Smog

When I was 15 years old something really interesting happened. I sat at the end of the kitchen table as my parents struggled to find the words to voice their emotions and concerns towards me. " We don't know what to do with you." were the words that echoed through my head and down my spine causing chills that forced me to squirm in my seat.

Oh how massive is the burden of not fitting into the world we were born to live in. My confidence so fragile as I grew into what I did not know. Looking to my parents for potential direction and being redirected to Jesus in any and every way. Praying habitually, nightly before bed, asking Jesus for answers to the questions I should have been asking myself. People always affirmed a confidence in me. At the time they spoke of it, I didn't feel familiar with it but I do think it made it easier to grow into. I do feel confident in myself as a human, as I feel everyone should. I am this skin, I am this body, I am this mind, soul, and being. No matter who I am, I am, and that should be enough. That is enough for me, and that is enough for those who I love. I strive more everyday to hold no expectations towards those people. They owe me nothing, it is I who choose to be appreciative of their existence and that makes it up to me to act on that intention if I want them to be aware of my appreciation of them.

It hurts to be different from your family if your differences are not celebrated. It is confusing to think differently and have those thoughts rejected. It was not my intention to have different values and principles than those who brought me into this world. None-the-less I grew to become very different and distant from the very people who made my life experience possible. Throughout my years of displacement and cloudiness, and travels, I wish I'd known my value. I wish I'd known my contribution. Being different becomes minimal when notice and focus is put on the opportunities and contributions possible based on said differences.

I left home young. Travelling the country looking for anything that seemed like home. Searching for all the things that seemed out of reach, convinced everything is closer than it seems. I still think that. I don't believe that any time spent is really time wasted, but I feel as though I might have done more with my time if I'd been more aware of my purpose/contribution. I spent years alone, completely intertwined in my thoughts of the future and past, present; how they correspond, interact, and succeed each other. I learned to understand that my inadequacy in someone else's life has no impact on my adequacy as a human, as a female, but most importantly, as myself in my own life. There are an infinite amount of opportunities available to me. So many options. I started looking more to the law of attraction as a sign of tunage in my life.

Life is crazy. we learn in so many different ways set somehow still seem to find relativity between one another. I'm not the only person in the world that has grown to have and love a family outside their own. Sometimes it is the times of being alone that really make you grateful for the relationships you have. Sometimes it is the intensity of the loneliness you will perhaps always remember that will make you forever grateful for the love that currently resides. We can't look back on what we've done and be remorseful; its devastating and not fair to do. The truth of the matter is that we did what made sense in that moment and however it looks now is not the same, because our lives are not the same. We change, and the things we do change, and the most important thing to focus on (in my perspective) is the evolving as a whole. As we evolve we become better, and we become more. We gain a higher understanding of ourselves and our capabilities and in exchange for the painful, ego-bruising learning, we live a more fulfilling and more satisfying life.

Photos by Danielle Nicol

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