on blossoming

I must admit, without shame but rather with relief at this final liberation, that I have always been jealous. No, not particularly of the Barbie doll girls, glamorized drug dealing, partying, or sexing it up, but of people who know what they want and, by all means, get it.

No, not in the sense that they know what they want to eat for lunch or what they want to purchase on their next shopping crusade.

I am actually green with envy of people that know what they want to be when they "grow up" - their profession, their life's culminating apex stretched out over forty, fifty years. People that have laid eyes on, pinpointed, cherished, and are determined to grasp a tight hold upon their life's purpose. I am so jealous of their absolute and emphatic KNOWING - they made a decision already, pick and chose, came out satisfied with self.

I, on the other hand, have never been able to picture myself in a serious profession ten years from now. I have passively fluctuated between a countlessly long enumeration of future job possibilities. I wish I was more assertive. I realized recently that I have always been in rather pathetic denial about the fact that I am utterly afraid of commitment. Be it commitment in taking on a job, investing in a relationship, spending more than 10 dollars on anything, engaging in daily after school activities for more than 45 minutes - I shrivel into a wad of cowardice at the sight of commitment. At times I know this is because I do not have enough grounded faith in my own potential; I usually, with a compass of particularly short length, inscribe myself within a circle of likewise short radius, dictating my dead ends. I tell myself that if I try to venture beyond the edge of the circle, into such unfamiliar territory, I will surely lose myself along the way.

But really, I think it's time to muster courage to battle what is not fear, but apathy and lazyness. Simply put, the acclivity leading off a cliff is not a dead end, but the avenue less traveled.

I have finally realized what I want to do with my life!

I would like to be a writer. I'm not quite sure what type - journalist, columnist, broadcast reporter, novelist, translator, etymologist, the list goes on, only to name a few. I just want to mold and glue and shape and twist and paint and create with words - a blank canvas to be filled with multitudes and waves of language. Aside from basic emotions as love and pain, language bridges a universal gap of expression (given the assumption that nothing is carelessly or masterfully lost in translation). It interweaves and overlaps entity with entity. I can't imagine investing my life's purpose in anything aside from using language to make what sparse impact I may upon my bubble of a universe.

Let me not turn back upon my resolution in fear of failure or judgment or slight (but in my head, intensely magnified) obstacles. Let everything I work so hard for now, be of ultimate contribution to what I one day see myself as. For once, no backing out or hesitations allowable, you shaken little girl.