So here I am. I'm suddenly 25 years old. The voice that comes out is strangely hesitant; timid, has been without an audience since a long time ago, when the world was still bright and endless. It was a time called college. It was a time when this voice was justified, was legitimized; when its idealism was bravo'ed for being intellectual and daring. When we still thought there was room left in the world for One Voice to change the injustice. To right the wrong. To awaken people.
Years later...I've found I've fallen asleep myself.
I have been through a whirlwind of Life...it's slapped me around, brought me up, knocked me down, and brought me to corners of the Earth I never knew existed. Sometimes I wish I never discovered. My idealism has been drowned out by waves of dangerous nativity; has been chased away by bouts of fear of my own weakness and limitations in the face of a dangerous world of lies and hypocrisy. I felt I had been ill-prepared for the truth. I felt I had been sheltered from how deep the Rabbit Hole actually goes. Now that I had been down...I wonder if I can ever crawl back to some semblance of normalcy. I wondered so often if those souls for whom I had been so quick to lie down on the train tracks, to rescue from injustice, really even deserved all this selfless determination I had given of myself in years past?
The world is not what we learn about in the suburbs. My parents protected me from reality, which served two purposes; leaving me utterly unprepared for how ugly human beings can be to themselves, and to others, as well as to equip me with the Idealistic forces - namely religion, the Golden Rule, and confidence in myself - to bounce back from these realities stronger and wiser.
Now as I sit in my apartment in St. Louis - the first real physician manifestation of my hard work - I wonder, what now? What can come of this new found wisdom? I am now an adult. I am now a "Ma'am" and a "Lady," officially. They told me it would happen, and now it has. I am months away from getting married. This is a branch of my life that no one would have expected, to this man who completes me and confounds me at the same time. I still ask myself, when the day takes a halt to catch its breath, such as now - Who Am I? Was the so-called Idealism I felt I was born and called to bring to realization, the almost tangible relationship I have with my Creator, all simply an Illusion? Is this not yet the time? Is the time coming? And how many others like me are there in the world who had these fantasies of high expectations of Change, who found themselves limited by the "way things work," and the sobering realities of ugliness and fear that linger in humanity? Am I destined for this life, as is, and nothing more?
Years later...I've found I've fallen asleep myself.
I have been through a whirlwind of Life...it's slapped me around, brought me up, knocked me down, and brought me to corners of the Earth I never knew existed. Sometimes I wish I never discovered. My idealism has been drowned out by waves of dangerous nativity; has been chased away by bouts of fear of my own weakness and limitations in the face of a dangerous world of lies and hypocrisy. I felt I had been ill-prepared for the truth. I felt I had been sheltered from how deep the Rabbit Hole actually goes. Now that I had been down...I wonder if I can ever crawl back to some semblance of normalcy. I wondered so often if those souls for whom I had been so quick to lie down on the train tracks, to rescue from injustice, really even deserved all this selfless determination I had given of myself in years past?
The world is not what we learn about in the suburbs. My parents protected me from reality, which served two purposes; leaving me utterly unprepared for how ugly human beings can be to themselves, and to others, as well as to equip me with the Idealistic forces - namely religion, the Golden Rule, and confidence in myself - to bounce back from these realities stronger and wiser.
Now as I sit in my apartment in St. Louis - the first real physician manifestation of my hard work - I wonder, what now? What can come of this new found wisdom? I am now an adult. I am now a "Ma'am" and a "Lady," officially. They told me it would happen, and now it has. I am months away from getting married. This is a branch of my life that no one would have expected, to this man who completes me and confounds me at the same time. I still ask myself, when the day takes a halt to catch its breath, such as now - Who Am I? Was the so-called Idealism I felt I was born and called to bring to realization, the almost tangible relationship I have with my Creator, all simply an Illusion? Is this not yet the time? Is the time coming? And how many others like me are there in the world who had these fantasies of high expectations of Change, who found themselves limited by the "way things work," and the sobering realities of ugliness and fear that linger in humanity? Am I destined for this life, as is, and nothing more?
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