Chapter: Resilience

The last 12 months have fumbled by with such a determined, graceless speed that I literally do not know what month it is until I've received my monthly subscription.

In one year I have had enough developments for a lifetime. I got dumped by the man I thought I was going to marry (read: first love), I was sent to Asia for one job therefore taking a temporary leave of another, I was told by my roommates that they were moving out of the area and therefore I would have to find a new apartment on my own (a good and bad thing: good - cause they were the worst roommates ever, bad because getting your own apartment in l.a. is not exactly an affordable task at this juncture), I came back from Asia after deciding it was not a good fit and was unable to get back my old job, I lost my favorite uncle in New York, cleaned out my savings account to fly across country to see my youngest sister who was unexpectedly diagnosed with renal failure in Philadelphia - an event that took place after she visited California and was dragged away by police because of our worse-than-a-storybook-evil-stepmother who felt like upping her crazy bitch points, which subsequently caused me to break my rule about never going over to my fathers house to go search for my sister and then call every hospital and police station in Orange County until I found her in a lockdown facility where my stepmother was going to let her stay to rot without telling her family...(pause for breath).

I left my modeling agency because they were lazy, signed with a new agency who didn't end up matching my enthusiasm or believe in me nearly enough, signed with a management company knowing full well that up until this point I had zero acting experience or frankly even a desire to act at all, became a title holder and a Miss California, USA 2012 contestant which put me under so much stress that I became obsessed over every freckle, pore and hair follicle on my body,  my computer acquired a virus and crashed, I reconnected with an ex-boyfriend I had not seen since I left him in Germany over 3 1/2 years ago - it turned out to be a bad idea, discovered that my mothers new beau was in fact my fathers best friend from the navy - a secret I was expected to keep while she ceaselessly attempted to set me up with his man-boy son, My father cancelled my medical insurance out of spite but decided not to tell me until I had racked up thousands of dollars in hospital bills, I was accepted into a local university as a transfer student for the Fall and then in the Summer discovered they had "rescinded" my acceptance after first cashing my registration check, and of course during this time one of my best friends decided to go to Saudi Arabia for a year for work experience, my transmission died while I on the freeway and given all of the aforementioned events I have unable to acquire the funds to fix it and on and on I go with my tail of woe. 

I have always been a tenacious person. I was met with extreme opposition at a very young age and at one time I even questioned why I was so afflicted during a time where everyone else was so carefree. I eventually concluded that it was all preparatory for something greater. I figured that if I was to do something great with my life that that would come with a price and that I needed to ready my backbone, and spirit for such a tremendous responsibility. 

I have since lost that optimism. 

Moving to L.A. and seeing the suffering and struggling around me made me believe that sometimes great suffering comes with no gain and no fortuitous agenda. 

But even as I type this I wonder if that mentality in itself is defeat. 

Is living on the street with no roof over your head a struggle - a moment of extreme opposition to get through, or is it the cards you've been dealt? Is it the entire picture? Are we homeless because we have given up or are we homeless because that's our lot in life? Have we folded too early and so we accept our situation as our permanent condition and allow ourselves to fall categorically into an affliction that might have been temporary? Is it not possible for it to simply be "the way things are"?

I see how easy it is to give in. How easy it is to wonder what it's all for and to finally decide that the universe is conspiring against you and you concede that the path of least resistance is the one where you sit down on your stoop and die. 

There are two major theories when it comes to life's choices. One is that if it's supposed to happen then it will - the universe will conspire to help you fulfill your own personal legend. Then there's the idea that if you are met with enough opposition and hardship then it is a sign that you are on the wrong path and you need to be going the other way. 

This seems incomplete. What if what the universe has in store for you is to face that opposition head on. To suffer greatly and face sky-scraping challenges, to tell you with all it's weather and natural disasters to "turn back" but pulling your heart and will forward. Can't it in fact be true that maybe your personal legend is to battle daily? That there are no "signs" only the will to survive? To survive outside of your circumstances? To not accept "that's the way things are"?

If that is indeed a possibility then I believe I am in that category. I have not seen a green patch or the 9th cloud ever since I can remember. With every mediocre opportunity comes a contract with the devil. 

Maybe it seems like I'm being glum - maybe I am. But I reflect so often upon my life soberly and carefully that I wonder if maybe glum is my virtual avatar.  

I want to believe that most things are out of my control. And that with the billions or people, the earths unpredictable tendencies, politics, economics, and disease that not everything can simply change because I wish it. That sometimes my failure is not a result of a single choice but of a network of choices made by a network of people. Still it is up to me to take responsibility for my own life. To decide that I am going to be the head of the network and braid it to let out on the road I choose for myself. As far as the opposition, and the signs, and the gloom what choice do I have but to recognize their existence and continue to prepare myself for the day where all that muscling actually builds a life for myself.