Just Keep Swimming

I began this post earlier this week, but have spent the week mentally recovering from finals so naturally anything that should take a few hours takes days. 

(From December 17) I’m too tired to do Sudoku puzzles for hours on a plane; that’s insanely tired. After watching my best friend go through one of the nastiest break ups I may ever witness, a sleepless few weeks including finals that kicked my ass, and an early Saturday morning flight out of LAX to get home for the holidays, exhausted does not cut it. Somehow it is one week until Christmas, I passed all of my classes, and have ingested more caffeine than any human should in a three week period. When I look back on all that I have accomplished these past few weeks, including a controversial debate on biological evolution, 3 final exams, a unit exam, a lab exam, a term paper, and a date thrown into the mix, I’m not sure why I’m standing tall and alive. Just yesterday at this time in the morning, I was finishing up the 165-question biology final, and beginning to cram with two hours remaining until my cumulative, note-free, physics exam. Just 23 hours before I began writing this, I was laying on the library floor wondering how on earth I was going to remember fifty or more obscure physics equations and constants, running on almost no sleep, coffee, and a few delirious laughing fits. It is when we are tested, physically on a mountain, mentally in an education, or emotionally from someone leaving your life, that we confidently emerge stronger.

Being more mentally taxed than ever before this week, I was reminded of this past summer when I spent a week backpacking in the BC Coastal Range of western Canada. Because of my personality, I often find myself offered various leadership positions. All through high school I led in an organization called Young Life, a Christian outreach organization, and when I graduated I had the opportunity to take girls to camp. This same group of girls, which I shouldn’t be surprised about, wanted to go on a trip through Young Life called Beyond Malibu. The campers can choose either a six-day kayaking trip, or a six-day mountaineering trip. I am an opportunist, and love these girls to death, so of course I did not hesitate for a moment on taking them on this trip. We are given two mountaineering guides, and all of the necessary equipment to brave the snow and summit a mountain. Even though I went in to this trip not thinking for a second of the difficulties of carrying 45 pounds up a mountain, and only thinking of these girls and how they would be changed by this trip, I came out a changed person as well. My now good friend Amy and I, having met up once concerning the trip, led five young women up this mountain with the help of two incredible woman guides. Despite my big personality that sometimes masks my small stature, I don’t pack a lot of punch. At 5’4” and 115 pounds, I’m a small woman. This also did not cross my mind as playing a part in being able to carry an 80-liter pack for six days. Essentially, if I had any way off of that mountain, I would have been off in an instant. However, because I was leading this group of girls, I had absolutely no choice but to push forwards. There were hours on this trip that I was so exhausted, and in so much pain from my body being unprepared to carry so much weight, that I didn’t even speak. I could focus on no more than the next step in front of me. When we summited that mountain, together, I had never felt so accomplished. I had overcome the physical pain, and began the journey of becoming a hard worker.

The semester that ended yesterday (now last week) was the hardest semester of my undergraduate degree, and the relief has not sunk in yet. Numerous times I was reminded of climbing up a snowy face of the mountain, kick stepping one foot after the next for hours. The sense of accomplishment I have from getting through this semester, big thanks to my sidekick Sean for dealing with my grumpiness, is something that will carry me through the rest of my undergraduate degree. I also am limping away from this proudly saying that I am a hard worker. I truly gave this my all. If my career choice of a doctor is really what I am aspiring towards, it will take over my life. Strangely I’m excited for the challenge.

These past few months, with a week past that I have had to recover and process the hardest months of my life, have instilled in me a fire. I will stop at nothing to get where I’m going. Sometimes one wakes up in the face of incredibly difficult situations, ones that we would immediately opt out of if possible; however, it is these situations that give passion in specific areas. Be easily inspired. Choose to keep moving forwards, even if the next step is the only one you can focus on. 

Transmission Shifts Smoothly

Five days ago I was in Santa Barbara, I spent one night in LA, headed to Seattle, spent four nights there, then headed back to LA. Now, I’m cleaning my very dirty room in Santa Barbara. In the airport hours I’ve wasted thinking instead of studying for my physics exam, I have been reflecting on transitions. Especially reflecting on the transition from Santa Barbara to Seattle, and slipping easily between lives that may never meet each other, it feels like I lead a secret double life. I bounce between my independent life in Santa Barbara, and sleeping in my sister’s bed in the room I grew up in. My friends in Santa Barbara don’t know who I was years ago, and my friends and family in Seattle have seen only a glimpse of the woman I have become in the little over a year I have spent in paradise. I have come to love change, and have learned to appreciate the uncomfortable growing moments in life it produces. I wish that lesson was easier learned.

I spent most of my time in high school working in restaurants. I hardly ever showed up to school, and focused primarily on bucking all authority in my life, which included being mostly financially independent; I shrugged authority in a few unhealthy ways as well. My parent’s money troubles in my younger years played a key part in instilling the independence in me still seen today. I held a supervising position at a Greek restaurant near my house at 17, and was clocking between 40 and 50 hours a week while finishing up high school. I had two Advanced Placement (AP) classes, University of Washington’s freshman composition course, and the remainder of my high school credits such as the culminating project. I had been working at this Greek restaurant for over a year, dated the same man long distance for three years, driven the same little white car, lived in the same house for 12 years, and had the same friends since elementary school. My life was fixed in a routine from work to school. I had enough money to pay my bills, fuel my car (usually, rolling in neutral was necessary occasionally), held high enough grades by showing up for tests, and consequently had an ever-growing, detrimental fear of change.

A week before graduating high school, my long-term, rollercoaster of a relationship ended, I got in the luckiest of car accidents, finally quit my demanding, miserable job at the restaurant, and left the school I had attended for four years. I had put up with the insecure, power thriving, awful Spanish manager for too many months because of the steady income and hours. Leaving the job I had worked at for so long also required initiating way too much change, I was comfortable in my misery. My ex-boyfriend was jealous, unsteady, and emotional but ending a three-year relationship also meant initiating an immense amount of change that I was in great subconscious fear of. When I came to a halt after shooting across two lanes of traffic after running a red light and clipping a 15 passenger van going 45 mph, my first thought was not about injuries or how lucky I was to be alive, it was instead that this would cause a lot of work to deal with. This change was also pushed on me. This accident disrupted my norm, and that was more difficult to deal with that seeing that I could have killed someone else, or myself by not paying enough attention.

I ended up with silly Celicia (my current car, see previous posts) after totaling the Daewoo, I got back into the same disastrous relationship, and ended up with a fresh perspective on my parents and their ability to back me up in all situations. Having so many comfortable aspects in my life shaken up also allowed me to be so much more excited to head out to college. Somewhere inside me I knew I needed to get out. I could not be comfortable forever, and was ecstatic to leave for Santa Barbara in the fall of 2010.

The same guy I had dated since my freshman year of high school was living in San Diego when I left for school, and I thought it would finally fix our problems if I was able to hop on a train and visit him whenever I wanted to. What I discovered when I got to college was instead that we were no longer compatible in so many ways. Breaking from my routine in Seattle and moving to a beach town taught me to relax. I learned that life goes on, no matter the situations. Anxieties are wastes of important emotions, and today is the day to think about. The more relaxed, well-adjusted, and confident I became through finally having time to grow away from a stressful job, the more jealous, nervous, and anxious my boyfriend got. Being within a few hundred miles of each other did not solve any of our problems. Finally in January of 2011 I initiated the biggest change I had ever initiated, aside from moving 1200 miles from my life, and ended the relationship. Although it was a difficult change, especially hard on him, I was once again given more room to grow.

Not every change we undergo in life is drastic. Despite this however each change is necessary. When given a new situation, a difficult one, we are given the opportunity to be stretched and discover what we are truly capable of. Learn to look for these difficulties, and look at them with the perspective of teaching.

Bouncing between lives from Santa Barbara to Seattle keeps me on my toes with life. It’s the oddest feeling to slip easily between the friends I grew up with, and the friends that have never met my family or seen where I came from. Taking life one day at a time helps to deal with even the most unexpected surprises and transitions. Never get too comfortable. Stretch yourself. Find the few important things in life that make it worth living, and pay little attention to the rest. 

You Win Some, and You Lose Some.

Although I’ve been told several times in the past two weeks that you don’t lose any, you learn instead, I am starting to sweetly disagree. From finding out I’ll be getting a random roommate at the semester, to begging the student account office to let me register if I give them almost every penny to my name, my losing streak seems to be much outweighing my winning streak. In reflection, I have a tendency to destroy relationships by keeping people at arm’s distance, and accidentally walk on the nicest people in my life. I’ve got to find some optimism, something to look forward to. Some family time with great food and a warm fireplace instead of a stuffy dorm room will hopefully rejuvenate my tired soul. I think my thought processes would flow more if I could focus on one thought long enough to tie it to the next, maybe next week. Stay with me here. 

When I started writing this post, I had a working car that I dropped almost $600 on after being stranded on the side of the road last weekend. After tonight however, Celicia may be doomed for another repair while I have a whopping $38 to my name. I bitterly wrote a check to my school this week for part of the lab fees and parking permits I never quite had enough money to spare and pay throughout the semester. After explaining to them I had a little over $270 to my name, and that money wasn’t going to come in time for me to get my classes and labs that the spots were dwindling down, by God’s grace they let me register and my shit-show of a life moved on to the next crisis. I signed away almost every bit of my bank account and muttered to myself “You win some, and you lose some”. Lose again. Tonight my car started revving itself up just as it did four months ago, life: 3 Chelsea: 0.

Leave it to my father to make a plan to break down. My flight for Seattle leaves Tuesday at noon, so even if I end up on the side of the road tomorrow night driving to LA, we’ve got a plan. We’ll tow it in whatever city its in, and call in a rescue from any one of our friends that lives in LA. It could have been worse; I could have gotten more from my parent’s than their money problems and car curse in the form of my dad’s nose. He took that joke well. 

The past three not-real relationships I have accidentally ended up in I have successfully kept some great men far from my emotions. I blame it on being wild at heart, and speak the truth when I say it will take quite a guy to tie me down. However in reflection I think I may have passed up some opportunities for wonderful relationships by refusing to feel as tied down as I once did in a four-year relationship with a jealous guy. My friends say a guy will come along that is willing to break my barriers and fight me on it, but there’s a good chance I’ll be too stubborn and end up an old, rich doctor with fifty cats. I don’t like cats that much. 

Somewhere in this mess of misfortune there must be a silver lining. Will I come out of the hardest semester of my undergraduate degree a harder working, stronger person or a beaten down disgrace of a student? Will my weekly mistakes teach me a lesson at some point or will I continue to just shake my head at myself as I fumble around life? 

Morning light will come, and each trial will pass. If I make it out alive (or sane, that is) I’m sure I’ll be stronger in some way. Even if today is a grind, tomorrow will be different. All the bad luck I’m storing up hopefully means some good luck is on its way.  Keep your chin up; the rain will stop eventually. Unless of course you’re catching a flight to Seattle the day after tomorrow. Thank God for chocolate.