I walk alone

Have you ever felt like things were changing right before your eyes?

I went to school today. And it felt like I didn't have to be there, like being there was entirely my choice. 
There is a path I can take at any second that will involve me just using my Bachelor's to get a job and start earning my living immediately. This path is full of open spaces, I can see the sky. But it's also boring to me. I see another path before me; the path I'm currently on. There is a long hallway with several doors placed along the walls. Some doors are bolted shut; some are cracked open a little bit.
      I've had a recurring dream for as long as I can remember. I'm in a house. I understand this house to be mine; it came into my possession so recently that I haven't even had time to explore it. As the sun begins to set, I decide to explore every single room before the light fades completely. I immediately reach a fork. One door leads out of the house entirely. The other door leads to the hallway described above. I always choose to stay inside and explore the hallway and each of the doors I see. In this moment, I understand that my decision to stay in this house and go through each door I find is going to take the rest of my life. And I'm ready to spend my life exploring each room, going through until I find no more doorways, turning around, and finding another one.
This dream is a manifestation of my decision to continue with my education. I want to go as far as I can go. The point of my journey is not to reach a destination, but for the journey to last as long as my life does. At a young age I thought this dream was just a testimony of my inquisitive nature, my curiosity and adventurous spirit.  Now, it's that and more. I’m not sure how much more, but I will enjoy finding out.

Whenever I pick up a really good book, I ingest it slowly. I sip the words in thoughtfully like I'm drinking an expensive Merlot. I savor every sentence, every page; swishing them around in my head to make sure I've tasted every hidden, subtle flavor. Once I'm almost to the end of the book, I grow restless. I want to know what happens next. I don't want the story to end.
    When I was around five years old I saw a movie called The Never-ending Story. I fell in love with the title. How amazing would it be to find a story that didn't terminate abruptly? Maybe it's my mild OCD talking, but the authors never tie up all loose ends. I always want to know what happened to everyone. Even if someone dies I want to know what heaven is like for them (or hell, depending on the character).

I want to find a book that takes after my dream, where there are seemingly infinite doors and pages to travel through. I want to see a possibility of infinity. Only then will I believe in the existence of an endless love again...

Gender Roles

The other day, I was in the car with my little brother. Now when I say "little" I actually mean "younger." We were joking around and I forgot the actual context of the conversation, but I yelled out "That's what she said!" And proceeded to laugh at my own extremely clever joke. My brother froze, turned to me in amazement and said "You can't be perverted.... you're a girl!"

Where the hell did he get that whack idea from? Certainly not from me, or my mother. My mother raised me with the knowledge that I could do anything, gender roles be damned. The only person I can think of to blame is... my father. hahaha. Unfortunately, I have many foot-in-mouth moments with my dad because I'm shall we say exuberant when it comes to perversion and sexual innuendo. Most of the time I have my mother and brother laughing hysterically, but my dad looks at me out of the corner of his eye with an expression tantamount to "whose daughter is this?!"

Meh. It can't be helped I suppose. I talk to my mom about everything: relationship problems, the occult, religion, death, school, the long line of broken hearts trailing behind me, fellatio, you name it.  And one time I mentioned to my dad that I was dating a new guy... and he stared at me in horror asking what had happened to my last boyfriend who I hadn't talked to in months! Way to pay attention, dad.

It's just odd to me that now that I'm an adult, I'm expected to be more of a lady. Yet when I was growing up my dad was proud that I was the only girl that could hit a home run my Junior year of high school in a simple P.E. class, or that I could bench press as much as the scrawniest guys, or that I loved horror/action/science fiction movies and was a nerd at heart that just happened to be blessed with above average social skills and excellent hygiene.

Even my uncle, who is a 5th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, told me that I was a very charismatic, sweet young lady and that I needed to protect myself. He was surprised when I was able to copy his num-chuck routine having witnessed it only once. And that I already knew basic self-defense. It's not like it's hard... I hit below the belt. Problem solved.

But I suppose the main issue here is that now that my brother is twice my size at 6'3" and around 250 pounds, that the males in my family have figured: she's smaller, therefore younger, more naive, more vulnerable. How quickly they forget how many verbal fights I would get into with my brother's tormentors and elementary/middle school bullies. It never escalated to physical fights because I would just demolish the damn bully's already fragile ego. I knew every dirty word in the book at a young age, not because I was trashy, but because I was forced to defend myself from two boys in my 4th grade class that were threatened by my mental superiority. After them, no one messed with me ever again; I learned to strike before I was struck and my mouth had a mind of its own. Sharp as a whip and twice as painful. There must have been a handful of bullies my poor brother had to deal with. He was always small for his age while he was growing up. Meanwhile I was the 2nd tallest girl in my entire grade, and 7th tallest person, period.

Luckily, my brother the jolly green giant now defends me against the fiercest opponent I've ever known: my mother. LOL she's the only person in the world that intimidates me, and I guess it's just as well. She scares the crap out of broseph too, but we've figured out how to calm her down from her wrathful tirades.... for the most part. Together my brother and I are an unstoppable force.

I guess.... let him think what he wants. I'll be as perverted as I please and people will just have to deal with it. Or I can be sneaky about it and get my sex-talk quota filled while passing it under the radar thanks to my family's poor listening skills.

"What is the one image you think describes my personality best?"

And my dear friend answered "a sunset."

Sometimes I feel like I'm different than everyone else. Feminine to the core, but masculine when it comes to emotion.... Maybe I produce more testosterone than the average female and this explains my intolerance toward crying men. My theory is: tears can be faked. So many times I witnessed someone crying. I was usually the cause of it. My upfront nature shattered his delicate ego and rather than influence him to grow a tougher skin, I created a monster. Someone that would cry every week to get his way, like a petulant child. Ugh. The very memory disgusts me.

On a lighter note: it feels good to type ferociously whatever the hell pops into my head.
Inspiration comes in many forms and although I write inside my head every moment of everyday I rarely commit it to paper... or computer screen. But luckily, a little friend of mine inspired me to write again today. The best part is looking back on what I've written, remembering how brilliant I was/am/will be, and seeing firsthand that I did overcome obstacles that at the time seemed insurmountable.

Earlier this evening, I was thinking a lot about death and how it has affected me. It doesn't scare me anymore, not like it used to. When I was about 6 years old, I had a dream that a ghost lady was screaming at me and woke up yelling for my father. He asked what I was so afraid of and I told him "Dying. I'm afraid to die because I don't want to be all alone in the dark." He wrapped the blanket tightly around me and said "Death is not darkness, it is light. When you die everyone that loves you is there to welcome you, like a big birthday party. And at first the world is blurry, but it becomes clearer as you focus and realize that there is so much love around you from those that passed on before us." I don't know where my father got these ideas, but they stuck with me my entire life and even at six I understood them to be the truth.
There will be nonbelievers. But is it so difficult to think that we will be reunited with our families after we die? After every family member I lost was physically gone I never really felt that they had left. All the love I had and continued to have for them didn't just disappear.
>Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it moves from one body to the next.
Love is the most potent energy I have ever come across, and it does not die, it cannot.

Lately, I have dreams of dying. It's usually a car accident; a massively violent, traumatic crash.
The most recent one involved my father and myself. We drove off a bridge and he was knocked unconscious. My seat belt broke and I saw that his was still fine. I thought "Good, he's unconscious so his relaxed body won't be as injured as mine will." I knew in that dream that I was about to die. I felt a rush of fluid (most likely blood) travel to my head and my skin became inflamed. I closed my eyes and thought that I was ready to die because I lived my life without a single regret. I thought, I graduated from college and I guess that's enough. I won't ever be a doctor, or have children, or travel the world, but I'm okay with that. As long as I die in place of my father. I felt the motion of the car as it continued falling over the bridge and I saw the concrete at the bottom getting closer. And moments before I should have heard glass and metal screeching against itself I woke up. I only opened my eyes, my heart was not pounding, my body didn't break out into a cold sweat. I was calm and my eyes immediately adjusted to the dark. Then I had an epiphany: death is like waking up.