You Can Never Go Home Again

It happens to most of us, if not all, at one point or another. Usually after graduating high school or college or finding out you finally got the internship of your dreams in Africa or your first real job in New York. It’s a cumulation of every single second of your entire life, up until that very moment. The moment you leave home. Sure you can always go home, but you can never go home again. Going home again implies nothing will have changed in your absence when quite the opposite is true. This is the price we pay for choosing to experience life in different places. The ultimate life choice: to leave home forever or to stay in the same place, content with constant familiarity and comfort. I think the choice is obvious for most people, under the right circumstances. Leave.

Leave home to see wonders, to grow, to acquire new knowledge, to experience different love, and to encounter strange creatures in darkened smoky corners of the world. You will change in the most beautiful way. All the nuance and beauty will wash over you. But, the one thing the world out there doesn’t offer you, is the one thing all humans need.  And one day, you will wake up, nostalgic and yearning for that place you once called home. The place your mom made you chicken noodle soup and braided your hair. The place your dad read you stories before tucking you in to bed and turning out the lights. The place where  you rented movies every friday night with your sister. The place where you scraped your knee, playing tag with your childhood best friend. The city park you practically lived at during your high school teenage angst. You can go home. But it will no longer be the home you used to know. That city park has a new swing set. They got rid of the see saw. You have grown too old for bed time stories, and the house you grew up in is now inhabited by a new family with young kids of their own. You have to make your own chicken noodle soup now, and your hair is too short, too grown up looking to braid. All movie rental places have gone out of business and have been replaced with businesses that will become a symbol of comfort to other young children entering adolescence.

Leave home. For the love of God, leave as far, and as often as you can. Most of you will come back.

But every time you walk out of that door, every time you drive down the freeway with city lights gleaming in the rearview mirror, look back. Take it in, just for a moment. That is home. Your home. Nothing will ever be the same again. The beauty that you see is fleeting. Small changes will creep in like seasons and everything you once knew will seem unfamiliar one day. Blow a kiss, wave goodbye, and say thank you for all its has given you. Because, once you leave, you can never go home again.

A Goodbye Letter to Depression

I didn’t know the weight of your existence, until you came into my life. It was in January when we first met. I looked at you and said, “Oh, you will be gone soon enough.” I imagine, you looked at me and said, “she is mine for the taking.”

You did something most never do. You stayed. At first, I wasn’t sure you would last long, but you came to me, each day, slowly- in waves… until I was completely engulfed by you.

I began to drown in you, and I was both contented and terrified by this. I began to find comfort in the dark solace of my room. I lost many friends. They said I spent too much time with you, and you weren’t real to them.  Like a bad relationship, I couldn’t leave you, and you wouldn’t dare leave me. Not yet. Not until you got what you came for.

We spent every hour together. You sang me to sleep during the day. I should have been sun bathing or laughing with my friends, instead, I cuddled up to you as if you were a long lost relative. You convinced me that important parts of my life were now, pointless, and I should stop caring about them. I did. Maybe, I was easily influenced or maybe, I was just weak. Or maybe, it was all truly out of my control. You turned me into a different person, and then, into a hollow shell of a human that I did not recognize nor relate to.

I looked into the mirror and saw a stranger looking back with cold, lost eyes, hanging by a sliver of a thread.

I depended on you. You understood how I felt. You were the only one.

“She used to have that spark for life,” they would say in whispers, behind closed doors. They lost something too, you see. Everyone I loved and that loved me. They lost me. A version of me, anyway, that they would never see again.

For too long, I only existed in dampness. In solemn dreams, dull aches, lonely nights and sad songs that played on a never-ending loop. I existed in the in-betweens of life and death, of wake and sleep, of happiness and grief. I wasn’t alive and I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t happy nor sad. I wasn’t asleep, but I was not awake either. I was nothing. Nothing. Not even numb.

I had to take pills to get rid of you. I wasn’t strong enough to do it on my own. I needed you. I felt safe with you. But over time, I began to miss the feeling of being alive. You know the one. The one where you exist in a bubble of drunken euphoria with your best friends, time slows down and you tell yourself not to forget this moment. The feeling you get after leaving a concert, electricity flowing through your veins. The feeling you get while driving down the highway with the windows down, singing Joe Purdy at the top of your lungs. The feeling you get when someone special says something tiny and insignificant, but it means everything to you. The feeling of being alive – truly alive, amidst all the chaos.

I wanted to feel again. Even if that meant feeling pain.

You were scared when I began to fight you. And you should have been. I wanted the fire back.

I have been free of you for three months now. Three months of not having to wake up and swallow a pill to help get me through the day. I am three months old. My life has only just begun.

I am writing this to say goodbye. You were important to me. You changed my life. And for that, I am both proud of who I’ve become and nostalgic for the person I was before you came along. You challenged me. And I am better for it. You kept me in the dark. But I kept searching for little cracks of light, and slowly and suddenly – all at once, I found them. Little by little. A lot by a lot. Until cracks turned to streams, and streams turned to oceans, and oceans into the constellations that illuminated my world again.

You took my time. My spark. My hope. You took everything you could, until I thought I had nothing left to offer. And I surrendered it all to you, because I was not in control. You took a lot of things I will never fully get back. But in the end, the one thing you truly wanted to steal, was the one thing you couldn’t take. You couldn’t take ME.

Photography by Casey Kim.

I love People, I don’t Understand Them

I love people. They are fascinating and complex, and often times, they will surprise you. I don’t understand them though. I try and I try to view situations in different perspectives, but sometimes, people’s actions are just simply non-sensical and selfish.

I have noticed just recently that people have a flare for the dramatic. They have a knack for making assumptions that usually come with negative connotations. They are quick to the defense and often times, much too rash in their choice to not be understanding.

Look y’all.

People aren’t robots. Far from it, actually.

People aren’t always going to fit in to the mold you create for them. People are complex, life is hectic, circumstances happen, people change their minds, and life goes on.

Let’s try to be more understanding of people and situations when not everything goes the way you want it to. Life will be much more pleasant, more peaceful, and less stressful for not only yourself but for everyone around you. Throwing a fit because someone couldn’t come to your birthday party is ridiculous. Getting into a fight because someone “ditches you” or the plans you previously made is non-sensical. Getting jealous because your best friend is spending too much time with her boyfriend is selfish. Assuming someone is ignoring you because they don’t call you back is childish.

People don’t sit around in their living rooms twiddling their thumbs asking themselves what they can do to please you. They have lives. We all have lives. Sometimes, it is really hard to be a good friend, girlfriend, daughter, student, employee because of circumstances in life. It wont always be that way though, so be understanding of those times when it is.

Talk it out. Understand that there are always external attributes at play.

People. I love you, but I don’t understand you.

We’re all fighting a battle. Some of us are much stronger than others. Some of us are really struggling. So many of us go through very similar things. Let our very human qualities bring us all together, not tear us apart.

Understand yourself so you can understand others.

xoxo

TJ

 

This Is Water

This is a great video about life and how you choose to perceive every day situations. It is called This Is Water by David Foster Wallace. Very thought provoking. I encourage you to sit through the whole nine minutes.

The Stigma Of Slut Shaming

We live in a society that somehow continues to justify “slut shaming” in our culture. And it needs to STOP.

First and foremost, what is a “slut?”

According to the dictionary a slut is defined as an immoral or dissolute woman; a prostitute.

Since when is a woman engaging in legal sexual acts with whomever she pleases grounds to be called a prostitute?

So many people in our culture are still guided by the antiquated notion that women should remain pure and innocent and if they are not then they should be quiet about their indiscretions. Conversely, men are actually encouraged in our culture to be promiscuous and are often placed in high esteem when they have a large number of conquests. This double standard enrages me, but thats a rant I will have to save for later.

Not only is slut shaming just plain wrong, it has also been used as a way of justifying rape, which is absolutely bizarre and disgusting to me. I don’t care if a woman appears to be the “sluttiest of sluts” in your mind, that will NEVER justify you invading HER body. Get real.

As you can see, slut shaming is a stigma that can have dire consequences, which is why it needs to be combated head on.

Every human being on this planet, regardless of sex or gender, has the right to live their life how they see fit. Some are more open minded than others, some are guided by conservative or religious principles, some are much more free spirited and experimental. All of these ways of living are equally respectable and should be treated as such in our society.

Just because you may not agree with a person who is more promiscuous than you believe is right, does not  give you the right to slut shame. Just like disagreeing with someone abstaining from sexual activities, does not give you the right to “prude shame.”

A woman should not have to feel ashamed of who she is, her desires, or how she sees fit to live her life because society says it is wrong. You would think fellow women would be the most understanding of this concept, but sadly it seems that a lot of slut shaming comes from people of the same sex, people who you would think would be the most accepting.

I have had friends called sluts by both males and females and to see how this one word can affect them is just heartbreaking. After all, it is just one meaningless word, right? WRONG. It’s a loaded word. Calling someone a slut is a degradation of who they are. It is important to remember that even though the words “slut” and “promiscuity” are often identified with each other, they do not equate each other. Try to remember that.

A person who is promiscuous is not a slut. They are just simply more promiscuous than you. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Our culture seems to think that by shaming people into believing they are sluts, this will somehow convince them to change. The things is, change doesn’t work that way. You can’t belittle someone in the hopes that in doing so, you will convince them to change. If anything, calling someone a slut simply because they live their life a different way than you see fit, says more about you than it does them.

As Ani Difranco says, “promiscuity is nothing more than traveling, there’s more than one way to see the world.”

I am not dignifying promiscuity, nor am I demeaning it. That is the point. Let others decide how they want to live their life in all forms and fashions and you decide how to live your own. Without malice. Without judgement. Without degradation.

I hope that one day we can all live in a world with a mutualistic respect for each other’s individuality and rather than feed our  ethnocentric tendencies, we will embrace each others differences and learn from them.

So, anybody out there who has been called a slut or a prude and was deeply hurt by it, shake it off. You know who you are better than anybody else and you shouldn’t be ashamed of acting or not acting, on your impulses and desires. You are human. And as long as you love yourself, no other person can make you feel inferior.

xo

TJ

Humans And Humanity

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love are the four basic emotions we feel in life. One cannot exist without the other and all four overlap to make up the human existence.

You can’t have love without feeling pleasure and you can’t be happy without knowing sorrow.

I am writing this to shed some light on the world we live in and this thing we call HUMANITY.

In the wake of the Boston marathon bombing yesterday, The Dark Knight theatre shooting and the Newtown shooting it’s hard to believe in humanity. In fact, I wouldn’t blame you for cursing the human race and simply writing people off as mean spirited and evil.

However, in times of tragedy, a spotlight in shined upon everyday heroes. People who are no different than you or I. People who remind us that in times of sorrow, pain and devastation- there is still good in this world.

A goodness that lies within most people. A goodness that keeps us going. A goodness worth fighting for.

Pleasure and Love walk hand in hand.

Happiness comes from sorrow.

One cannot exist without the other.

Just like humanity can not exist without humans. Without us.

So many people see tragedies like this Boston bombing and say they are appalled by the lack of humanity shown in people these days. But they are a person. YOU are a person. Where is your humanity? Change starts with you.

If you want to see more humanity in this world, be more humane.

Simple as that.

Bad things will always happen and sometimes to good innocent people. But it’s how we react to these horrible events, how we learn from them, change from them, grow from them.. that will define us as humans.

xo

TJ