Collateral Damage; The Sequel

I was just listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with Jon Stewart. I’ll admit it was my first Joe Rogan podcast I ever listened to – and it was only for Jon Stewart. I watched The Daily Show a lot when I first got to college in 2014 because Professor McBride used his commentary in a conversation on the Ferguson Riots. I found him to be rational, digestible and honest. It’s rare to find all three in one voice.

We are living in one big riot in 2020 – and hearing Jon Stewart’s voice of reason was calming. He spoke about the need for a massive upheaval of our systems and the need for Americans to flip America upside down. We need to stop accepting the bullshit we’ve normalized. We need to stop accepting the bare minimum from the people and institutions we fund. We need real, tangible change – we don’t need symbolism and gaslighting.

In his conversation about the government’s response to the economic toll of COVID-19, he brought up the 2008 recession. He spoke about a conversation he had with the Secretary of Treasury in regards to bailing out the organizations that caused the mortgage crisis instead of making the mortgages themselves whole again. The Treasurer said that it would have been a moral hazard to bail out the mortgages and that the plane was on fire and they simply had to land it. In short, instead of helping the middle class get out of a mess that Wall Street started, they bailed out Wall Street and everyone else became collateral damage.

Hi, my name is collateral damage.

My parents lost the first and only home they ever bought during the 2008 recession. My dad was a union laborer and the construction industry took the first lethal hit as the economy spun downward. He was out of work for nearly two years. They had just refinanced the house and he couldn’t afford the new mortgage payments. He was a hardworking person who tried everything (legal and nonlegal) to save it.  The government decided we were going to be collateral damage and we didn’t have the power to say otherwise. What came next was 10+ years of struggle.

I recognize that many other families and young kids are the newest members of the club. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, you got $1200 of your own money back in the form of a stimulus and either months of lay-offs, complete shutdowns or minimum wage with a side of potential death. There is currently no long-term eviction moratorium, many are losing healthcare without a job, unemployment is barely enough to get by and the job market is bare – not to mention, the pandemic is still raging on.

We are raising the next generation of collateral damage. So, this one is for you my fellow rejects. I want to talk to the kids who are scared right now watching their parents fill up entire dressers with unpaid bills. You hear them on the phone with financers and banks, their voice trembling with uncertainty. I know you’re nervous because you are finally starting to realize – your parents don’t got this one. They have no fucking clue how to make it through this one. There’s no one there to bail them out. America is too busy injecting billions into the stock market to care about your family, and that’s the truth. Your parents didn’t plan for life to turn out this way and their anxiety is bubbling to the service, exploding right there in front of you. But…they’re adults, they’ll keep you safe, they’ll figure it out. Trust me, they will do everything in their power to do that, until they can’t any longer. You have to understand that your parents have been tossed in the open waters and abandoned. They didn’t venture out there on their own, they were lead to the sea and left there figure out a safe way back to land. They’re just treading water. If there’s no life vest, eventually you’re going to start drowning. My advice? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. That’s all I got. But, if there’s one thing I can tell you as someone who waded the seas for many years, don’t resent them if their legs get tired. Don’t resent them if the water starts to fill up your lungs. Don’t resent them if you’re drowning – remember, they didn’t put you there. Sure, maybe they didn’t make rent payments and now the landlord is knocking at the door like some Jehovah Witness…but they didn’t ask to get fucked by a larger system. Know that they are going to do everything to keep you afloat but acknowledge that sometimes, the current is just too vicious. 

I know how hard and scary and unstable life seems right now. I know the emotional turmoil that awaits you and your family. I know the pit in your stomach. I know the feeling of hopelessness. You’re in the hole now,  it’s lonely and dark. You don’t know what’s going to happen and there’s no life vest in sight.

What happened to us in 2008 followed our family for the next decade. My parents likely won’t ever own another home again. They had their credit destroyed trying to keep up with our middle-class lifestyle, we lost health insurance, cars got repoed, I had some strange group of rich moms pay off my braces so I could get them removed, we all shared my brothers 1996 Honda Civic, we had several mental breakdowns, my parents split up and got back together, we’ve moved over 10 times since then, our belongings got auctioned off in a storage unit, I lived in my car. I always kept it all a secret because I was so embarrassed. But that’s the bullshit narrative you must reject. Being embarrassed because my family got fucked by the system? Really? This isn’t your fault nor is it your parents. You just got labeled collateral damage and got tossed out to sea. Surviving that is a god damn victory – no matter how dirty and damaged you get in the process. Don’t be ashamed of your struggle, despite what happens to you. Your story of survival is something no one can take from you – no judge, no eviction slip, no lay-off, no shut-off notice can take your strength away. Revel in that. That is your power.

In conclusion, you’ll get through it. And yeah, I know, that sounds like a crock of bullshit from someone outside of your situation, I thought the same thing. But you do get through it. Lean on each other when your legs get tired, make some self-deprecating jokes and endure, endure, endure. When our time comes, you’ll have a badass story of survival and some killer advice while others die with millions in the bank and nothing to show for it.

Oh! And if you land safely on the sea? Go back and save someone else. We’re all we got.

The Lost Files

“For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.” Khalil Gibran

Today, I heard something that struck my soul. In discussing the plight of our society, while referring to the text Man’s Search for Meaning (which I recommend), my professor spoke on human suffrage, “You can’t lose the will the suffer, otherwise a person can die long before their body does.”

The will to suffer.

This is a concept I hadn’t ever acknowledged.

The courage to endure. 

I’m revisiting this post three years later as a 23-year-old. I found this in my drafts and immediately felt compelled to reflect on this. If I could tell my younger self anything right now, knowing what I do with the experiences I’ve gained, it would be to endure.

Endure the pain. Endure the hurt. Endure the uncertainty. Even more powerful than the will to live, find within yourself the will to suffer and the courage to endure.

The universe has a funny way of reminding you who’s boss. In my journey to understand why bad things happen, I’ve concluded that sometimes you need to be brought to your knees to learn how to stand on your own two feet. In your times of suffering, reawakening your own will to endure and ability to know you can walk through the storm is your lesson. Yes, some of this will never make sense to us.

Life is hard – no one disputes that. In fact, I’ve seen even more suffrage since writing this quote down years ago. I’ve lost family members, watched others lose some, too. Suffrage is a constant – but so is love. And love is the reason you endure.

The Alarm Clock

I read a Facebook post a few weeks ago and it’s stuck with me for a while now, more than anything else really has. It was written by a 27-year-old woman from Australia who was in the final stages of terminal cancer. She was preparing to die and she wrote a post about how it felt, about what she was reflecting on as a beautiful young woman about to leave everything she’s ever known and enter the afterlife.

While most of what she wrote is redundant of what you’re told in stories and romantic comedies – it was so incredibly powerful to know that it’s all true. That in the end, you can’t take the money you’re slaving for, you don’t give a shit what size your jeans are, you don’t care if you’re broke or  In fact, she was left with money in her bank account and she didn’t know how to spend it – because she was dying. All those times she spent panicking about material things and the opinions of others – none of it mattered anymore. She just wanted to breathe and she would soon lose that ability.

All of those mornings you wake up and immediately sigh, punch the pillow, grunt around because you’re late to work and don’t have time to stop for coffee – you don’t even take a moment to acknowledge that you just woke up. You were just granted another day on earth. I say granted because at that same moment you woke up to a blaring alarm in your ear, another person didn’t.

It’s SO incredibly hard to have gratitude these days but I’m challenging myself to exercise it as much as I humanly can so that every person who is begging to see another day isn’t doing so in vain.

You might be struggling to pay bills, but at least you woke up with your alarm clock today. You might be tired and overworked, but at least you woke up with your alarm clock today. You might be an addict, you might be at an unhealthy weight, you might be broke, you might be in a bad relationship, you might be stressed out, unemployed, sick, stretched to your limits – but at least you woke up with your alarm clock today.

I think we all know our time is limited here but I don’t think we believe it. If we did, we’d live differently.

 

Life itself.

‘Life brings you to your knees. It brings you lower than you think you can go. But if you stand back up and move forward, if you go just a little farther, you will always find love.’ – Isabel Díaz (Life Itself)

Listen, kid. Let me be the one to tell you this – no matter how shitty you think things have gotten, no matter how dark you think it’s been, life can get worse. That’s the harsh reality that you’re likely blocking out. Maybe out of sheer ignorance, maybe out of naivety, maybe because you’ve been trained from trauma to pick up your rose-colored glasses at a time like this. But you know it can get worse. That’s the reason we all rubberneck at the scene of a horrific car accident, that’s why we are glued to tragedy and in love with destruction. We’ll buy tickets to the show, but we want bleacher seats. You know the seats where you can feel the vibrations of the music and you can only see the performers from the TV screens around the arena. You’re there – but not so close that you can see the real emotions on their face, you can’t see the sweat glimmering on their forehead and the raw truth in their eyes.

It’s because none of this life really makes sense to any of us.

The importance of love is something we all know, yet none of us understand. If you asked me to define love right now, I’d be at a loss for words. But, I do know I crave it. I know I don’t want a life where it doesn’t exist. I know I’ve only gotten to where I am because of love – pure, unjudgemental, fierce love.

I can’t articulate what it’s like to feel like a piece of your soul belongs in other people. It’s as if another person is breathing air into your lungs – even if that means they’re left gasping for air. It’s not something that tangible, it’s not something that’s uniform, it’s something woven into the very essence of life itself.

For some reason it’s much easier to see love when the world gets very dark, gleaming amongst the rubble. It’s the foundation that we build our lives on so that no matter how many times we crumble (or implode), we find it once again when it seems like the whole world is empty. 

Sometimes life is f*cked. We lose people who we desperately need, innocent people suffer, tragedy strikes for no good reason at all. Life will do you so dirty, you will be broken, you will feel like peace was created to evade you. But find the love in those times. Find where that glimmer of hope is, find the people who will breathe air into your lungs. It doesn’t make it easier by any means, but it makes it meaningful.

 

 

And in my darkest hour, she is standing right in front of me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Surrender is growth.

I had a dream last night that I was back in Hawaii and woke up thoroughly depressed by the snow falling outside my window. I had decided in that second that today sucked because I had to work, my body is sore, and I’m not going to North Shore to sit my ass on the beach drinking one too many vodka slushes. I sat and plotted how I might be able to get back there, fantasizing about ditching the whole “life plan” thing and living a bronzed and carefree lifestyle. I thought about how much I changed as a person over there and felt like I owe so much to the people I met and the island itself. I was getting so frustrated by the fact that I had buried four of the best months of my life because thinking about them only reinforced the fleeting nature of these memories. And more than that, it reminded me that two years have gone and passed and shit got real. I’m an adult now and I’m never going to be able to undo that.

Am I doing it right? Am I making people proud? Am I going to have a good life? Will I make enough money? Do I care? What do I care about? Am I going to even be good at this?

Wait, isn’t this what I always wanted?

I’ve been reflecting a lot about my life as I’m on the brink of starting a new one. I’m starting one of my dream jobs this week and I’ve found myself mulling around in a state of uncontrollable doubt. For some reason I feel like I don’t deserve it or I’m going to be a massive disappointment and I should just accept a life of mediocrity now and save us all the pain. Basically, I’m acting like I just got drafted into some corporate battlefield and I haven’t even figured out how to match my socks yet.

Sometimes you need to throw yourself a big fat pity party to realize how dumb you sound. I worked extremely hard to get where I’m at and I’m more than capable of success. I’ve realized I’m not actually doubting my abilities because I know I’m intelligent and hardworking, I’m actually afraid of having to take the fall if it all goes down the shitter. All I ever wanted was control over my life. Now I have it and it’s a hell of a lot scarier than it seemed growing up.

Just like every family, we had our demons, some ruthless, some bearable. My biggest challenge through it all was control. I resented my life and our struggles because I couldn’t control the things that were happening to me. I couldn’t fix the economy or pay the rent or give my parents a friggen day off. I couldn’t cure their addictions. I couldn’t cure their brains or solve their problems. I couldn’t stop his hurting or help her realize her importance. These were the problems the world kept stored up high on the top shelves so us little ones couldn’t reach them. But we saw them and sat under them as they leaked out, more and more each year, until we were tall enough to see what in the world was causing such a mess. I wish I knew then what I know now. You grow up and reach for those cabinets, so eager to repair, only to find a mirror. You’re left staring right back at your own reflection, because guess what? You grew out of all that destruction and now you’ve got the responsibility of owning who is staring back at you. All you can control is the person you become, despite the things that keep falling off that top shelf and landing right into your confused little hands. Believe me, there were days when it seemed like the god damn sky was falling down right on top of us and I was sure as hell not yelling around about how excited I was for personal growth at the time. But just know that there’s a choice a person makes underneath all the rubble. It’s the most vital decision any person can make, though none of us realize it at the time. Do we stand up, dust off and rebuild again or to lay down and accept that we belong under there? We always stood up.

I’m grateful for those demons, even the ones that were downright nasty, because I love who they created. I love myself because of them. I love my siblings and who they’ve grown into because of them. I love the lessons they’ve taught and I’ve loved the strength they evoked. I love the passionate and fiercely loyal and understanding people those demons created. I love that they’ve helped me to appreciate my parents and understand their sacrifices and their troubles.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t have issues because of them. But, how I’m handling those issues is all I can control. Any personal trouble I’m facing is just another opportunity for growth. I have some pretty intense anxiety because I have this unrealistic need to control everything and to fix people that I physically can not fix. So, I get to embark on a journey that is letting go. Learning to accept my loved ones for who they are and who they can’t be is so incredibly difficult and so incredibly freeing at the same time. Through this challenge, I’ll fail, a lot. I’ll learn, a lot. And I’ll succeed as a better, calmer person. The second you stop pitying yourself, you realize the opportunity your demons are giving you to grow.

And some might think this is some post-grad crisis but I think it’s more of a personal enlightenment. I’m embracing the future because I know the Universe got me. I know I can handle the bad and the brutally ugly and I’m more than ready to welcome the good because I deserve it. I don’t know what my “good life” is yet but I know it’ll include happiness, love and the very people who fought those demons with me.

 

 

 

Have you ever walked on an old sidewalk, the concrete wearing decades of old scuff marks and cracks like the aging wrinkles of the people who’ve walked along them? Have you ever stumbled across a flower, somehow, someway, peaking through a crack in the concrete and flourishing above ground? It’s as if someone picked a little patch from a beautiful garden and tucked it right there in the middle some concrete slabs and that little flower said- screw it, I’ll thrive here too. Those flowers always used to captivate me.

 

 

;

September 2014, I was freshly 18 years old and started college at UMass Amherst. I was scared shitless and regretting my decision to do this the second my dad and two sisters left my bedroom. I was on my own and I was going to fake it until I made it. I got my first of three concussions within two weeks of being at school and I’m fairly certain my father wished he called this whole thing off right then and there… I would soon acquire three more and dozens of hospitalizations over the next three years. I roomed with Kara, a girl from New Jersey whom I had only met once. I realized on our first night that she would be a forever friend. Even though she came to my state and made fun of the way I said things, pointed out when I said “wicked” and liked New York sports teams, I’ll love her forever. I battled body image issues a lot this year, even though I have been chronically insecure of my body for as long as I can remember. I threw myself into the gym and tried to ignore the hateful voices in my head when I ate more than lettuce and yogurt. My sister called me one afternoon in November and told me she was pregnant, I was going to be an aunt. Two of the most important people in my life lost someone they loved and cared for in tragic ways. I tried to heal heartbreak and realized that wasn’t possible. I learned how to watch someone mourn when you can’t ease the pain. I started looking for shooting stars more often and held the people I cared about a little closer. I drank too much. I started to unravel and I didn’t like the way I was treating people. One snowy Saturday morning in February I walked to an info session on campus and signed up to take classes at The University of Hawaii at Manoa in Fall of 2015. My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby named Kevin on August 10th. My father drove me to Logan Airport on August 20th and I boarded a 14-hour flight to Hawaii. It was the first time I had spent more than a few weeks away from home. It was the first time I had even been on a plane alone.

I went to Hawaii and lived with six strangers, three of which didn’t speak English. In that tiny apartment, I met two of the greatest people on earth, Sabrina and Alyssa. I know I’ll somehow reunite with these ladies soon because I owe them a lot. I got caught in a wave on Big Island and herniated a disc in my back and earned one more concussion as my head banged against the sand trying to break free of the rip tide. Two days later, spinal fluid was leaking out of my nose and I was hospitalized in the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. I woke up at 4 a.m. surrounded by Hawaiian nurses telling me I was being discharged. I called a cab and some nice man from the mainland drove me back to my apartment as I laid in the back unable to sit up straight and on enough pain medicine to take out a large animal. I got stung by a sea urchin night swimming at Waikiki and called my dad, not realizing it was 3 a.m. back home. He called hospitals in Hawaii trying to figure out if it was poisonous. I swam in waters with beautiful sea turtles, I climbed mountains and lived as freely as a person could. My brother came to visit and slept on my floor for a week. That meant the world to me. I loved every second of all of this, even the shitty parts weren’t shitty. I spent four months extremely broke in paradise finding out who I was and what I could handle.

I came home and fell in love. For the first time in my life I actually felt like someone else in this world understood who I was, despite all my bullshit baggage, and fostered my potential. I had someone who was forcing me to learn how to love myself.  I was still figuring out how to be the Devin I wanted to be back inside my stressful world and he helped more than he’ll ever know. I got Lyme disease in March, which knocked on my ass for a few months.  I finally saved enough money to buy my own car, a 2004 white Monte Carlo that I fucking loved. Things at home were rough that summer. We spent a few weeks homeless, in between rentals, frantically moving in and out of hotels in July of 2016. My friends and my boyfriend kept me sane and that Monte Carlo held everything I owned for those few weeks. You learn a lot about loyalty when you’re stripped of the most fundamental structure in a person’s life. You also learn what true appreciation is.

I started junior year living off-campus. I worked hard to support myself as I always have. My younger sister started as a freshman at Wheelock and was now the second person in my family to go to college. She’s doing amazing at school and I’ve seen her grow into an independent person in the blink of an eye. I was driving on 495N at 6:30 a.m. when the first snowfall of the season was hitting. The roads were a mess and my car started to spin out when I tapped my breaks going downhill. I saw headlights coming in my rearview mirror and I had no control of my car. I put my face in my hands and screamed. My car was pushed 20 feet down the road, my trunk didn’t exist anymore and my car was totaled. I had only put my seatbelt on two exits beforehand. I spent a week on my couch, in pain and a bit depressed. I did all my finals from there while my parents took care of me and my boyfriend brought me snacks and happiness. I finished the semester with a 4.0 GPA. The last semester has been a lot of hard work, pushing through 20 credits of classes and applying for hundreds of internships. In the midst of it all, I’ve been having a lot of medical issues and it has taken a severe toll of my mental strength. My life doesn’t slow down even though my body has stopped functioning properly. My brother got in a horrific accident and my anxiety skyrocketed thinking about the idea of losing him. My nephew said his first full sentence and grew to the size of a toddler before he’s even had his second birthday. I got hired as a public relations intern for a PR firm in Walpole and I now have enough credits to graduate after this summer is over. I officially earned Dean’s List every semester here and I’m graduating this semester with a 4.0 as well. Some people think I’m giving up my senior year experience by doing this. I’m actually really excited to get started on what’s next.

Through it all, my three best friends and I stayed as close as ever. Our friendships haven’t waned despite over a decade worth of this nonsense. They never left. I’ve watched them grow into amazingly strong woman and we endured a lot together. They traveled new countries, drank a lot of booze, spent too much on ubers and had experiences that will shape them forever. They’re all so intelligent and beautiful and I can’t wait to see what they do with their lives. I owe these girls everything and I hope one day I can repay them for what they’ve done for me.

I wasn’t even supposed to be here. College wasn’t in the cards for me and I had no guidance about how to even apply. That is not to say my parents aren’t extremely supportive, they just didn’t know how to help. I’d never want to undermine how hard they work to give us all they can. All I knew was I was smart and I wanted more for myself than what I could’ve gotten elsewhere. I didn’t miraculously end up here, graduating almost a year early, I worked my ass off for it. I spent almost every month waiting in line at the financial aid office because they were telling me I didn’t have enough money to keep going. I almost left. Every single loan I have is in my name and my estimated family contribution is almost nothing on FAFSA, and they still tried to say I made too much money as a part-time student working three part-time jobs to receive the aid I needed to keep getting an education. I didn’t give up because it was this hard. Things worthwhile will never come easy. I didn’t want my situation to keep me in a place that would only become a life of cyclical hardship. I don’t know if my degree will get me out of where I am but I know it will, at the bare minimum, be a tribute to myself for trying. It will serve as tangible evidence, to myself, and to my family, that if you want something bad enough, you just have to figure out some way to go get it.

My fifth-grade teacher once told me I was going to crash and burn one day because I was filling in a week’s worth of a reading chart in class right before I passed it in. He thought that because I was “cutting corners” that I would never make it life. He figured this behavior was indicative of laziness, a personality trait that would lead to my demise. I didn’t think his words traumatized me or anything, but I still think about them to this day. The day of my high school graduation I almost wanted to contact him…just to tell him to shove it. But I refrained. I guess this post is a way to vocalize what I might have said to him if I ever had the chance. Yes, I cut corners. And guess what? Sometimes you have to cut corners to ensure survival. For some people, cutting corners is the only way to make it to the finish line before one too many obstacles pile up and the entire road gets blocked.

 

 

 

Home (less).

Home is not a place.

In my twenty years on this earth, I’ve laid my head on a lot of different pillows, in strange rooms that were never really mine. I’ve seen a range of landscapes through my window and my neighbors have never amounted to more than familiar strangers.

Sometimes when I tell people I’ve moved ten times thus far, they aren’t sure what to make of such a nomadic lifestyle. To be clear, we aren’t building a new home every few years, we rent your’s, or your neighbor’s, or maybe even your eighth grade english teacher’s. We live in a house, it just isn’t ours. This way of life doesn’t usually evoke any unwanted sense of sympathetic awe but more so reveals itself a concept that seems foreign altogether- “you don’t have a home?”

Well, let me explain. I don’t have a door frame in my house with markings of my annual growth in height nor are my family pictures mounted in my living room. There is no bold lettered proclamation of my family’s last name proudly displayed on the exterior of the house. My room isn’t painted to my liking nor is it decorated to suit my personality. It doesn’t yell, “Devin’s Bedroom”at all those who enter. I don’t reminisce upon last year’s Thanksgiving or Christmas of ’08 when I sit down to eat dinner at a table that isn’t mine. Those memories belong to someone else, whoever they are.

But, my memories still exist.

The dining room table my parents bought from Bernie & Phyl’s, you know, it’s light wood that has two leaves tucked inside to make room for extra guests…that table holds my Christmas dinners. That’s where I remember sitting, balling my eyes out, the night before my first day at South River Elementary School. I was the new girl for the first time in my life and I was god damn terrified.

Those little moments are tucked away, safe and sound, within myself. You see, I don’t need to be in the same living room to remember the Winter Storm Nemo when my parents, their four children, our three cats and one dog slept in the living room together for an entire week without power. I can still tell you about how my brother, trying to start us a fire, filled the entire room with thick pillows of smoke because the fluke was closed in the fireplace. I don’t know if it was the sleep deprivation but we laughed about that the entire night.

Home is often misunderstood. No, I do not live in the same house that these memories originated in, I am a foreigner here. I didn’t create the dings in the walls and I don’t have a story to tell you about what has happened here. But I have a home. I have a home within myself and those who I keep close to me. My friends, the same group of girls I met as a new girl on the first day of third grade, they are my home. My family, the group of people who have endured so much with me, they hold my memories safer than any four walls could possibly do.

Home is not a manmade structure.

The sense of comfort you have, laid up in sweatpants with your feet on the couch you’ve had forever, well I have that too. I find comfort within my conversations and experiences with the small group of individuals who have served as my stability all these years. No matter where I reside, that comfort remains in the loyalty of my relationships. And the feeling of peace that comes over you when  you’re safe inside your home, I feel that same sensation when I’m surrounded by my family. I am protected in their company, just as protected as you are behind a big oak door and an overpriced security system.

In no way do I feel as though you have something that I don’t.

I have a beautiful home, built upon the strongest of foundations, covered by a roof that has weathered every storm Mother Nature can create.

Home is a feeling.

 

 

Whichever way the current goes.

This post is a compilation of my thoughts as I sit, anxiously, in a coffee shop in Honolulu, trying to convince myself that it’s okay to board a plane home next week. 

I fear an abnormal amount of things in this life, change being one of the scariest, most frequent challenges I deal with. I can only hope that my fear of becoming stagnant in life will one day overcome the unknown threat of change.

It’s understandable to be hesitant to willingly abandon the comfortability of routine and walk blindly into the darkness of the unknown. However, our comfort zone is just that, a safe haven where knowledge and familiarity sheilds us. Though it offers protection from our darkest fears, it more so handicaps us in ways we refuse to acknowledge. The soul’s path was never intended to conform to a life of rigid structure. Our desires should never be suffocated by the weight of our fear’s limitations. Our futures have no real restrictions, these are simply appropriations of our immobility.

I’m learning, slowly but surely, that life is all about adjustments, words my father has kept on a broken record since I was a little girl. Well, Dad, I think I’m finally starting to understand. Leading a life where your soul remains lively and captivated can only be achieved once this realization is met. True happiness depends on our ability to fully and completely embrace the experiences we have in between these massive changes. Let the looming possibility of change force you to run as wild as you can, fearlessly interact with your environment, let the beautiful minds of strangers expose themselves to you. There is a great deal of life to be lived.

Through deep reflection and some writing, I’ve realized this. There is far more beauty in the entirety of this experience than there is sadness in its closure. I did it. Hell, I flew 5,090 miles away from the only comfort zone I’ve ever had. Sure, I was content there. I also had no idea what I was missing.

The experiences I’ve had on the islands of Oahu and Hawaii are something I’m not sure I can quite articulate in words. The people I’ve met, the stories I’ve heard, the connections I’ve made with people from all over the globe. The days spent traveling, conquering fears, reaching new heights, assimilating into a lifestyle that I consider to be polar opposite than that of my own. I lived as hard as I possibly could, gaining perspectives on life that I promise to cherish forever. The significance of my time here is not lost through the impending change that awaits me. In fact, these past four months will continuously enrich me as a human for years to come. Next adventure.

Shoots,

Devin Fiona.

 

 

 

 

 

For Paris.

As cowards, you can do a hell of a lot of damage. You can create chaos, you can terrorize the minds of innocent people, you can instill fear into entire communities. You can threaten lifestyles, cause people to second guess whether they want to celebrate in large groups or participate in events that make them happy. You can target values, religions, emotions. You can try to eradicate the very aspects of our society that you will never have the privilege of knowing. You can be violent. You can force people to feel pain, to watch helplessly as another person’s blood is shed on the very streets they call home. You can slaughter. You can ruthlessly rip a human life away from their family. You even have the power to remove them from this world. You can pull triggers, you can cause explosions.

But you can’t win.

You will never have the ability to kill what it is that you loathe so much.Your ears will never deafen to the distant sound of children’s laughter nor will your eyes go blind to the sight of a warm embrace between two old friends. That pain you are capable of inflicting? That pain is miniscule in comparison to the outpouring of love that we are capable of expressing.  You can’t kill that resilience. You can’t kill the courage inside of a firefighter, willing to run into a burning tower to save people he has never even met before. You’ll never have the strength of a person willing to, despite unknown danger, create a make-shift tourniquet to stop the bleeding from a stranger’s body. You can’t kill the human spirit. The power of such spirit pushing people to overcome incredible tragedy. You can’t kill our ability to thrive against all odds. You can’t kill the love nations worth of people have inside of their hearts. You can’t kill the deep sense of responsibility we have to protect one another.

As cowards, you can do a hell of a lot of damage.
As humanity, we will always rebuild, radiating enough light to erase any and all damage you’ve done.

My thoughts are with you Paris, love will always win. 

Drift

“Conquerors come and go but the ocean remains mother only to her children…she adopts anyone who loves her.”

The ocean has always captivated my soul in ways nothing else can. The ocean calms, excites, provokes, challenges, terrifies, enlightens, embraces and destroys. But above all else, the ocean loves. She loves with no sense of guilt or hesitation, only requiring absolute vulnerability from her visitors. All sense of self is to be left on the shore line, strip yourself down to the core with the removal of each piece of clothing. The sand does not judge the worn soles of your shoes nor does the sky question the paths of your journey. Let your mind be as open as her arms, as free as her waves.

She cleanses. She heals.

And she remains, patiently waiting for your return.