CANNOT

don't believe in that word

refuse to even say it

you can do a n y t h i n g you want

whatever you don't do

is only because you won't do it.

- a poem by seventeen-year-old me

The biggest reward of actively writing is that you get to read words you have written in the past and be taken back to that exact moment or season of life, but are able to reflect on such with twenty/twenty hindsight. At seventeen, I wrote and believed in these words for different reasons than I believe in them now.

In the season of life that I authored this poem, I believed anything that went wrong in my little world was a reflection of me as a solitary human being, and that I could do enough to right whatever wrongs came my way. I clung to the belief that I could make anything in the universe happen as long as I wanted it to happen badly enough. My thoughts were a constant collection of impossible "if-then" scenarios:

"If I achieve perfection in school, sports and activities, then my parents will accept me for who I am."

"If I always say yes and pour all of myself into failing relationships, then they will be put back together."

"If I can use the right words to tell you, you will see things the way that I see them."

Defiant of compromise, I was determined that I could achieve the perfect life and with that would come happiness.....and as you may presume, there came a day that I was hit with the devastating realization that perfection on earth cannot exist.

Four years later, I've learned the hard way that there are many things in this world we have no control over at all...the weather and the actions of other people being at the top of that list.

Brad Warren so truthfully writes, "You can spend your whole life building something from nothing, one storm can come and blow it all away. Build it anyway."

Today when I read this poem, I take it as motivation to continue towards my dreams and a reminder that I don't have to be who others expect me to, I am free to make my own path. Whatever you choose to do with your life: enjoy it and do it unapologetically, without expectation of a certain outcome...because the most beautiful things I have in life, came from outside of my perfect plan.