Sunday, June 20, 2010

Dear This Question,

"If you could go back in time and change anything, would you?"

Ya know what? People usually say (in response to this question), "No, all my decisions have lead me to who I am now, the good and the bad are all a part of me." And that's all fine and dandy for those people; I am happy that you're in a great place in your life. But there are really some things I wish I hadn't done, and there are ESPECIALLY things I wish I had done better. And I can repent, and have repented, which is AMAZING, but my life would be easier if I had made better decisions in the first place.

So, to answer this question, yeah. I would. I would go back in time and slap myself in the face and say, "Realize in your now what you are doing to me in my now! Listen to your parents! They are so unbelievably right! Follow through with something for once in your life!" I'm not okay with a lot of who I am today; it would be a complacent lie to say otherwise. Trying to fix what I've broken is difficult. It's already been hard dealing with decisions, or lack of decisions, I made for most of my academic life. There are habits I've created that, in my mind, are impossible to break. It makes me feel horrible.

I feel like I should have been one of those people who got perfect grades in high school, who strived for excellence, who got on honor roll and thought, "Oh, good. Another average semester." But I wasn't. There was a point when I just stopped caring. It got to the point where if I passed a class that had nothing to do with choir or drama, there was a celebration between my parents and myself. How... settling of me. And of my parents, but that's a bull crap psychological blame game to bring them into it.

Anyway, to this day, I can't stand to do homework. Even if it's easy. I've put up a mental block. The word "homework" gives me an ulcer. Every year, every semester, I think, "This one will be different. I'll figure out a great system of how to do my homework, and turn it in on time, and la de frickin' da," and something miniscule and stupid will happen, like I'll forget my book for one day, and I stop doing homework for the semester. And I fail.

Do you understand why I say YES to this question? If I felt like I had things really resolved with this issue, I'd probably be able to be everyone else with this question. It's not resolved. I'm probably dropping out of college because it's not resolved. And society says these days that if you don't graduate from college, you fail life and you'll never be happy, whatever.

I could keep going, but it's late, so I'll probably do the second half of this rant entitled something like, "So since I'm not your typical go-to-college type person, this is my plan" some other night. No comments because I haven't finished explaining myself.

Love, Tanika

Friday, June 11, 2010

Dear Cakes,

Why is it that when we're making the practice cake, everything goes near to perfectly, but when we're making the real deal, everything falls apart? This is my sister's wedding, here. I wanted this to be GOOD. I wanted you to be something I could be PROUD of. The cake for the birthday party was great; I got little to no credit for it, but it was great. I'll definitely get credit for this one, though, because it's the one that won't be all that amazing.

In other words, maybe I should just go grab a cake from the grocery store and call it embarrassing. Deal? Deal.

Love, Tanika