AVI LOUD

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything in written form on my blog, so here goes…

As I start school at SCCC’s Commercial Photography program next Monday, I will be in school for 9 hours a day, and I will only have time to work on the weekends, so I will be the busiest I have ever been in my life, and I think I’m ready. In fact, I’ve been ready for quite some time. When I took a quarter off last year, I learned a lot about myself through the isolation I put myself through. I learned that due to my creative nature, I cannot allow myself to remain dormant or separated from creative environments or else I will start to question my own talents and passions. It got to the point where I almost contemplated suicide partly because I had become disappointed in many people whom I trusted and partly because of sheer boredom. I often had dreams about suicide…imagining what it would be like if I were gone, who would come to my funeral, who would be the most upset. Since I cherish life so much, for me to even think about ending my own life on a whim was a wake-up call for me to refocus my life and take control of it. I have learned over the past two years that my happiness has to be entirely dependent upon my ability to simply be happy. “There could be a million things going wrong in my life, and so long as I am alive, I would be content.” This is how I see things now, but that’s not how it always has been.

All my life I have been selfless, and my one and only source for happiness had rested upon my ability to make the people (girls) I care about happy. This was my way of validating my existence; if people felt like I cared about them, then that meant that I mattered. One by one, people whom I had trusted my soul and life with began to let me down, one way or another. I am still undecided about what words hurt me more, “You don’t care about me,” one girl said or “You care too much,” said the other. To hear two very different things was extremely confusing. I felt like I wasn’t giving enough, but on the other hand, was I smothering people with kindness? To this day, I have not found a balance for the amount of love and support I show people because it is unreasonable to ask someone to change how much they care. I will care too much until the day I die, and the people who cannot handle that support will dissolve into blurry, faded memories. When given the option, I choose to give it my all. This is why I don’t hate any of the people who have hurt me. The funny thing is, I wish for nothing but the best for any of them, despite the fact that they have hurt me, they do not deserve to feel sorry for what they have done. Life is too short to feel sorry for being human.

This pattern of trusting people too quickly and then being hurt afterwards was merely my poor attempt to find someone who would give me the satisfaction of making them the happiest they’ve ever been. And because I wasn’t truly happy with myself, I looked to find it in other people. But that only goes so far, because no one will ever be able to make everyone happy. By trying to do the impossible, I ended up being even more miserable with myself. I deferred from the photography program and sat in my room, thinking about recent events, reflecting and most of all, learning. I began to accept that not everyone you show love to will return the favor. Not everyone will let you make them happy.

I guess it took a series of mishaps for me to finally wake up from the fairytale I had been living in. It’s ironic that I accused someone of living in a fairytale when I was living in one of my own without even realizing it. So many things can happen in a short amount of time, and the best advice I can give to anyone is to count your blessings and try as hard as you can to learn from every experience you have, good or bad. I have not solved myself, and I probably won’t for a long time, but I am making good progress. And so, as I am about to embark on a new journey, one that has been long overdue, whether I remain intact when I am done is still in question to me. Yes, I will be different in two years, and I honestly have no idea what that will look like. But, I know that no matter what, I will be content. So long as I am alive, I am happy.

Goodnight