Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

 A Work in Progress

I am selfish. I bash people who are happy because I myself am not happy. I am great at making excuses. I am stubborn. I would rather fall on my face ten thousand times if continuous failure means I can eventually accomplish something on my own. I can not accept advice but freely give it. I have the fuel to fire myself to do anything, but sometimes I would rather just give up. I have poor judgment. I am naive and gullible. I am overly judgmental. I work better alone and I am scared to death this is how I will be for the rest of my life.

My identity can not be summed up in a long and involved sentence. I am branching off from being “My Mother’s Daughter,” and finally cutting myself from the umbilical cord. It is only until I moved away from home that I feel as if I am standing on my own two feet, stumbling just as a toddler learning to walk for the first time. My identity is shaky and extremely unclear.

Every day of my life is a battle, against myself or with others. An important figure in my life recently informed me that I am a liar. The shocking truth has left me dumbfounded and outraged. I never looked in the mirror and saw this person he claimed was there. Of course I recognize I do lie, I think everyone does at one point or another, but “liar” has such a harsh tone. I am unsure if I am more disappointed in myself for allowing this side of me to dominate a relationship, or more mad that what he said could be true.

What if the way this person depicted me is the truth? Then what? I am stuck with me and what if this person I am stuck with is someone I am terrified of being? What happens when you become the thing you hate most? After all, as far as I am concerned, you are not born anything, you make yourself into what you are today and in the following days. Although it may be common place in a religion I sometimes identify with to believe all people are born sinners, I myself have never followed that way of thinking. I am who I am because of me, not because of someone who precedes me.

Thankfully, I have not become the person he sees just yet. Although I have done many things I am ashamed of and wish I could take back, I still have a good soul and am worth fighting for in the end. The battle is mine. The inner struggle is harder than any exterior struggle.

In high school I used to believe in God without any question, want a perfect marriage with a white picket fence and a house full of children. I wanted a career, a beautiful home, and enough money to live comfortably in a gated community. I wanted the American Dream. Then I met new people, moved to a new location and things changed in my life. I got slapped in the face by reality. I believe what leaves me feeling bitter is not that the dream is impossible, but that these things are happening around me, to people from my high school, to older friends, and I am still stuck, idle. As time goes on and seeing peers already starting families, I feel like I am behind. I thought getting an education and waiting until I am older was the “correct” thing to do, but why am I the unhappy one and they are celebrating? I am angry that these changes happened in my life to make me no longer believe in that dream. It is like a child being told Santa Claus is not real. Ignorance is bliss.

I sound like I have lived seventy years and have reason to be this cynical. The truth is, my life as a whole has not been much more dramatic or hard than the average life of a nineteen year old. Things that have happened to me have changed me, sure, but the way I reacted was my fault. These happenings: getting rejected from “the” school, losing friends, watching friends die, saying goodbye to things I worked for for years, can’t be the only things to decide who I am. Although none of these things are easy to swallow, it is and was up to me to decide how I wanted to walk away from them. To toss my hands in the air and say “I give up” is the wrong way to go about things, but it is the way I have traveled thus far. A therapist once told me that no one can make you feel a certain way, you make yourself feel that way. I used to think she was taking the pills her coworkers would prescribe, but she has a point.

So I ask you, the reader, to consider these thoughts that I battle with in my mind daily: No one can force anything on you. No one can make you feel love or hatred, or any feeling in between. The decision on how you want to live your life is yours, however you intend to make it. However, remember there are other people out there besides yourself; remember every decision you make also makes a little ripple in the world. Do not be foolish. Do not allow yourself to be fooled. There are a lot of bad people out there and as I have been told by that important figure in my life, if you associate with them long enough, you become them.

I may just be a struggling college student with too much on her mind to allow the thoughts to be processed. I may have overwhelmed myself more than ever before. The mountain might be too steep. But I moved to Massachusetts to get away from problems and to move on with my life. And although I have come to realize location changes nothing and that it will take a lot more effort to get past the skeletons in my closet, I am learning. I am finally ready to accept that challenge. I may not be able to change my screw-ups, but maybe, hopefully, I will not make the same mistake again.

I do not know where I am going in life, or where I will even be at the end of the week. I do not know if staying here is the right thing to do or if running home with my tail between my legs is best. I do know however, I am tired of waiting for something to happen to me; it is now my turn to make whatever my life is going to be, happen.