Faith.

Wow. It's been awhile since I've updated my blog...I should probably start doing this more often.

Well, senior year is in full swing, and is beginning the process of winding down. The Auburn acceptance letter has been received, the scholarship applications have been sent out. Now all I am left to do is wait for May 25, patiently twiddling my thumbs as the era of high school draws to a close.

One big assignment still left on the agenda, however, is the infamous Word Paper. If you go to my high school, you have heard of the ultimate rite of passage every senior must complete before being handed his or her thick diploma. Second semester of senior year, students select a word that they want to define. The students must complete the necessary research (requiring me to brave the Auburn University library for the first time), and then write a paper on what the word means in Shakespearean context, religious context, etc. Then the students must do the scariest thing of all, in my opinion: define the word in terms of what it means to them.

I originally chose the word "immortality." I began research on it, but something kept bugging me: while some students complete the necessary research, cross their T's and dot their I's, hand the paper in, and never think about it again, I wanted my word to actually mean something to me. I discarded immortality, and chose in its place "faith."

So here I am, struggling to define what the word "faith" means to me. Honestly, I'm not sure yet. I have been in so many situations just within this school year that make me question faith. Not exactly my faith in God, but my faith in people. Friendships have been lost this school year, still missing in action; people who I put all of my faith and trust into have let me down. I have been faced with more disappointment this school year than an any time I can think of. And in a way, I'm glad. I have become that much stronger, and that much more ready to begin a new chapter in my life.

While these experiences have left me to only grow stronger, I am still left asking myself: "What is faith?" Is it a belief in something so pure and so unbreakable, nothing can destroy or even make it waver? Or is it something that we place in people, beliefs, etc., that can someday be ripped away when it becomes inconvenient for us to continue to have faith?

And honestly, I don't believe faith is ever convenient. It takes lots of strength, courage, and loyalty to have faith in someone or something. That's why when faith happens, we revel in it so much; having complete faith is rare, and we should enjoy when we have the confidence to be 100% faithful in something.

I thought I was 100% faithful in a lot of aspects in my life this year, and I was wrong. I've learned the complete faithfulness in something is not going to happen every day. It may even be once in a lifetime.

But I believe when we DO find something that we have 100% faithfulness in, we should hold on to it for dear life...don't let it slip through your fingers.

Finding My Way.

Wow. I seriously haven't updated this blog in...FOREVER. My only excuse is that life has been absolutely crazy the past couple of weeks with school ending, etc.

However, I've had more on my mind than just school. The beginning of senior year is on the brink of beginning, and I could not be more ecstatic. I am so ready to move on to a new chapter in my life, even if it is an entire year away. With senior year drawing nearer, another word has been drawing nearer to my thoughts as well: FUTURE.

Yes, thoughts of life after high school have been definitely been burned on my brain, and rightly so. However, when I think of my future, I see so many things. Too many things. Too many options, directions, and paths. So many choices to choose...or not to choose. I am totally at a loss at what I want to major in in college. I've thought my whole life about being a doctor, but honestly, I'm not sure if it will make me happy, or if it's even my destiny. I am so lost in this crazy world...I just want to find my niche, my path. And sometimes I wonder...do I even have a path to follow, or am I supposed to make my own?

It's so frustrating. For a few weeks I'll think, "Okay, I really want to do this with my life. Everything is settled now." And then I'll slowly start to wonder, "Do I REALLY want to spend the rest of my life diagnosing the common cold? Or filling prescriptions?"

I know this is not an uncommon feeling for a seventeen year old. Feeling lost is totally normal. But if you know me well, you know I like to have my ducks in a row, have everything organized, neatly organized and filed away. So the fact that I feel like I'm fumbling around in a pitch black, unfamiliar room is not only frustrating, but completely and totally mind boggling.

I know my first step to finding my way though, and it's quite simple: do I follow the path that has already been mapped for me, or do I forge a new trail?

The Power of Being Positive (and Stargirl).

I am the most pessimistic person you will ever meet.

I'm not kidding. My name is synonymous with the famous "Debbie Downer". Okay, not really, but ask any of my friends; my outlook on life is that if it's going to go wrong, it will.

Just for a little background information, I have had a horrible school year. I have had to deal with a lot of petty high school drama, and it has created a dark cloud perpetually hanging over my head and giving me a really, for lack of a better term, crappy outlook on life.

So with this in mind, today, day of all days, I woke up in a great mood. I had no idea why, and I still don't; the weather was miserable, I had to wake up early, blah blah blah. Bottom line, there was no sunshine or pancakes to start off my day in a positive way. So why I bounded out of bed, ready to start my day in the most positive way possible, is beyond me.

Throughout the day, I was a lot nicer. I talked to more people. I stopped being quiet Taylor and smiled and laughed and didn't have an expression on my face that made people think my cat had just gotten run over by a truck. And you know what? My day was GREAT. I had a great day because I ignored the bad stuff going on and I just smiled and found something to laugh at. Words can not express how much better I felt when I got home; I still feel like a heavy weight has been lifted off my back.

Which got me thinking about this book I read in ninth grade. (All of these meaningless stories will make sense, I promise.) It was called Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. If you haven't read the book, it was about this girl who was completely and totally herself. She wore wacky clothes. She said hello to complete strangers. She sang "Happy Birthday" to people on her ukelele--in the middle of the cafeteria. When we read this book in English, our teacher assigned us to do at least one "Stargirl" thing--say hello to 10 complete strangers, wear a weird outfit, whatever.

Guess what I didn't do? Any of it.

I mean, I couldn't say hello to complete STRANGERS. That would imply I was friendly, and you better not be friendly in high school. That's the WORST thing you could be.

So my great day brought on thoughts of Stargirl...and I thought, what if I were more friendly, like Stargirl? Every single day?

What if I said to the rude people, "Wow. You must have serious self-esteem problems. I'm sorry," instead of letting them get to me?

What if I said hi to ten new people a week, possibly making new friends in the process?

What if I apologized to that person I had been wanting to apologize too?

What if I called that person I hadn't talked to in forever?

So while these "What if's" are running through my mind, I came to a decision. (No, I will not be singing you "Happy Birthday" on a ukelele any time soon.)I'm going to challenge myself.

I AM going to call that person I haven't talked to in forever and make plans.

I AM going to apologize to that person I really need to apologize to.

I AM going to say hello to ten new people every week.

I AM going to say to the rude people what I should have said a long time ago.

I AM going to be more positive every single day of my life, knowing that yes, some days are going to suck and I am going to want to scream, but ALSO keeping in mind that I am making myself an overall better person when I say, "Hey, this really sucks right now. But I'm going to find the positivity in this and move on."

So what is my point in publishing this to the world? I want to challenge YOU.

YOU should call that person.

YOU should apologize.

YOU should say hello to ten new people.

YOU should say to the rude people what you should have said a long time ago.

So the question is: are you going to take the challenge?

Daydreaming...

I don't know about you, but I daydream way too much.

I daydream about the thing I should have said. I daydream about how things are going to be in five years. Ten years. Twenty years. Fifty years.

But I mostly daydream about one thing: getting out of here.

I'm not saying anything is wrong with Opelika; but I have been here my entire life. I've seen the same faces year after year, the same streets day after day. I want to get in my car and drive somewhere else. Somewhere totally new where I don't know any faces and I've never seen the streets.

One of my main goals in life is to get the Rhodes Scholarship during my senior year at Auburn and go to England where (hopefully) I will work towards my master's degree in English. I looked at the statistics online, and only four people have ever received the prestigious honor while attending Auburn. So, the odds are definitely not in my favor. But I am willing to work and work and work and work for it. I am willing to pull an all-nighter four nights a week (or more), not have a social life, whatever it takes to make the grades to go to Oxford University. I mean, have you ever seen the campus? It's utterly and completely breathtaking, and I would give anything to study there. Not to mention the academic aspect; it's one of the most respected universities in the world. My heart beats faster just thinking about maybe, possibly, having a smidge of a change of going there. This was probably a really boring post, but it's been burned in the back of my mind for a while now.

After all...it's just a dream.

Taking Chances.

I had a thought smack me in the face today. Do you ever have a day like that? It's like we put our philosophical hats on and start thinking about things and we realize a truth maybe we didn't realize before.

Anyway. I was thinking about how I have completely changed from two, three, five years ago. I have become extremely stand-offish and cold, and it's really, really, really bothering me. I always push people away. It doesn't matter who they are or what the circumstances are; if I feel I am getting too attached, I push them away for a while. And I know WHY I do this. I don't have to be Aristotle to figure that one out. I don't say the funny thing I'm thinking to say, because someone will just tell me it's stupid. What it boils down to is yes, I have had friends that have ditched me. Yes, I have had the people I trusted the most talk about me behind my back. Yes, I have had my heart broken. Everyone has. But this "disloyalty" that was perpetrated on me has cut me so unusually deep that the thought of ever getting extremely close to anyone is a scary and nightmarish for me to think about. I keep everyone at arm's length, because I don't want to get hurt.

No, this wasn't the thought that smacked me in the face. The thought that smacked me in the face was one sentence.

We are all running from something.

I don't care if you say otherwise; we are all running from a previous hurt that has damaged us. We are all trying to forget. But the thing is, I for some reason CAN'T forget. I can't let go of it and it drives me nuts, because I feel like if I let people get close to me, they are going to hurt me just as badly, if not worse.

There is a quote that Bob Marley said. He said, "Everyone is going to hurt you; you just have to decide who's worth it." I really hate this quote, but it's completely true. The reason I hate it is because in my perfect world where no one gets hurt, the people who are meant to be your friends or otherwise never hurt you. But that's not the case in reality.

So I guess the only thing we can do is move on. We have to let go of what has hurt us, brace ourselves for the pain might come, but hope that maybe it won't. I mean the freaking quote on my page right below the title is all about diving headfirst into life and throwing caution to the wind.

I just need to learn, accept, and apply this to my life: Life is all about taking chances; not just on situations, but on people too.

The Beginning.

Well. I hopped on the blog-wagon.

I have had one of these before. I usually start it extremely enthusiastic about my new project, faithful that I will write every week, no, every day...

This, in fact, never happens. I will forget about my blog, push it to the back of my mind with the other things on my low priority list and I will never post a thing. I will return to said blog weeks, maybe even months later to write a new post, and guess what? I forgot my password. Fabulous.

I digress. Lately, the whole "starting a blog" trend has taken my school by storm, and I figured it was time to fire up the ole blog again. I usually, when thinking about what I want to write about, think, "I have absolutely nothing to say." I mean, what am I supposed to say?

"Today was pretty good. I did okay on my Pre-Cal test and blah blah blah blah."

No. No. NO. If I ever start sounding like this, figure out my password and delete this thing. Break my computer. WHATEVER. Just as long you are not bored by my pointless rambling.

So I hope my posts are meaningful in some way. Or maybe they won't be meaningful at all, just because they were written by a teenage girl who has not experienced enough in life to be wise about anything. Who knows?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about time. It's sort of hard not to think about, with everything going on in my life. Half of the time I feel like there is way too much stretched out in front of me, a never ending stretch of road I won't reach the end of for a long, long time. Other times I feel like there is not enough, and I feel like I am literally clawing onto the passing seconds just to savor them as they speed by. I'm slowing reaching the conclusion of my junior year, and all of my friends are graduating. They will be gone, entering the real world. I will be stuck in first block at 8am, guessing the months, weeks, days, minutes, seconds, until I will join them in the daunting real world.

So maybe you can see why I am feeling sort of crazy about this whole time situation. There's not enough left with my friends, but there is way too much before I finally reach the end of my own high school career. Sometimes I feel as if I can't even imagine my senior year without them. I think, "Oh, I can't wait to do that with..." I trail off, a sickening disappointment filling me. They won't be there. Sure, they'll visit. But it won't be the same.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic. I probably am. I mean, most of them will be down the road. I can visit anytime. But the fact that I won't see them every single day like I do now is sort of depressing. But life does have its ends and its beginnings. Sure, a chapter of my life is ending in the next year, but then a new one will begin.

My life without blogging is ending, but my life with it is beginning.