It's been a crazy year. 2016 has taken a lot of our favorite musicians, actors, and everyday people and club goers. It has also unearthed terrifying environmental threats, heartbreaking violence oversees, and a disturbing trend of hate during this campaigning season. What's a girl to do in these trying times? Do these widespread events feed into our daily lives? It certainly seems so. I've always had the understanding that the law of attraction drives the universal current of things. There's a lot of chaos in the world today, and there's been a lot of chaos entering my atmosphere. I have suspicion to believe everything is connected. I want to tell the world about a Libra out of balance.

Last school year, I was on top of my game. I had all A’s and B’s, I was leading ambitious movements for environmentalism on campus, and I spent almost every day with the love of my life. I even started a garden in the spring. I was so happy to be out of my unhappy life in Alabama, and in the beautiful world of the mountains. All I could focus on was re-figuring my life and starting over. It started so well, I couldn’t believe it was really happening. I spent my entire summer working, paying bills, building my reputation, and making new friends. Little bit by bit, the chaos in the outer realm found me. Things started to unravel faster than I could manage them. My boyfriend moved back home, I couldn’t save any money after constantly loaning it out and impulse spending to cope with the loss of free time and exhaustion, and to top it off my health was slowly deteriorating. This summer was the turning point of my good year.

As a Libra, I always find the balance in situations. My summer was rocky, but I was sure I could get back on my feet when school started back. When school started back, I was even more off kilter. A whole new tuition bill, 20 credit hours, two jobs, a club to lead, and all of the demands of my personal life. I kept trucking because I was terrified of failure. I picked up a third job, I committed to projects for my club, I maintained my social life, and I kept up the house I was living in. I thought I was pulling myself out of disaster, but I was going deeper and deeper into a hole.

Now I am on a quest to start over and simply get by.

I wonder if I had taken one thing at a time I could have built a stronger foundation. I really don’t know. I have no formula to follow for success, other than to work hard and stay involved. That’s all I did. I carried the world on my shoulders so that I had an acre of land where I could rest my head at the end of the day. As a result, I lost my home, my grades are slipping, and I’ve gotten nothing done with my club. How could hard work have come to this? It wasn’t hard work I was pouring my body and soul into. It was over commitment and avoidance of my issues. It was covering up my problems with work. Instead of facing my personal demons head on, I exhausted them in hopes they would leave me alone long enough to make a real decision on what to do with my life.

I fear that is what is going on in the rest of the world, right now in 2016. History as we know it is so full of mistakes, and today we push past them with rampant, unsustainable development and extremely distracting technology. Bigotry and ignorance is sprawled across every media platform every hour of the day. In our daily lives we are so fixated on the material gains we are convinced we need that we neglect our real spiritual and emotional needs. We are so afraid of the discomfort caused by confrontation we refuse to consider the deeper bonds that could be created by compromise.

What does this have to do with me, the individual? I am a Libra out of balance. I personally would rather bottle my problems up until I explode, and sever all ties to the. It seems much easier that way, but I carry my pain year after year. I see chaos and pain all around me in my universe, and I ignore it. I am convinced I am doing my part by working and doing community service, and leaving my spiritual wellbeing by the wayside isn’t contributing to the bigger problems. There’s a quote by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec I really enjoy, “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” As I see my former life lay in a pile around me, I realize I am responsible for the avalanche. Everything is not lost though, I have received an incredible kindness from the people around me. I am truly the luckiest girl in the world to have these people in my life. They are the people who will heal the world.

Of all the misfortunes I’ve experienced, I have learned to grow from them. Once you realize all you can do is rebuild after a storm, it gives you a strangely refreshing perspective. I hope to see the world around me learn to confront the problems that are going to completely destroy any progress made; it’s much easier than having to start from the bottom. No matter what negativity and chaos is brewing in the immense and terrible universe, it only takes a small amount of positivity and light to change it. I am slowly regaining my balance. The small amount of energy I possess can really affect the world around me, I hope to keep it positive and productive. I hope you do the same