Ea Alis Propriis Volat

{via.}

I was facebook/blog-stalking myself a few days ago, going through old posts and photos and reminiscing. And I started reading these two posts and marveled at how, without even knowing it, I have gone from being so stuck to being so unstuck.

About this time last year, I began feeling trapped. I started feeling stuck. I was unhappy, and I was so jealous of all my friends who seemed to have their lives together, who knew what they wanted, who seemed to glide through college without once doubting themselves and where they were going. That wasn't me, and I couldn't understand why. I was in the middle of a time of change, but I didn't realize it yet. It felt like I had done all I could up to that point, and had to kind of bide my time until I could take the next step.

I can look back now and see what it was -- it was that I had been in college for two years. I had figured out what I didn't want for my life, but was still trying to figure out what I did. I was half way done with school, but I still had half the way to go. It wasn't a fun perspective. It felt dry. It felt boring. I felt like a shell -- like the Valorie I knew had gone into hiding and all that was left was her body. Now I see that it wasn't that she left, but it was time for her to go into her cocoon, and emerge as a butterfly, ready to be who she was always meant to be.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you I've got it all figured out now. I don't. I have a better idea of what I want, and I'm becoming confident enough in myself to verbalize that to others, even if it doesn't fit their (read: my mother's) expectations of me.

It's been rough. There's been nights of crying on my closet floor, there's been mental health days. There's been starting projects, and abandoning them the next day. There's been living alone, there's been loneliness, but there's also been a wildly satisfying sense of freedom. And overarching all of this, there's been this sense that, wherever the hell all of this leads me, I will be getting there on my own terms, and that, more than anything, has been the most simultaneously comforting, enthralling, and inspiring part of this sometimes very scary process.

Back then, I was feeling so stuck. I was trapped in this mind-numbing cycle that sometimes made me want to bash my head into a wall just so I could feel something. But now it's like my life is hurtling toward graduation and goals and The Real World at a pace I can barely keep up with. Every day is so busy, so full of something that will matter, something that I enjoy, that I find myself dropping onto my couch at the end of the day and wondering where all the time went. And even though I'm exhausted, I'm smiling. And that is the most fantastically satisfying part.

Ea alis propriis volat is Latin for 'she flies on her own wings.' And that's what I intend to do.