Christmas Rocks--Yay Santa.

Well, as I said in the previous post, I've been babysitting my cousin for the past two days. We just sent Santa Claus an "email" it was pretty awesome how there was an instant response. Nuri said to me, "You know, I think I believe in Santa now, he knew my age, so he must know I'm tall and everything!"

He gave me another Christmas gift too.

"Next year, I'm not going to ask for any shooting games. They're violent and it's bad. And when my children have Christmas, I'm going to make sure they never get shooting games for Christmas."-- Nuri

:D ADORABLE

The Future is in His Eyes

I am an only child, but I never have been a lonely child. I had the good fortune of growing up with a cousin who was a year younger than I was. I was his boss and he was my demon. We were as thick as thieves, as the saying goes. Of course, I was the mastermind, and he was the lackey. Whenever we did something wrong, I ran as quickly as I could to hide. My cousin always stood there and took the brunt of the blame. We fought each other like hell, but in retrospect, I know that it was only because we loved each other so much.

I feel terribly sorry for my younger cousin. I've been babysitting him for the past two days, but he's eight. And something about being twice his age makes me lose my patience with his antics. I can't understand his inner intrigues. It's hard for me to understand him most of the time because he speaks so sweetly and softly.

I can hear him, even now, as I write this blog post, gallivanting in the small space of the hallway, trying to devise a game for himself. Every couple of minutes he comes in and dances and asks me to put something on the internet, but I cannot. I haven't the time. I'm rewriting an essay that I bombed with a capital B, so I've been very short and impatient with him.

I'm letting him down, just like every psuedo-adult in his life. He's got no one to share his little inner turmoils and triumphs. I can't be that person for him. I don't understand what he wants the way I used to when I took care of him and I was ten and he was two, or when I was twelve and he was four. Something about those ages before fourteen made being those ages mutually intelligible. I was always the nice one to him back then. Now I seem like the bitch in comparison to my other cousin who used to play too roughly.

I play too roughly with his self-esteem. I'm sorry.

Give Thanks

For all the craziness that is my life...I suppose I wouldn't miss it for the world.

So, what's going on with me?

Between my family issues that seem to be a symptom of our general issues but also look like they're going to blow up at my graduation if I just let loose.

I'm not observing Thanksgiving today. Unless you call watching the Thanksgiving parade while secretly seething and not having any food to eat celebrating. Pretty freaking awesome. But luckily, I have my work to fulfill me. lolz. That means that I'm blasting Christmas music on my iMac and writing college supplements (I've already finished three!), and then rewriting the essay I bombed, and then starting another essay which I don't plan on bombing.

All in all, it's going to be a good day.

say a prayer

To my cousin. Keep your head up.

i could have been dead
sleeping in my grave
but God blessed me
to see another day

even when i did wrong he was still there
I'm so glad that God still hear a sinners prayer
I'm so glad that God still hear a sinners prayer
now let me pray let me pray
- A Sinner's Prayer, Deitrick Haddon

My grandmother, the blessed saint that she is, just received a letter from a cousin of mine. She gave me the letter to read, and I, being my sanctimonious sarcastic self, wondered what would be the purpose of a letter that told me what I already knew. That is, my cousin is in jail. But upon reading it, I felt humbled by my cousin's stoicism and strength in the face of 5-10 years of jail, of which I did not realize he had been convicted. He said that he has renewed his faith in God and that sometimes God puts obstacles in our way to test whether we will overcome adversity or let it overcome us.

I wept.

How could I, who had been so fortunate in life, be so immune to God's calls? If anything, God has helped me more than anyone in my life, for it was He who put those who helped me into my life. He ordained those things, He gave me the talents that I have been blessed with it, and the intelligence to use them. I have been so lucky: I could have been born deformed, I could have been killed in the violence that occurred around my neighborhood. I could have ended up not going into Prep, and not getting into as great a school as I attend. And I, like so many, assume that I'm entitled to these things. But I'm not. I could have been like so many girls I see: unhappy, unhealthy, possibly on my way to pregnancy or reckless behavior that could have killed me or my spirit.

But here I am. Here I am, despite the many things that could have happened to me. I've been so blessed to have family that supports me however they can. I've been so blessed to have friends that for the most part, are some of the best friends a girl could ask for.

So here I am, giving thanks for this day and all the days before it. I will try to do my best to continue living with the joy that I have within me. I will do my best to excel, because I realize that I am a part of the hope for America. That sounds self-centered, but it really isn't, because it means that it's up to me to continue paving the way, to prove to kids that you can go from living in the ghetto to going to a conservatory or whatever it is that you want.

Here I am, rededicating my life to God, even on the Internet.

Here I am, saying a prayer for you.

Nameless Wonder

This evening, as I walked towards the dry cleaners to pick up a fantastic sweater that my grandma sent there yesterday, I watched a beautiful sunset. I was so mesmerized by the in-between shades of orange and red that I almost forgot how to move my feet towards the dry cleaners. And in retrospect, I am certain that my new year began then, when I watched the glorious dying sun gracefully sink into the sky like a dancer in her final movements, sinking into the floorboards. My year has sunk gracefully, but it has certainly sunk. I think I can say with full authority and the backing of the 11th grade that December starts with a "d" for a reason. 

December was like death, depression, deprecatory statements, deep-down delving into the soul and finding nothing but despair, and also like the digressions that riddled my papers. 

November was not much better, more like nothing. There was the poetry workshop, but we had like 2 people besides the editors. Though it felt more cozy, I had also felt like I had failed to get the interest of those who we needed to come. Dance party was the next day, and that was a shitload of nothing. God, I almost want to cry with the shame. What was so funny was that everyone was asking me how it went the next day, and I bitterly laughed, because it seemed to me that for all the people that asked, a few of them could have come. November was a good month to study T.S. Eliot. Life was certainly a wasteland at the time. By the by, T.S. Eliot is amazing, as is W.H. Auden: modern men for the modern times, I think. Anyway, since I seem to be taking a month-by-month study of the year going backwards, I'll continue on with October. 

October was overly pumped-up, although I admit I was organized. It was perhaps one of the best months in terms of productivity. I felt like I was accomplishing things. UMOJA was going well, we were meeting, I had stuff on the calendar that I was excited about, it was awesome. Beaver was going well, Emily and I were so on top of things that it was ridiculous. That was awesome. 

September was sort of the anticipation month, a trial period of sorts, to check if we were able to even get preliminary things done. We were. But by December we were in over our heads. Ach. 

August was family drama month. We had reunion, which is always fun, but then July's family get-together seemed to have added extra stress on my already strained relationships. That was interesting. Enough said. 

July was spent researching the family and reconnecting the family in ways that inspired others. Although summer brought great intentions, fall showed the flowers for what they were– the spontaneous sprigs that always come during summer, which always fade by fall.

June was actually fun. I got paid to babysit little children, or so it seemed. And that was my first job. So I felt cool/toolish because I was a little old for first job syndrome. But ach, whatchu gonna do when life happens like that? 

I refuse to recall sophomore year. I don't really have that much to recall. 

Having gone over my year in such detail, I think that I am prepared to expound on my new plans for this year:

I resolve to:

1. Be more proactive about my own life. I've spent too long being in the backseat. And now suddenly, I have to be the driver, but literally and figuratively. (By the way, I do plan on getting my driver's permit on February 21st, thank you very much.)

2. Take pride in my own achievements. I underestimate myself, and I think it gets in the way of my own talents. 

3. Make organization a life choice, not a resolution. Yup. That one seems a little self-explanatory.

4. Make health a life choice, not just a by the way. I realized this year that not sleeping is not helping my work. I refuse to let my schoolwork or my procrastination get in the way of the sleep that I must have to function like a normal person. The earlier the better. 

5. Keep God first. It sounds lame, even to my Christian friends, but without him, I am truly nothing. I think that is why I haven't really been able to write the way I used to. Now God is a choice that I have to make, and keep making. That's the hardest part of all. It was easy to choose God when my mom would drive me to church. It was easy to choose God when everyone around me was doing the same thing. But now, it's hard when I am trying to pick between God and sleep. I pick sleep so often that I think God must be pretty pissed. But see, if I just decided that I would go to bed early enough to do what I have to do on Sunday, then this problem would be solved. 

6. Make my work a priority. Not just schoolwork, but my poetry and writing skills. I'm used to feeding the fires of my passion almost daily, but with so much work at school, I allow myself to be overwhelmed and allow the cost to be my own personal fire. I can't do that anymore. 

7. Be a member of my family. I've been hiding from my immediate family for so long that I feel like when I do see them, it's a shock and I greet them with the disconnected hellos of a stranger. 

8. Get a grip. 

That's enough for now I think. While I certainly could have posted much more often than I have been, I feel that this hugely verbose post should be enough for most of the readers out there for at least a short amount of time.

Tired. Bed time. It's time to start those resolutions...