Contingency (Rant/Advise)

You can plan every second of your life, pencil in every detail that you want to make certain happen. Your entire life can be laid out such that nothing is a surprise. Only… it won't happen. You can aspire towards that big church wedding when you're five, imagine getting ready with five blonde best friends giggling about the cute groomsmen. But… what about the words "life happens" – do they hold no substance to these plans? And there's the equally important "shit happens", describing a lot

Yep. Believe it.

more of the life that I've experienced than I'd care to have ongoing. But it's true, shit happens, and you have to deal with it.

You basically have only a select few options. Option one: wallow in sadness that your perfectly designed future is in shambles, let the world win while you're at it. Option two: keep going at a dream that won't come true, hold on to a dream that barely exists by the last threads on this planet, and then head to option one after you realize it's fruitless to keep going. Or option three: have a contingency plan, and if you don't already have one that can work around or through whatever shit life gave you, make one up.

Option three, is, in my opinion, is the only feasible option for survival. And it's the best one to tell the world to stop screwing with your life. The world won't stop messing around with life as a general thing, but at least you won't let it win over yours. If the world consists of bullying people, then you basically are telling those people "up yours, I don't need or want this, and I can do better". If life is an accident that renders you unable to use your right hand and you're an artist, you figure out how to paint with your left, or you learn how to express yourself another way.

If you desperately love something, I'm not saying to forget about it if you've for some reason lost your talent for it because of an unexpected event. There are choices we can make, but not all of those options are presented pointblank. Many of them, more than are presented, are things you have to find out for yourself. And before you say you can't, try it. Try it for long enough that you know with 100% certainty that it will not work.

Or run and hide.

I don't really care what you do, because ultimately this is your life, not mine. Take my words for what they are, advice from a stranger. I am trying to help, but if I'm pushing you, you don't have to keep reading or do what I say.

But remember: it is your life. Crap may be piled a mile high on it, but as that old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, find something to do with them. Make lemonade if you have sugar. Or use them to clean up the rest of the mess that's already in your wake. Or just eat them whole. It is your life, take control of it. Own up to your short comings and to your mistakes. Be happy with what you've got, because no matter who you are, there are many small miracles that require nothing but a positive attitude to change your outlook around. Don't hide under boastings and trimmings, things that don't really matter in the end.

The real question is, in the end, what matters?

If you think sticking to a ruined plan will make you happy, good luck. I'm not saying that it won't work, but sometimes the planned ending is not the optimal. Sometimes it's the unexpected journey, the unexpected end that makes it the mile.

So dance in the rain, walk until you're lost and then stop and smell the salty air, experience the world for what it is. It's a mess. And despite how you may not want to admit it, you're probably not far off of that either. So embrace it.

Be a mess and wear a smile.


Reposted from here, my Fictionpress account. 

Aspirations

If you've actually read my #DearMe and my creator's introduction page, then this won't be a surprise for you. My two greatest aspirations are to be a teacher and a novelist/writer. Why?
Novelist:

I was a nasty little girl that hated to read when I was five all the way until I was about twelve. The two books that got me back into reading were Twilight and Looking for Alaska. They were both recommended to me by a girl, whose relations to me would take longer to type than I'd want to in this post, and I had to say I liked Looking for Alaska far better. From there, I read mostly fantasy, delving into Terry Pratchett novels and world where anything could and often did happen. 

But why was I so attracted to fantasy? 

My elementary school ranged from kindergarten to grade 8, and high school was grades 9-12. I had a rocky start to this school, being that my entry was in grade 7, not at birth or a young age like the rest of the students. Because I was an outsider I didn't know my classmates well... and I had a home room teacher with a strange vendetta against my heritage and therefore me. I felt alone. Even with the people I thought and considered as friends, everything was so distant and I was always running to catch up. 

In books, especially fantasy books, every word I read brought back drops of life. This was like replenishing a bone dry bucket with misty rain. It can work, but it can take an eternity. But it's still better to do it this way than to not do it at all.

When I read about the characters and their worlds, I could imagine walking straight into the book, traveling to a different dimension and such. I was given the opportunity to escape the world that was killing me. And for this reason, I love books, and I always will. I love to read them, and I found that in writing them, the same feelings were produced. I could leave the world that was given to me and make one I liked better, one suited for me.

I was ashamed when I first wrote a scene onto paper that I crumpled it up and threw it into the bottom of my knapsack. My mom had taken to rummaging through my bag to see if I had homework and happened across it. She pressed me, asking if it was in fact homework, and I told her it was nothing and threw it into the recycling. 

She must have picked that paper out and kept it, because when I got to the end of grade 8, when I was about to graduate, I found it, flattened as well as it could be, on my desk with a chocolate on top. 

I want to be a novelist so I can write stories that help other girls and boys that are going through the same things I was going through at that age. I want to be another option for escape and I want to be an inspiration, to tell them that there's hope and that there's always a way out.

Teacher:

They always teach children that they can go to their educators, the teachers, for help and solace. If you were having trouble at home, you were supposed to go to the teacher. If you were being bullied, you went. So why did I not?

I can count exactly how many wretched teachers I've had between grades 2 and 8. To also note, for part of grade 5 and all of grade 6 I was home schooled. The number is 7, though some of those teachers are worse than others. The notably worst three teachers were my grades 4, 5, and 8 teachers. Worst of all of them is my 5th grade teacher - the reason I was pulled out of classes and home schooled for two years. 

Five out of seven of these bad teachers could just be classified as not nice people (I'm refraining from swear words here). My 5th grade teacher was able to, within two months, build me my own personal purgatory. I remember three specific occurrences that caused my anxiety to be overwhelming. Once was when I'd lost a handout and asked for another copy, another was when my project broke when we were supposed to test them, and the third was when I was told by my mom to not hand in an assignment out of family and personal ethics and beliefs. This woman, for each of these occurrences, pulled me into the hallway and yelled out "Who's the teacher? WHO'S THE BOSS?!". I remember those words so clearly, as she shook her finger at my face, her bleached blonde curly hair looking more and more like a ferocious lion about to attack. 

I became so scared that my brother would see me crying at recess, trying to collect myself. He'd tell me to go and call home, to get my mom to come in. When I refused, he did it for me; he was always the one to look out for me. 

By the time I was allowed to be home schooled, I was having nightmares that this woman was out to kill me, that I was a fly she was trying to swat. For the first month of my home schooling, I refused to leave my bedroom during the normal school hours, afraid my mom would take me back to that wretched woman.

As an added note, I am partially German. The assignment my parents told me to not hand in was an essay on why Nazi Germany was bad. I do not have a problem with saying that what happened during the was was wrong. But the Nazis were not the only ones at fault, and I was always raised that way. The woman also always kept saying "the Germans" instead of "the Nazis", making it sound as though the blood flowing through my veins made me as much a killer as Hitler himself. 

In grade 8, I had a teacher similar to grade 5, only I was also being cyber and mentally/emotionally bullied by my grademates. This was when Facebook was becoming popular. My mom was still at my side, but by this time, because I was so bothersome, my dad had left me, saying that it was me that was the problem and not the teachers.

I want to be a teacher so that I can be there for the kids. I was driven to my wits end, possibly even past that, and I don't want for another kid to suffer the way I did if I can help it. 

I want to help others. That's all. To save them from the same hell I endured.