Day 6: Adulting

Adulting. Something you will not understand until you actually have to be an adult and do things on your own. When you have to take the reigns on your own life even if you do not know where or how to lead. Going in with an optimistic approach of independence, adulting is not at all what I imagined. I am not sure there is even a comparable situation that will assist you into the adult world unless you have absolutely had to rely on yourself to get things done. I know as a military child you tend to see life in a different manner and for the most part your childhood goes rather quickly as we lean more on ourselves to get the job done. Though even being a military child I had my moments of struggle, no one is prepared for what life is thrown at you. It is true that you live one day at a time. I find that it is just best to remind yourself that each day will have their struggles and rewards but no yesterdays are the same as our tomorrows.

There has been many times where I had wish my mom was around to help me make decisions when I am at the grocery store. Or be given some thought out advice on how to overcome moments of confusion with my dad. But through it all, you tend to learn a lot about yourself when you do not have any influence coming from someone else. I found my love for drinking hot tea in particular peach hot tea. I have learned that I cannot buy milk for one because I will let it spoil. I am embarrassed to say this but I had half a gallon of milk sitting in the inside of our fridge for a whole semester without opening. I was afraid to open it and throw out the contents out so I threw out the whole thing in the trash bin. Out of sight, out of mind, right? In the basement was the laundry room and in there there was the old washing machines that I had forgotten how to use so I had to relearn the technique to use those machines. I found out that I am not strong enough physically to bring all of my dirty laundry at once so I had to separate my loads in a bag and take it down to the basement in rotations. Also learned that doing laundry on a weekday was not going to cut it for me and if I were to do my laundry at an earlier time on the weekend I was able to get all my loads done by the afternoon. Some of the things I have learned while adulting, it is all about the little things my friends. 

I normally do not get sick but when I do get sick then its like a piece of hell breaks open. Towards the end of my second semester of college I was hit hard with the allergies. First came the headaches which I thought could be treated with a pain killer pill only the headache persisted into the next day. This is how migraine and I first met, it was not a welcoming experience to say the least. The following day I was okay but the day after that I woke up with a sore throat and my body had given up on me. If my body could speak it would of probably told me, "Girl you are on your own for this one!". I had asked my mentor if she had any cough syrup or if she could take me to the pharmacy to get me some but I did not receive a reply back until I had woken up that morning of the sore throat. Everyone was apparently busy so there was only one thing I could do and that was to walk to the nearest pharmacy myself. Using every remaining amount of energy left I began my walk to the pharmacy. Perhaps this was the moment that I had hit adulthood. When you are left to take care of yourself and be responsible for taking your medicine and taking yourself to the doctors when needed. What a fun week that was for me!

Overall, adulting is going to push your buttons. With time though, you learn to adapt yourself to adulthood... at least that is what I am hoping adulting leads to. I am still adjusting even some of my adult friends are still adulting. So do not feel bad if you are getting to the age that you have to be an adult and all you experience is a lot of confusion and loss of control. That means you are doing it right! Keep up the good work! You will soon find your momentum! Things will soon start making sense, it is the getting started part that brings in the toughest challenges.

How is adulting coming along for you?

xx Chavelita

High Standards: Bad or Good?

For as long as I can remember I have had high standards. I would always pick the boxes with the neatest packaging at the grocery store. Pay the extra dollar for a water bottle than to use a local water fountain. Buy clothes by the brand at times because I am familiar with the quality of the clothes and for the fact that the clothes fit my petite body that has always been a struggle of mine growing up. Though these standards mentioned are just to the material items, when these standards apply to people the real difficulty begins to peer out to the open. I have learned to stop being picky with the types of food I have been given but I find to be extremely picky with the people I have encountered over the years. Throughout time I have dropped so many friends for the simple fact that they no longer fit in my life. They no longer became effortless to talk to and with the constant feeling that I was being judged or becoming an interruption, the sensation was not worth the time. For the low tolerance I have for the negativity and drama that comes out of the mouths of others if I wanted to hear that I might as well turn on the television. Drama that half of the time I did not recognize the names of the people involved and needed someone else to explain the whole situation. I was not built for gossip and jokingly stating that I live under a rock, I honestly do live under a rock.

Coming back to having high standards, separation from most people has greatly affected me. To have a handful of individuals I am comfortable to speak my mind with and completely know that I can take them into account, does not leave a lot of room for new people to come into my life. But this is not a reason for why I do not want to meet new people, in fact I do want to meet new people but I just take so long to trust in people that by the time I feel ready they are no longer there. I am constantly missing my window of opportunity and I have been beating myself up because of that. I have been on dates, I have not been entirely unknown to what it is to meet a guy and share a few words with but then I have this gut feeling. The feeling that he is not the one so I slowly back out until the point where I find myself avoiding and or not talking to him. When I imagine a relationship, I imagine someone who is there to stay not someone that can simply have a great time and be dumped the next week or so because they got bored of me. I will be honest, I am high maintenance because of my emotions and how sensitive I am that may cause people to not tolerate me but because of my strong bond to those emotions I find that to be one of my greatest strengths and one of my greatest downfalls. For the way my emotions move me, I can provide so much love and support but this also depends if he is able to handle the amount.

The other day I was with a pair of friends heading to a pizza place for lunch and somehow the conversation of what the ideal guy came up. I remember I stated that I had weird taste in men and I already knew that I was going to be asked to elaborate as to what I meant as weird. My weird taste of men consists of someone who has a passion for all the things they hold valuable to whether it is to serve the country or be deeply wrapped into the major of their choice, have a great sense of humor but is able to tell where the boundaries are, supportive and pushes me to do my best, and sensitive that he is not afraid to tell me what is on his mind regardless of what masculine social norms have to say. He does not have to look like a Ken Barbie doll but I do want him to be able to completely trust in me as I would completely trust in him. I want him to be successful, he does not have to be successful when I meet him but I would want him to get there. I know that I do have a lot to offer, I know how much baggage I am carrying even if I do not show it, I know how extremely private I can be to those who do not know me, but I do not need someone to complete me. I simply want someone to join me on this journey of life so I have someone to share memories and moments with.

Do you think having high standards is a bad or good thing to have?

xx Chavelita

Teen pregnancy

For the past weeks or so in my IB Spanish class my classmates and I have been describing pictures that forces us to give us an argumentative yet personal opinion of what we think the picture means to us and what the message is trying to get to across to those who view the picture. When it was my turn to describe the picture, keep in mind that I do not have the ability to choose the picture I wanted to discuss about, I was nervous that I was going to get a picture that I had no argumentative statement to discuss. Yet the picture that I was given was teen pregnancy. Yes teen pregnancy and to be truthful with you all some of the things I said will be shocking because it did shock at me. (Alright so I may add some more ideas while writing but the main ideas done in my interview are highlighted into the following statement)

What do you see in this picture?
I see that there is a teenager mother holding her baby of maybe three years of age. Instead of looking terrified though, she appears to be happy that she has her baby boy in her arms like she does not regret making this decision of having a child at such a young age perhaps at 15. In fact by looking at her clothes she may be from the Middle East and depending how the country view teen pregnancy it could actually be seen a normality rather than something that should be shunned about which is done here in the United States. She seems confident at what she has placed in her life in front of her. With technology advancing and the world moving at such a rapid pace, society has been creating teen pregnancy into a controversial topic of discussion. In comparison with the generation of before, maybe having children at a young age did not seem like a big deal because people would get married at a young age and with the lack of technology, lets face it people were more sane. Now in today's generation teen pregnancy among adolescents and soon all the reputation, all trust, all relationships or friendships made by other people are lost. Which seems unfair because they do not even have a chance to prove themselves. So they got pregnant at a young age, but does that make them irresponsible parents or parent? Before people start to give the cold shoulder at least give them a chance to prove of what potential acts that could be done within the nine months of pregnancy and the many years after that. I am not saying that teens should get pregnant but if they do, it does not necessarily mean that their lives are over. I wish that adolescents would at least wait before having children to save themselves from spending sleepless nights taking care of the child to emergency visits to the hospital in case the child gets sick. Sacrifices will have to be made to make the outcomes as successful as they can be. Society gives teen pregnancy the idea that hell will break lose and from where I am standing the world has yet to burst into flames. Each baby is seen as a blessing no matter of the situation and if people were to be more open-minded of this situation teens will be more comfortable to speak about teen pregnancy. Female adolescents will not have to live in fear of acceptance from their peers, family, or society because I can bet you that all these girls want is to feel safe and welcomed and supported throughout the pregnancy. They want to be able to see their parents eyes without having this feeling that they will not look back. Parents you have the right to feel disappointed or in desperation to know of the full details that caused the pregnancy but before you blow up at your children give them a hug first and tell them that you are there for them. I know it sounds contradicting but I find it best that everything settles down first before the questions rise into action.

Teen pregnancy is a controversial topic to speak about and I totally understand if you have a completely different outlook on this matter. I am not a mother only a seventeen year old girl but I believe that once when you are open minded, you are able to view many perspectives in the discussion.

What do you see in the picture?

This is the actual picture I had to describe

xx Chavelita

Sponge

Many times you hear that you should learn to forgive your peers so that you have a clear conscience to move forward in life or that forgiving is the mature thing to do when getting into arguments among others. Yet, how many times have you heard that you should learn to forgive yourself? Of course, our friends will commit mistakes, even our parents do and there are times that we find space in our hearts to forgive them but what about space to forgive yourself for the mistakes you have made? We are not perfect or at least I have yet to see a perfect person but we tend to forget a lot about ourselves and about how we feel in situations.

I have to admit, we are like sponges. There are times that we soak up to the tiniest bit of information regardless of the topic and there are times that stains appear on us, usually these consist of memories. The substance could either be historical context from English class or it could range to the latest gossip that runs around the halls at school. Then there are the stains that are really difficult to remove. The constant need to rinse out the sponge and to scrub only to have the stain still faintly there. If you are wondering where I am going with this metaphorical talk, this is it, this is how we handle information. What we soak up can be temporarily beneficial for us that can later be applied when the right time comes and the stains is the information that sticks with us. Not all stains are bad but they linger more. With information comes with emotion attached and these memories are more potent because you are able to relate to them at a personal level.

Forgiving yourself just like you forgive others does not happen overnight. As we get older I feel it gets harder to forgive since we hold on to memories a bit more tightly than we should and we can be a bit hardheaded to look past the actions that happened during the transition. All of the sudden you feel this confusion eating you up to the point of having sleepless nights. You attempt to connect the dots as to what is going on and before you know it you are left thinking who's fault is it and what should be done in order to solve this problem, and all this shibang. Here I am to tell you that you first need to step away from the picture. Let your brain breathe and take a moment to collect itself. Maybe before you ask advice from someone, write down what you know happened or any details that you can remember then read it back to yourself. Is everything accurate from what you recall? A mistake that I always find myself doing is making irrational decisions based on the current mood I am in. Like when I am bothered by something and I have the tendency to straightforwardly tell my friends my thoughts on the certain matter. There was even times that I would pass incorrect or misheard information so it is important that you know what you are talking about before your venting process because something else. But throughout the day I find my sanity back and I look back to my messages and I cringe because of how irrational I reacted for something that did not even last a day of my emotions.

Now I am not telling you that what happens in arguments is your fault (well it could be the case sometimes) but I am saying that you are responsible for yourself. If you feel like something is troubling you and you are not quite sure what it is I like to think that it is because you are going through a change. Changes within ourselves are great, they are weird but necessary to reevaluate ourselves and update our self-perception of the world, ourselves and others. So coming back to forgiving yourself, you should not hold yourself accountable for every little thing that went wrong especially if they were not done on purpose. Forgive yourself in a way that you no longer feel like a weight of an elephant is on your chest or shoulders. Things you can forgive yourself are things like...

• not being yourself
• crying yourself to sleep
• talking gossip
• taking things for granted or people for granted
• for telling yourself all the cannots instead of all the can dos
• not getting enough sleep 
• for skipping meals or feeling self-concious of your body

I joke around a lot with my friends, telling them that you do not need a bully because you are your own bully and to a certain extent this is true. Do not belittle yourself for the way you do things, you should stick to doing things your own way in a form that you feel comfortable in expressing yourself. 

Forgive yourself and watch how things will start to slowly fall into place. Do not hold grudges or anything that will keep you from being the amazing person you are. 

xx Chavelita