I’m sitting in the corner of my room, with a blank expression painted on my face under the window that’s letting the warm rays shine through the dusty glass above my head. I’m in a zone of thought, and wonder, and confusion. I am constantly daydreaming; constantly living in a world that exists only inside my whirlwind mind. I’m a natural disaster, an untamed tornado, crashing and rolling over everything, trying to grasp onto the things that I want, but watching them fall out of my hands. I’ve come to a point in my life where I know what I want, but I don’t know how to get it. I know what my passions are, my strengths, my weaknesses, my quirks, my triggers. I know who I am. And I also know I’m not where I want to be. My problem is: I don’t know where I want to be.

I’ve lived a hectic life, full of tragedy and heartache and laughs that cause stomach pains. Life’s unexpected. Life throws curve balls and sends thunderstorms in periods of drought and sends butterflies for good luck and lighting strikes to warn of danger. It’s full of chain reactions that affect every stone and crevice in its way. The changes spread like wild fire across distant paths, winding down roads of pavement and dirt, until it reaches the very place where you stand. It hits you like a train that lost its breaks 100 miles behind the track. It knocks the wind out of you, and makes you think you’ll never get it back. I’ve felt this feeling many times, but I never really get used to it. And it always seems to come out of nowhere. You’ll think you’ve got life figured out, but it really has you strung up like a puppet. It knows its next move, its next pull, its next jerk, in the next direction. It knows everything that you don’t.

You think you have your future planned out, like a picture in your head. The thing is: the picture isn’t finished. It’s probably going to get crumbled up and thrown away, only to start over again on a completely different canvas. You’ll start drawing at a young age, starting out with bright colors and intricate shapes. You’ll draw a house and your family members all lined up in a row, smiling, holding hands. Two years later, one of them will be erased, because they moved away or got replaced. You’ll grow three years older, then four, then five, and six. You’ll get told "no" and "because I said so" and that sticks and stones can’t break your bones. Then your house will turn into a home that fades into just an ordinary place. You’ll draw up a future that you think will turn into reality. But things will change again, and the future you thought you’d have will turn into a dream that you forgot in the REM of your sleep. See, life’s a lot like painting a picture without an image of the end result. But sometimes, the ideas that happen along the way turn it into the masterpiece that you wished for from the very first day.

So even though you don’t know where you see yourself in three months, three years, three decades from now or how you’re going to get there, know that in the end, you’ll be where you’re supposed to be. Though the picture in your head might be a little unclear, if you keep drawing, all the colors of the rainbow will appear. All that it takes is hope, determination, and faith. Hope for a better future, determination to get there, and faith to believe in something bigger. You’ll learn lessons that teach you how to deal with mistakes. You’ll overcome battles that you thought you could never take. You’ll reach for heights that you never thought you’d have the courage to break.

Maybe at the end of our lives, we get to see the whole picture; each face, each place, everywhere we’ve been, every emotion we’ve felt. What we’ve been through makes us who we are. Every mistake, regret, cry for help, builds onto our strength that we become capable of in the end. You are in control of how you handle each situation that’s been thrown at you. You can either paint a rain cloud over your head, or you can pick the brightest colors to surround yourself with. You don’t pick what happens to you, but you can pick which colors to paint with.

So what if you paint a sandy beach with bright blue waves, and then life comes crashing in with darkness and erases the sun’s rays? You draw over the sketches and the lines and the shadows. You cover them up with sea shells and footprints that are walking in the same direction for miles. You cover them up with drawings of sea gulls flying through the air and little boys running barefoot with nothing on but a smile. You hope that whatever toxic image tore you down, it will give you enough motivation to help you get back up.

You can be the paint brush and life can be the picture, even if you can’t control the motions. If you are in a situation that you don’t like, you have the control to tear that piece of paper up. So don’t be afraid to tell yourself that where you are is not where you want to be. Pick up the paint brush and start your own creation; you never know what you’re going to get. Don’t be afraid to start.