The spark

Things are so much better now. I feel like everything is fresh and new. To put it simply, things are okay; I'm okay.

This trip home has done wonders for me. It has made me realize and remember just how strong I am as a person. I am home, in more ways than just the physical, and it makes me feel more alive than I've felt in a very long time.

Meeting/getting to know new people has also worked wonders for me. Making new friends and sharing information about myself has helped me to recapture the things that I enjoy, the things that mean something to me. It had been so long since I had done something just for myself that I forgot what my interests really were. Talking to new people who want to know about my interests has changed things for me.

Joey is going to the Pearl Jam concert with me at the end of June and I'm looking forward to it a lot. The next mission is to save up money to buy myself a New Kids on the Block ticket on craigslist before they're all gone or too expensive. I don't care if I'm in the furthest point of the balcony, I just want to be there; this is something I've wanted since I was 3 (literally).

I go back to Cambridge in a week and I have mixed feelings about the trip. Although my outlook on a lot of things has changed, I'm not sure what that's going to mean for my summer, or for my senior year in the fall. I'm looking forward to getting a drink with Paul at some point when I get back and maybe hanging out with Yacine (Jaseen?) a time or two before he moves to NY.

Emily is going to be in Cambridge for the summer too, but she'll be working through the week and I won't get to see her very often most likely. I'll get to see her some though, and that's better than any other summer in the past. :-) I'm looking forward to that a lot.

I had thought about going to California for a week or so on August, but I think it would be a wiser decision to stay in NC and put the money on my credit card. I'd like to get the thing paid off as soon as possible. I also want to be in town for the fair this September, provided that I don't have to be back in Cambridge until after the date of the fair. I haven't been able to go to it since before I graduated from high school and it's one of the things I've missed in life. I always loved going to the fair, but I guess I never really and truly appreciated it until I wasn't able to go to it anymore after going every single year for so long.

I haven't seen anyone from high school since I've been in Franklin and it sucks. Hopefully that will change after this weekend (it better since this coming week is my last one here until August). I want so badly to see everyone, but it's hard to make time for things because I want to see my family too. After all, I never get to see them either. This weekend my family is going fishing one day and to Cades Cove another day. The only problem with that is that I won't have a chance to see either Amie or Laura as I had planned, unless of course either (or both) of them can hang out with me Saturday night. Friday night is technically still up for grabs too, though Melissa invited me over. I spent last Saturday there though, so if one of my friends wants to do something, I might forego the party this weekend. I get to see Melissa every time I come into town, some of these friends I haven't seen since high school.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the fire I used to have; the spark of ferocity I was known for by so many people seems to have disappeared over the last couple of years. I'm sure that a lot of it has to do with all of the things I went through freshman year at Harvard, which were trying to say the least, and also to do with my own hesitations about whether or not I'm good enough to be at Harvard in the first place. I need my spark back, but it's hard when I'm in a completely foreign place with no one I really know. I have friends that I've made since coming to Harvard, but there are few that I actually trust. This makes me feel alone the majority of the time, and when I'm alone, I'm just not me.

I'm a social person by nature, but for so long I've been locked away from other people (in many ways and for various reasons). Now it's hard to go out and have the confidence in myself that I used to have. It's hard to WANT to have a spark. But the desire is back now, which will undoubtedly be followed by the tenacity that was the basis of one of my letters of recommendation for Harvard, the tenacity that garnered me the reputation of being a lovable pitbull. Once the tenacity returns, the spark will come with it; it is already beginning to smolder, it just needs some space to breathe, literally. Strangely, it feels like my senior year at Harvard is my year to start over, try things fresh and reinvent myself. No one at Harvard knows the real me, at least very few, so it's time to do what I want in the way I want it. The people who take issue with that are no longer important to me.

Welcome back, spark.