the streets or riding from town-to-town on asses these days. Things change. What good is a marriage license if it's so easy to end a marriage?

I think marriage should be gotten rid of altogether. It's a joke. If we're each totally devoted to someone and never want to be with anyone else, why would we need a marriage license? It wouldn't validate your love for that person any more than normal. How could a marriage license make that devotion any more real? It can't.

We should get rid of marriage.

Needs

The universe is boundless, yet we are not. Although I often joke about living forever, reality says otherwise. You and I one day will cease to exist as we are. Everyone has a belief to cling to. Some are still searching. The fact remains that we must make all that we can from each moment we have.

Much has happened in my life since starting out from my first days in college. The failures outnumber the successes by orders of magnitude, but we all experience failure. I'm still searching for ways to overcome them. I have hope that I will discover what it takes to make peace with my failures, learn from them, and move on to successes farther down the road.

My perception of the universe has expanded immensely from what I once knew it to be. In actuality, the universe has expanded while we have remained the same size. By the same model, when compared with the universe, we shrink smaller and smaller each second.

We forget the roles we are playing while pursuing the bigger, the better, the shiny, and the new. We are defined no longer by our actions, but by what we own. We buy that which we think paints portraits of the "individuals" we think we are, but we are really all the same. We are really all alone.

We want acceptance. No person ever goes through life fearing he or she will be accepted. The fear is that we won't be accepted. We are all the same in that we're all different. Why is that so difficult for most to accept? We waste no time placating each other for our differences yet we use our deceptively calming words to convert each other to our own causes. When did acceptance become an object we could buy and sell with our words? We want unequivocal acceptance, or at least I do.

We want to love and be loved. We see the potential for a connection with another and often prevent that connection out of fear for our vulnerability. We want not to be hurt yet we cannot live life without some pain. We want to be able to share our existences with others who truly care about the individuals each of us are. We want to know that whether or not we seem to have anything emotionally valuable to offer that we are loved and that we are wanted. We want to fall asleep knowing others love us. Each of us wants to share a bond more lasting than stone with another who feels the same. We want to be loved, or at least I do.

We want to be needed. Every person wants to know that his or her life has meant something to the grand story that the world continues to write. We want to know that we have a role - a purpose - and that the world can't exist as it is without us. We want vindication and validation. We want our lives to increase the short supply of beauty in the world. We want to be needed, or at least I do.

And in the final flickering moments when we are breathing our last exquisite breaths, we want to be remembered. We want not to be forgotten. We want this because there is no guarantee that we exist in another form after we die. No amount of "divine" books can guarantee that we pass on to another realm. We are human and it is in our nature to hope for this. We want to be remembered, or at least I do.

It is my greatest fear that I'll never be accepted, loved, needed, or even remembered. I wake up most mornings and wonder if my actions each day will make me worthy of these things. I have lived in full devotion to a deity that I now feel has forgotten me, so I must do all that is within my power to find these things I want - the things we all want.

I can't make you accept me, love me, need me, or remember me, but my heart breaks at the thought that I may never earn these things from you.

I have discovered in my search to find myself that my self is all alone. It's a desperate and terrifying feeling to have.

If you don't see me today, at least do for someone else what I hope will be done for me. It is the least we should be doing for each other.

I love you all.

Too Much

As far as I know, I'm pretty screwed up. Most people know that about me.
The thing is, I hate being told what to do. I have pride issues. I need more humility, but not so much that I become a pushover. I really need to figure out who I am.
So, when people tell me I have to figure out who I am before I'll have a chance to achieve what I'm in college for I disregard what they say and continue on, averagely.

I know that I don't fully understand who I am, but I am trying to. I find out new things about myself all the time. This is where my need for humility comes in. Not only do I hate being told what to do, but I hate getting help from others. I hate it when people pay for my meals or simply buy me things they think I would like. I don't want to be thought of as poor or inept. This completely contradicts my thinking on getting an education. My thoughts have been "Hey, I'm paying for it. I should get a good grade because this is what a good grade costs," or "They should understand I have an attention disorder and offer me extra help." See my contradiction?

The thing about the brand of freedom that Americans are offered is that they have to work orders of magnitude harder according to their disabilities or inequalities in order to get what they want. There are no free rides. I've always thought that the United States was the land of opportunity, but one's level of "opportunity" is determined by one's personal wealth. There's no wonder why poor families can't rise out of poverty. "Opportunity" is another word for how much money one has in the bank.

Now, I don't believe in luck. The whole concept of some mystical balance between success and failure that hands good fortune out to the deserving or takes it from the wicked is lost on me. Keep in mind the phrase "only the good die young." Although that is a generalization, it negates karma. If luck truly exists, then it exists as Seneca said it exists: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." To me, opportunity will not come unless it has been prepared for. So, if I am to achieve this dream I have of being a doctor and prolonging lives, I'm going to have to face my fear of dangerous debt as well as my fear of failure. I'm going to have to find a way to pay for medications that will allow me to manage my "difference." I'm going to have to take risks. Risks scare the hell out of me, but they make success that much sweeter. In order to get what I want, I'm going to have to do things I don't want to do.

That's all for now.

I've been busy lately

My trip to Kansas was incredible. I never thought I would have enjoyed myself as much as I did. Lawrence is a gorgeous town. Downtown Lawrence puts Norman's Campus Corner to shame. While the people in Kansas are just as nice as those in Norman, Lawrence's atmosphere is more welcoming because it offers a small-town appeal. Norman is quickly becoming a corral for the big-box stores, the corporations, and the low-quality get-rich-quick stores. Instead of using Norman's natural appeal to draw respectable Mom and Pop businesses it has played the game of the corporations and sold off its identity. KU won their men's basketball game against Villanova while I was in The Granada at the Explosions in the Sky concert (which was incredible). When I walked out the door there was a sea of blue shirts celebrating the win. Total strangers joyfully clinked their drinks together while yelling at the tops of their lungs. Now, imagine OU had made it as far as KU did (KU ended up winning the National Championship). What would the scene have been in Norman? It would have been quiet, boring, and business as usual. Sooners don't have much school spirit outside of football. Any day besides football Saturdays is painfully mundane. This is supposed to be a college town. If anything like what happened in Lawrence had happened in Norman I can guarantee that "the law" would have shown up to disperse the crowd.

That's what happens in a state where it takes less training to be a police officer than it does to be a beautician (nearly 5x more training for a beautician - and not all beauticians are good at what they do). Chew on that.

Change of subject.
Last Friday I went to Tulsa to the OSU Center for Health Sciences where the OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine is located. The medical school there is small and everyone knows each other. That's the kind of medical school I want to go to. I have hope of getting in also. My options are narrowed down to two medical schools right now: OSU and Guadalajara. I may be offered the option of attending medical school somewhere else, but I will go there only if I can't get into my top two. I had an incredible day in Tulsa. The medical school is top-notch, yet hometown. It's a D.O. program, which means there are more areas of treatment offered to help patients. The approach is whole-body and focuses on fixing the problem rather than medicating the problem. I'm ready to go to medical school! Let's hope Oklahoma State takes me. If not, see you in Mexico!

This summer I'm enrolled in weight-lifting and Spanish as well as a certification course at MooreNorman Technology Center that will allow me to work closely with patients and hospital staff. Not only will it help prepare me for future interaction with people needing health care, but I will be building relationships with doctors who have gone through what I'm about to go through in medical school. It's funny, but I will have earned 185 college credit hours by the end of the Fall 2008 semester and still won't have what I need to graduate with my two degrees. All I can say is that I wouldn't have made it this far had I not learned to enjoy school so much.

That's all for now.