How did you get here so quickly? 

How, in such a short amount of time, did you manage to worm your way into the crevasses of my life? 

Somehow you're in everything I do now. 

Did you mean to do this?

Did you mean to make yourself the first person I think of when I wake up?

Whether it's waking up under the weight of a blanket that makes me feel safer when you're gone...

Remembering how it felt to wake up to your arm around me.

Seeing the dinosaur you won for me that one night...

Remembering how you disappeared and called me right when I started missing you to tell me to find you.

Turning around to see if we're still in the call I fell asleep to...

Remembering how easily I'd slide into sleep with you near.

Opening the damn pill organizer you got for me...

Remembering how you remind me to take care of myself and the things I struggle to do. 

Putting on the onesie I wear to stay warm when I'm trying to figure out what to wear for the day... 

Remembering how you set up a heater for me so it would be easier for me to get out of bed.

How are you suddenly everywhere?

How did you manage to make each thing just another reminder of ways you care for me. 

Did you realize that would be how I started my day everyday? 

Just loved by you? 

Did you know it would make me remember to take my vitamins? Especially the vitamin C you swear by, even if you've gotten sick more than I have this year. 

Did you know it would make me remember to pack some healthier food for lunch because you might ask and I'd want you to eat well too. 

I put on my shoes and I still have that scar from the blister of walking around San Francisco with you. 

I get to work and pull out the heating pad that keeps me warm in an office where everyone else feels normal. 

Reaching down to press my hands against it when they get cold...

Remembering how you would warm them when you were here. 

There's more. There's so much. 

When I realize it. 

When I look back at it. 

It's terrifying. 

How deeply rooted you are around me when you're not even here. 

But I water those roots. 

I let them grow. 

Wild and foreign as they are...

They show me new things. 

Give me stable ground. 

I climb higher on them as they grow with me. 

They remind me of you. 

Your strong protection.

Your firm foundation. 

The way you push yourself 

and lift others up around you. 

They make me miss you. 

They make me miss the real thing. 

But I'll sit under this tree that you grew for me. 

Make my home in it. 

Until I can see you again. 

Bewildered is the word. But is it even the word?

Is there a word for this?
For something that feels like it's both tearing me apart
and wrapping me so tightly in its arms that nothing could ever divide me?

I feel like I'm caught in the waves of an ocean storm,
Tossed back and forth by unforgiving waves.
Overwhelmed by forces beyond my own strength.

And laughing with the wind.
Blissfully wrapping myself in the roiling waters,
Finding a peace I didn't know existed.

I'm caught in you.
Split on the edges of a hundred paradoxes.
Bound together by a strength I didn't know I could have.

I am so lost.
Tumbling through the water,
Closing my eyes to feel the waves break on my skin.
Opening them to a world I don't know.
And feeling like I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I feel full.
Bursting.
Barely holding it together.
Overflowing with everything you've ever given me.
I am Generosity.

But I am hungry.
Starving.
Craving more of you
Every day that I don't have you.
I am Greed.

For the first time, I'm afraid of dying.
Sure, I've been afraid of pain and loss.
But Life was a long day.
And Death was a sunset.

And yet...

To have even lived this long.

To just experience this. 

To experience you. 

To love you.

To be loved by you.

How could I complain about losing all of this?
When it means that I had you to lose?

I am yours.

To have. To lose.

I have wandered off the path that was beaten down for me
Here the brush is verdant and wild
I stumble through their reaching arms
Branches and burrs clutch and cling

Their hands batter and halt my step
Their fingers write on my flesh in black and blue
Their persistence consumes me
Their numbers confound me

and yet I love them. 

Green and alive
Shadowed and defiant
Unapologetic in survival

this is my crusade
to witness their existence
and attest to their glory.
I will carry their stories to the fire.

  God has been showing me just how much he is involved in my life. I realized at the end of the last year that as much as I believed, I didn't have my identity in Christ and there were parts of my life that I wasn't giving up to him. I had been having a really hard time for the year leading up to that and I so desperately wanted things to change and I wanted to be His completely. I prayed for God to radically change my life, and I prayed for him to open my eyes to the ways he was working in my life, as well as praying for specific areas of my life that I knew I needed Him to be in. And he gave me very clear answers. Answers about my romantic relationship, my family, and my school life and career. Currently, I am single, I probably have ADD, I'm closer to my family than I've ever been, and I'm still working on my identity but I'm not so worried about it anymore. God is giving me the ability to love again but to love from His ever flowing fountain, not from my own.

What can I say?

So much can change in a year

Most of these photos are actually from my good friend Michael Vo. I took mostly film shots that weekend, but there are a couple shots of mine that I'll mark.

I can't believe it's been a year since I left this place. It was a true cosmos amongst the chaos for me.

A small group of my home town friends decided to go beach camping together at a place called Camp Merryeland. People usually hear me saying that I hate the beach, sometimes I even trick myself into thinking that too. But what I actually hate, is the noise and crowded cacophony that comes with the vacationers that flock there. That, plus the constant awareness of beer cans and toxic trash embedded into the sand, the attacking seagulls.... you can see why people think I hate it. But I actually love the sea; I used to want to be a marine biologist. Though I was never a strong swimmer (or a swimmer at all) so I never actually got to spend much time in the water. There's something so enthralling life underwater, where flight loses it's meaning because everything is already flying.

Anyhow, being there was all so surreal to me, mostly because I usually never get to go to these types of outings because financials or protective parents were always in the way. A few of us arrived a day later than the others because of work, but lucky for us we missed out on all the chaos that ensued that night before. We arrived right after a huge storm passed through the camp, the heavy rain flooded the tents and the winds threatened to blow the tents away. By the time we got there the others had already set and cleaned everything up and gotten deep into the sixpacks and jungle juice. Most of them drank enough that night to have mellowed out in their party urges for the rest of the week haha.

We spent the days

I want to know why something is good, not because I want to analyze it. But because I want to be able to then use that information to recognize the beauty in other things. --0

I'm here to reopen the case of the effects and implications of negative knee-jerk reactions as it is applied to other people. Recently, I've developed the theory that many of these reactions often stem from developed biases and can plant a seed of prejudice slowly creep into our beliefs and actions. While typical and generally benign, I think it can often choke our ability to reach our full potential for love and respect and thus induce significant losses of respect that would be otherwise unwarranted.  In the process, I'll have to define an understanding of the negativity that term "ew" here, represents, as well as discuss the distinctions between human and natural knee jerk reactions.

In this specific instance, the situation is of thinking "ew" as an internal reaction to a girl wearing too much makeup because it could be a sign of little confidence.

The more I think about it. The more I realize that succumbing and giving into mental health struggles such as depression and anxiety and even my ADHD symptoms, is a luxury. As well as a privilege.

That is not to say that it is not right for us to do so, but only that indulgence can do us no good.