There are things that I am able to change.

I can change my hair. I can decide that the long, blonde locks aren’t for me anymore, and chop them into a bob. I can choose to curl the ends one day and straighten them the next.

I can change my face. Thanks to cosmetics, I am able to choose how I want to look on any given day. I can choose to have glittery eyes and red lips, or naked cheeks and uncurled lashes.

I go through points in my life when I feel stuck. Not uncomfortable or bored, but stuck. During times like these, I wrestle with how to crawl out of the hole I’ve dug myself into, and my hypothesis is usually that I need change.

So, I change.

I cut my hair and I buy new makeup and I start dieting. All of these things make me feel on top of the world for a moment. People compliment my newly cut hair and I find ways to combine shadows to make my eyes look bluer and I start to look slimmer. I get excited because I feel like the ground becomes a little more even and I’m back on my normal path. But every time without fail, my hair grows back, the makeup collects dust, and I stop counting calories. These were all temporary means of change.

After going through all of this, I begin to try to change other things. I attempt to change the people in my life by giving friends the cold shoulder and reaching out to those who I know don’t care about me. I try to keep my passion alive for something I’m dying to move on from. I attempt to alter how people treat me in order to make myself feel better.

No matter how hard I try to change these things, I fail every single time. It took me a great amount of time, but I’ve learned that this is the difference between the things I can and cannot change. I can make myself look as different as I want, but until I accept the fact that I don’t have the ability to change others’ hearts and minds, I will stay in that hole forever.

As my beloved English teacher would say, I don’t have the power to choose what happens to me, but I do have the power to choose how I respond to it. I can choose to lock myself away from those who love me, but I can also choose to embrace my current situation.

Temporary change isn’t the answer to solve being stuck, but as of now, I haven’t discovered the correct answer either. So yes I do still feel stuck, but until I find the answer, I ask God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.