and you know it's not yours but for now it's okay

it's hard to feel too horrible about your life when you wake up to the view i have. it's like living in a giant park, with just enough urbanity to remind you that you are still within the confines of a highly civilized and artificial space, safe in the knowledge that all you feel comfortable with is right there, just hidden.

as it stands, i'm finding it very hard to reconcile myself to the fact that another academic year is drawing to a close, and i'm already nearing the very end of my life as a student. these past 9 months have started off heading down one set of tracks and along the way, the switching became entirely too confusing for me to handle, and now i'm somewhere i didn't really expect, but i'm not altogether dissatisfied. i do feel very surprised by many things.

for one, i'm very surprised by how people can care about what i feel or think, just because i feel like such a mess and really not worth their time. i'm so thankful to the few people who have stood by me in one way or another, people who somehow many to see the good in me despite my frequent inability to. in some ways, i know less about myself than many of my real friends, and my interaction with them familiarizes me both with them and myself as a person.

to some degree, i'm surprised by my own resilience. it might seem very much if i told you exactly what everything was, but i think emotionally, i've taken more hits this past few months than i have ever had. yet, somehow, i'm still standing, and perhaps in a mix of both stupidity and courage, i continue to subject myself to a lot of the same turmoils that have been plaguing me. all the self-doubt and disappointment, all the uncertainty and frustration that seems to have characterized my third year, they are all still here and i'm still trying to handle them.

but most of all, i'm surprised by how profoundly fragile i can be as well. it takes so little to make me fall apart, and i find myself reaching out to people in ways i haven't considered in a long time. perhaps out of all this, what i gained is the ability to trust. i've opened up to people more this year, and my honesty has earned both comfort and contempt in return. but as a whole, i think the best way to accept what i feel is to be forthcoming about it, and in this respect, i hope to do better.

i'm feeling okay. it took me quite some time to realize that, but when you start to cherish what you have, you start realizing you have a lot, and you can smile.