Write Until...

Today I told someone: I've been trying to write something, but I keep deleting it, because I haven't fully processed it. I can just stop time and think about it forever, so one post doesn't seem sufficient.

This person very eloquently said, "So don't just write one post, write until you write what you feel you have to write."

And suddenly, the pressure to write everything that I feel in a certain amount of sentences has dissolved. And just like that, I am inspired. I am inspired to write to my heart's content, the way I used to before anyone ever read anything I wrote, where I would fill entire journals with my thoughts and emotions in one sitting.

I've missed writing this way, because it feels as if those were my truest days; before I learned rhetoric, or fully understood my prowess as a writer.

And it's because of this that I have become obsessed with the idea of getting back to how I was. Now I understand how incorrect this mentality is, as I shouldn't be trying to get back to the past, but focus on who I am now, as a writer, an intellectual, and an individual.

And focusing on who I am now, I am proud and honored to be Saber of the Year, for it is now that I understand that this has been my best year.

I started senior year hell bent to make it better than the last, to make sure I began strong, kept my grades up, and chose the college of my dreams, which for years was Syracuse, but at the time looked more like an ominous cloud of ideas seven years in the making. 

I didn't know what my future held, but was determined to find out.

So I embarked on a journey, of self-discovery and enlightenment, in search of who I was, what I wanted to do with my life, where I would be in a few years' time.

I fell in love with the thrill of profound thinking, finally understood the difference between school and education, and began to doubt everything I had always taken for granted.

And as society and others told me that I began to know more and become smarter, as my GPA and grades rose, I found that I knew less and less. I was struck with all of these questions, about my identity, the meaning of life and truth.

Nothing seemed certain, and I began to doubt everything and everyone, even myself.

I was constantly questions like, "How can I become a politician without becoming a part of the problem?"

This year was the first time I have learned for myself, not just for the sake of it, and read because I wanted to, not because it was assigned.

And as I realized this, I asked myself, all of these years, is it possible that I have been obedient instead of educated?

I began to recognize my own biases, and understand that I will, to an extent, always be ignorant to something.

But even though this thought scared me, it doesn't anymore. And maybe it will at different times in my life, when I feel as if there's no hope, or I once again don't know what my future will hold.

The truth is, for my entire life, I seem to have had my future planned out completely, to the point where change was terrifying and avoided, even if was inevitable. But now I have no definite plans. As an almost high school graduate, who is soon to step onto the campus of Bay Path College, I no longer strive for the acquisition of specific goals, but for inspiration, for enlightenment, for open-mindedness.

I want to study law not to be a lawyer, but to understand the structure and language of laws that oppress and unite the public, so then change the fabric of laws in order to empower the public instead of chain them.

I want to learn languages such as Portuguese, Mandarin, French, and Italian, because someone once told me the only way to learn about other cultures and become ethnically and racially conscious is to immerse yourself into their languages, and because studying Spanish as a Latina has made me realize how individual, expansive, and beautiful a language can be.

I want to write a novel not only this summer, but at any time I want because of the books that have changed my life, books like The Bell Jar, Catcher in the Rye, The Awakening. The books that are almost haunting, but so enveloping that they can never be forgotten, and have inspired me to dream of the day my words live forever.

It used to anger me when people would tell me that they never saw me being the things I wanted to pursue; they never saw me as a politician, for example, not because they doubted my ability, but because they were afraid my essence and endless amount of dreams would be stifled.

Because I 'm a free sprit, a person who has never envisioned herself having one path, who has always thought that path should continuously evolve, but has attempted to fit into numerous of them for the sake of following the norm.

But now I understand I was never supposed to be just a writer, just a lawyer, or just a politician. I am an intellectual. I am an individual, meant to challenge the norms and change the world, in whichever way I see fit.

Because I, as well as my 28 other peers on the verge of independence and self-discovery, am destined for greatness.