The Flight

It was the flight that changed my life and my whole way of of thinking.


I generally hold myself together well. I can make it through some of the worst situations that would cripple most people into tears with nothing but shorter nails and higher blood pressure to show for it. I pride myself on my emotional resolve, but all of this changed this summer in one critical plane flight.

I made it two steps through security before I began to heave incredibly pathetic sobs of dispair, every bone in my body trying to turn me around to go back. My heavy legs boarded the plane ever so unwillingly and I sat, sobbing, in my seat, luckily spared of any company. Looking out the window and the runway lights, suddenly my heart ached so fiercly i thought I might die. The plane began to move and with every rotation of its unforgiving tires my heart constricted and my lungs denied me the air necessary for me to scream out like my mind was encouraging, but my mouth was dry and my joints were locked in place.

I felt like I was trapped, slowly dying and no one could see that I just wanted to get off the plane. After a short pause from the string of text messages he and I were sending and with another frantic look out the window as the plane began to pick up speed, I typed those three unforgiving, unrestrained words ... I love you ... into my pay-as-you-go phone and pressed send just as the plane began to lift off the ground. Overcome I sobbed into my seat, watching as I left this new world behind...along with my heart and all that went with it. I turned off my phone and stared, in pieces, out at the haunting image of Qatar fading into the distance.


I was going home.


Rebecca

Daddy's Princess

After a serious of somewhat trying events as of recently I decided I would update this blog, which has been long overdue if I do say so myself. My mind has been mulling over a series of topics, but I think i've pin-pointed the best topic for the moment.


During my visit in Toronto I reconnected a broken relationship with the one man that could ever hurt me . . . my Dad. So much history passes between us that it would be fruitless to try to update you, the reader, on all of the drama and heartache that has attached itself to my Father and I's relationship, however, I can say that when I was 13 years old he broke my heart and I unknowingly returned the favor.

I grew up Daddy's little girl, a princess, totally and blissfully loved and adored by the only man in my life, but when I turned eight and he packed his bags my heart was broken into a million pieces. Throughout my teens we exchanged hurtful words and hatefilled phone calls, peppered occasionally with the unemotional email every so often and the insincere holiday greeting. However, after a slew of incidences recently I decided to try to piece a long forgotten love back together, realizing that i could never expect myself to love another man if I never truly allowed myself to heal from my first heartbreak, I needed closure...and for the first time in my life I found it, and so much more.

As if no time had passed we embraced each other at the airport for what seemed like an embrace that was to serve as a symbol to what would be a freshly rekindled bond. Growing up probably helped, I was no longer a little girl looking up at her Daddy, but instead a young lady looking straight into the eyes of her Father demanding answers. After hours of talking and tears we found ourselves again right back at the beginning...I felt like I was that little girl again, as if this warmth and love could never and would never fade now that I found it again. There was such a closure in me to finally tie things up, words cannot explain the strength and importance of a father and daughters relationship.


Rebecca

Said best by Robert frost:
"Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with. "

A part of me, while reflecting on the last few years, is shocked this blog post hasn't happened sooner. In and out of relationships since the fourth grade, I started young and my heart became immune a long time ago. With all the "nitty-gritty" aside, I began to think about what happens when you have to put your feelings on hold. I've always condoned falling in love and pursuing it at all costs, no hesitations, but recently, possibly a more mature frame of mind has begun to overshadow my previous beliefs.

As little kids, we were read fairytales of princess'' and princes, love and happily ever after. There were no complications, just pure unceasing love; A sense that whatever was happening, this person was who they were meant to be with, no and's, if's, or but's about it. However, as we grow older most of us realize that this fairytale world is just that, a fairytale. Though we all still hold in our hearts the desire to find true love, the truth about our true love fairytale is that people aren't perfect, they will disappoint us and break our hearts. After all, I highly doubt that Cinderella had to pay her morgage and credit card bills, and Snow White was the "fairest of them all" so what was she to worry about? Maybe a bird who chirped off pitch.



Though I am aware as to how much of a 360 this new view is from what I ahve previously written, it is a breath of fresh air to approach things with no feelings attached, just truth. I generally say that if you find love, someone who you feel deeply for, hold onto them with everything your soul can muster. However, sometimes the real strength is in knowing when to let go.

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Pause
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I tried to finish this post, but for some reason I can't find the words I'm trying to get across. That seems to be happening a lot lately, being without words, unable to express how I truly feel. So many times I've tried to speak, but nothing came out. The last to nights have been spent sleeplessly, tossing restlessly among the sheets trying to block out my brain for just an hour.

Nothing makes sense right now....and I will admit, I am scared.




Rebecca

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. " -C.S. Lewis

It means Forever

This particular blog post has been nothing short of a struggle for me to write...my mind worked like clockwork flipping through words and ideas, but when it came time to write them...I felt lost. Even the few sentances I could string together sounded forced and insincere. This post is very close to me, these words are not from the pages of a dictionary, they are stright for my heart and soul. It is easy to write about logical things, but when faced with the task of confessing the struggles of your heart...nothing but roadblocks, internal struggle, and a final enlightenment await you. These words, drapped together into what I hope to be a certain clarity of my world as of now, are not to be read lightly.

My heart is heavy, it is beating slowly, weary and fearful. I set out to find the world, nothing more. I wanted to know its secrets and discover its mysteries hoping that in finding the answers to the worlds questions...I would, in turn, find what I was looking for. Just before my adventure truly is to begin I am driven off course by something even I can't find the words to describe. This new course, this foreign, disconcerting feeling, those eyes my heart were never ready to gaze into...it wasn't what I was planning nor was it a choice I was ready to face.

Some people are born for greatness, they wander through life eventually finding a way to make an impact, making marks on the people they touch with whatever gift God gave them. Some people were born to entertain, to be a shoulder to cry on, to be the call at 4:00 in the morning. Then there are those who are born for love, born to find one person to love for all eternity with every ounce of their soul...the romantics and the poets. The lyricist and the wordsmith. Those who hear the word love and instantly think forever. People like Noah from the Notebook...people like me.

Judgement will always laugh and scorn those who dream of love, those who wish for something more then a cheap one night stand or a shallow promise of forever. Should we simply settle because the world insists upon it? Instead we search, constantly moving, looking, dreaming. These dreams, these internal wishes for a bond unbreakable by time or tragidy. I left america believing I was searching for myself, searching for something that was missing. However, it wasn't until I looked into those eyes that I realized it wasn't my sense of self that was lost...it was my heart, that missing piece that I was born to find in someone else.

I could have the riches of the world, diamonds, pearls, houses, and a closet full of the finest silks. I could have all the friends in the world, I could have everything, but still feel like I have nothing...for without love, without that one someone who will return my missing piece, I am only half of a person. With half a heart I cannot truly laugh or smile, live or breathe. Its like living under a sheer black vail, each relationship being a breeze that shows me a brief glimpse of what I am searching for, only making me more determined.

On July 1st, I had 18 days left here in the foreign climate of the Doha sun. 18 days left until I return home to a place where responsability and realism will not only set aside my dreams, but force me to be an entirely different person and ignore what I truly feel. In 18 days I will be saying goodbye to the one thing that gave me hope for my dreams, those eyes that swollowed me whole in their embrace and left me powerless. That embrace that felt like home.

In 18 days I will say goodbye and I will pray every night thereafter that I didn't make the biggest mistake of my life.

Rebecca

Like the sound of a gun.

(un-edited)

For the longest time I had considered starting a blog, but never had I been extensively serious about it. Too much work mixed with my busy schedule, it was a recipe for disaster. Upon my current writing binge, my best friends decided to persuade me into starting my first blog and so, here we are.

To be honest, I do not have a lot of time to make this entry particularly pretty, filled with fluffed up words straight from the thesaurus. Just trying to pass the time until work is finally through with for the day, I am recounting my steps as to how I first began to write...what a dreadful trail that was.

All my life I was attracted to colourful words and their ability to describe in such a magnificant way. When I was eight years old I was diagnosed with a reading disability, more like a memory disability, that made it near impossible for me to remember new words, phrases, or sounds. To clear that statement up, it meant that I was going to struggle with remembering little details my whole life. Upon hearing this, my mother, an english teacher and grammar aficionado, decided to push me tirlessly through books so as to improve this "disability". Though I was never able to complete kick this bad habit, I became an excillent reader and, in response, fell in love with word play.

Growing up on Rumpelstiltskin, I foudn myself growing fond of quirky stories with unexpected twists. From this youthful adoration of word play grew a respect for wit and satire. Quite early on in my reading life I discovered the works of Oscar Wilde and from that moment on I was mesmarized. It wasn't until I was in the fourth grade that I began to write and as soon as that pen touched the fine lines of that paper, I became intranced with weaving stories and words together and the art of creating flawless imagery.

For my mid-term in Honors English we were assigned a spur of the moment essay in which we were to write about a specific theme of a story we had read during that school year. When I returned from the break my English teacher pulled me aside to inquire whether or not I had cheated. It was that moment that I realized I might have a knack for stringing words together. Throughout High School I built on this passion, but never actively persuid it.

Still to this day I am weary of whether or not to strive towards writing as a profession. Words or my true love, but whether I want to make that love a job...I am hovering in limbo awaiting my minds decision. So, until the day that I fall upon my decision I will write via this blog.

The title, "The Perspective of Youth," is a coy tribute to my own frame of mind. Though I am obviously quite young, my mind and idea's have always been older then my body, call me an old soul perhaps. With my love for the classics and old fashioned way of life, my perspective on life, love, and all the fall in between can be a breath of fresh air. The topics I generally write about are writen from my perspective, a youth.

sincerely,

R.Page

Swinging for an Invisible Ball

Everybody experiences it, that moment when suddenly, like a veil being pulled from your eyes, you realize you're no longer young and innocent. No longer can you get away with the little slip ups and social faux pas that seemed to colour our younger, simpler year. Suddenly we see the world through a new perspective, with expectations and responsibilty suddenly being thrust upon us, we shift our minds to acquiesce to these demands and lose ourselves in the hustle and bustle of our new "grown up" lives.

As we make it threw our tween years and finally through our teens, we begin to experience the realities of the world such as falling in love, true love, for the first time or perhaps getting getting fired from a job. Slowly we accumulate a new understanding and formulate a supply of knowledge we never had before, whether for better or worse. These brand new experiences, for those of us who actually have feelings and are in the least bit sensitive, are...well...scary. We spent the first half of our life "understanding the world", learning the rules of the land in a sense, and suddenly its ripped out from under us only to be replaced with a new set of rules and standards that are completely different from what we were accustomed to.

So what do you do? What happens when you wake up to a changed world? How do you deal? To be completely honest, even I don't know the answer to that question, after all, I'm trying to deal too. What I do know, however, is that taking on a negative approach to all of this change can only make things worse. When change rears it's sometimes ugly head, sometimes you need to just go with the flow and except it as a life lesson. This is the most important thing to remember: No matter how much you cry, get angry, and throw fits, life is still going to change; People, places, houses, names, cars...everything will change eventually during your life, you have no control over this. You can, however, choose to make the best of things and by doing that you are taking the lead in your life and you will be much happier and stress free.

Listen, I know what it feels like when you feel like you have no control of your life. Trust me, I'm living in Doha, Qatar right now, talk about letting go. Honestly, just hold on. Things don't stay "unbearable" forever and what you're going through, or at least what your feeling, has been experienced and weathered by someone else in the world.

How you feel...you are not alone.

Everblue

So much has changed since I first left for Doha.In a months time my world was flipped upside down.

I came here thinking that I knew what I wanted out of my life; I came here with my plans and overachieving attitude. With my personal drive for success and my ambition to learn. I was set on the path of succeeding in everything I did. I was happy being single, being free, and being my own person. What I wanted and what was going to happen, however, were two completely different realities.

I have always known that I would get through school, travel for a year, get a great job in either fashion editing or in foreign relations and make something of myself. I was going to move to the city, get my cute apartment, and establish myself as independent and self sufficient women. Of course I dreamed of moving over sea's, but I never intended I would fall in love with a place that was so different from what I was expecting.

When I got to Doha I was in a strong relationship, had friends that loved me, and was ready to get home a.s.a.p to continue my life. Now that i'm here and a few months in, I'm starting to wonder if the plans i've made for my life are really what I want. In Texas, every second of my days were planned out in my overly important agenda i became warn out, tired of giving everyone everything and not taking time for myself. By the end of the semester I was sick and ready to crawl into bed for the remainder of my summer just so I could breathe a little. I was surrounded by people all the time, but always felt like something was missing and could never put my finger on it.

When C. and I broke up I never wanted to date again. I didn't want to be looked at, smiled at, touched, hugged...nothing. I felt broken and empty. Love will do that to you. When you give someone everything you have, it's world shattering to lose them no matter how good of terms you end things on. When you are so accustomed to having someone constantly there it is scarey feeling to be thrown back into what I like to call the "shark infested waters that is the dating world". After everything was said and done and wounds were being mended on both ends, I tried to push forward, ignoring every love song that played over the mall speakers and virtually eliminating every love related tune on my ipod. I was trying to pick up the pieces.

When the shock set in and I was ready to get my feet back on the ground I was once again floored by fates unacceptable timing. HE wasn't what I wanted or what I needed. I wasn't ready nor was I willing to play this game again, but, as usual, fate had a different plan for me and I was helpless but to play along. Back to the start, checking my phone every ten seconds, worrying constantly about what i'm going to say and how I look, I never missed this. I am a notably stubborn person, many will back me up on this, but no amount of self control or strong will power could help me this time. I was hooked on those stupid bright eyes and there was nothing my sunglasses could do about it.

I wanted to travel the world and see everything, learn everything. I wanted to start an amazing collection of super cute high heels that were ridiculously over priced, but too amazing to pass up. I wanted everything I could get my hands on...but love was never something I was aspiring to. Love, marriage, and happily ever after were not on my mind. But now i'm looking at the possibility of moving over sea's, the real reality of me giving up everything in the states to start my adventure in europe, the prospect of falling in love again, and the chance to forget what is logical and realitic to go for the unattainable and amazing.

Sometimes we try to plan out our lives day by day so that we know what will happen next.It isn't until you stop looking, however, that you find what it is you are truly searching for.Sometimes you need to be broken before you can learn your lessons.

Rebecca