"This time next year?"

The words echo in my head. Although I said them, her voice is attached to them. This time, next year... next year seems so far. Too far.

I am a complete and total failure when it comes to long-term goals. I lament the lack of mental fortitude on my part to complete projects that would ask more that a smidgen of my potential. Now comes another, and the stakes are high. The stakes are so high.

"It's just a school," says a half-spirit, his voice tired and a perpetual yawn. "You are smart enough. You don't need to go there.. It's just Berkeley. Besides, you can't do it."

"Would you button it?" Pishon responds, but he raises his hand to stifle an involuntary exhale. "I wanna go! It sounds wonderful! Musicians and friends. Literature Heads and Math Wizards! Can't you imagine?! Why don't we try our hardest?"

"But people better than us haven't gotten in!" says the nameless voice. "What hope do we have?"

"More than enough, with you gone." Israel snaps. "And stop saying 'we', like you are a part of us. I know who you are, Sloth. I've grown tired of you, you saboteur. You have no business being here."

"Oh, off your high horse!" He steps out of the shadows. "I've been here since before you were conceived. I know this soul inside and out. I bring him pleasure when his mind is blank and his body is lax. I  have brought out the contentment in stillness."

"Oh, so wrong, boyo," Atticus objects. "You have plagued him, kept him dependent and hostile. You have allowed his to grow weak and insecure with your partners in crime. You do not belong. He loves you no more. He has grown tired of you."

Atticus, Israel, Pishon, such wonderful protectors. They are the friends I will need as I head into this War. It has been a war of attrition, and I've been on the losing side, but I've got a star on the dark horizon, a promise and a deadline. Heading through the haze I must go. I must pack my bags.

A Forgiveness and a Freedom

Saturday's journal entry:

Dear God,
I am tired of Hating.

I woke up this morning, and thought about the diving meet I had yesterday, and the people I rode to the meet with--- my swimming teammates. There is one boy... Patrick [name omitted]. He reminds me of Dad... mostly because he wants to go into the Army. I have this premonition that it'll ruin him.

He's not the first friend I have that is going to into the military, I just have the same feelings for them that I do for him: they'll be monsters when they come out. People who are narrow-mind[ed], nationalist monsters who will be wife-beaters and child-abusers. It doesn't help that Patrick shows small signs of anger management problems.

I have looked at my feelings for the army, and the Police Force as well [they are two peas of the same pod, in my understanding] and, I have to say that my main rationale for these things is that my father became those things. He never really connected with me for years at a time, only took of the authoritarian and raised my brothers and [me] that way. he told me he never had a father, that he had ran out when he was born. to be fair, he never had a real chance to get it right. But i was so angry with him for how he felt he was entitled to tell me what to do when he hadn't yet established a love-based relationship with me. it was a chain-of-command, and I was made to be at the bottom, below everybody.

On some level, I feel like I'm trying to defend my father: "It's not his fault he always scared me into submission--the army did that to him. It's not his fault he couldn't apologize to me and love on me like i wanted him to... the Police Force did that to him." There were things that he subconsciously conveyed to me, I just didn't realize it at the time. He was trying to tell me, throught the gifts so expensive and elaborate, that he loved me. What I had gathered, was that he was too cowardly to say he was sorry, and instead triend to make me forget with the toys and video games. He couldn't tell me with his body that he loved me. He couldn't give me a hug everyday and make me feel welcom in his home, the home that was supposedly mine, too. Instead, I felt out of place. I felt like an unwanted guest. I was anxious in my own home.

The army is not to blame for this. Neither is the [name omitted] Police Department. My Father failed many times, but it is still not his fault. He still raised me. He's still alive. the person at fault, whom I'm not even angry at, is my grandfather, who ran away and left my dad without an example. My dad succeeded where his father failed: he stayed. He can't push past social expectations of the old way, where men were pillars of strengths and bastions against one another. He can't connect with me on his own. I have to break that wall.

I absolve the Army and the Police force of the sins of my father, for none knew what they do. In effect... no one is to blame.

I simply ask that You help me now in the next step of forgiveness: extending my hand to my father and replacing my anger and hatred towards him with compassion, patience, and understanding.

In Jesus name,
Amen.

With Spring Comes Renewal

Thank goodness it's spring break! I know that many of my readers have been working like dogs leading up to this, whether you are at a top-ranked university or a Ivy-League Caliber High school program which you just completed a slough of paper to be sent to Belize or Manhattan or Dubai. It's time to exhale, or, as I did [at the unintentional expense of my beloved friend] keep exhale in a eleven-hour nap [no, seriously, I missed dinner!]

As you can guess, the weeks leading up to spring break are just as stressful as ever, which is why I haven't been more consistent. I had a test in one particular class in which, in the words of one of my facebook friends, "I [...] raped [it] without even yelling 'surprise!' first." It was my hardest class, and I studied and fretted over it for a week and a half. It felt good, let me tell you.

But now that the first day of my break has officially started, I have decided to continue my productive streak. I want to make these days count for the renewing of myself. A lot of praying, a lot of writing, a lot of thinking, and a lot of reading. People will fit in there somewhere, but they are a priority after homework I need to catch up on, so... thinking bottom of the list?

But, spring break, as great as it is, isn't just for me. What are you up this break? Doing anything special? Leave a comment below! Until the next time, hasta la-bye-bye!