down this river.

I had a heart to heart talk with my father this morning.  Or well, more like he was giving me advice and I was sitting there, listening quietly.  When it comes to my parents, I somehow can't bring myself to open up as easily.  It probably has a lot to do with the language barrier, mixed with my initial instinct to just... not talk.  It's gotten bad as I've gotten older, and it's one of the qualities about myself that I need to fix.

With my dad's help, I've realized that I take a lot of things personally and it's been accumulating more stress than I need to have.  I'm turning 24 in about three months and I feel like I haven't changed enough to show for it.  I thought I would have made a steady career for myself by now, maybe a boyfriend to show the parents that I wasn't going to end up a 30-year-old bride.  But as we all know, nothing in life ever turns out the way we expect, or even want to sometimes.

I'm twenty three and I'm starting my first year at a community college (which I may have to stay at longer given the information I received this morning).  Which means I'll have a shot at starting an actual career in what -- maybe two or three years? When I'm 25/26 - God forbid, 27? And I've always told myself it's okay to go at a different pace than others but when put to practice, it's actually really hard to remember this tidbit of advice.  Perhaps it's because instead of feeling like I'm moving forward, I actually feel like I'm reversing -- slipping backwards to pay for all the time I wasted in university.

There is no way I'm going to give up.  If anything, the difficulties that have surfaced make me want to work harder and make this happen so that I can reach the end of the road (the entrance to another rocky road) and prove to myself that I can do this.

Life is hard.  There are some really mean people out there.  This is common knowledge that I have learned since I was a kid. But I don't have to be discouraged. I don't have to hate those mean people. There may be way more setbacks than I was anticipating -- there usually are.  It might take me longer than I wanted to get me into the workforce.  That's okay.  I'm not just learning education.  I firmly believe that God takes me through experiences to help me learn to cope, to force me to confront myself and really dig out the issues that have been wormed into my heart since I was a kid.

In perspective, I'm still young. And if I die while still young, then at least I will have learned something.  I mean, I'd like to think I've changed so much from high school to UCSD, and then from UCSD until now.  And there's a lot more ground to cover, but little progress is better than none at all.  Just like trying again is better than giving up before your life really gets a chance to start.