Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Potential


Sometimes I can be contemplative.
I think thoughts that I never say out loud. Not secrets, just personal. It's odd to think that only me knows my thoughts. Even when I'm talking to other people, I can think my own thoughts and they won't even know it. They won't be offended that I'm looking at their lips move as they talk and not listening to the words they are saying. I won't even hurt their feelings if I'm thinking that what they are saying is meaningless to me. Let's be real, sometimes it just is. I'm sure I say a lot of meaningless crap throughout the day. Really though, when I get contemplative, it's usually about the past or the future. Today I was thinking about 5th grade. I was going to marry Joey and he thought he was going to marry me, but neither of us had the guts to tell each other, I lost the spelling bee because I froze and spelled jump: Gump, I had to get my best friend Christie to tell me what was written on the board because I hadn't discovered that I needed glasses yet, and at Christie's birthday party I stood on a table and sang and danced to the entire Britney Spears c.d. as provocatively as a ten year old possibly could. I felt so cool in 5th grade. I had a best friend at school, a best friend at dance, a crush, an awesome teacher, long hair to my butt, and wore huge (and I mean huge) bows in my hair every day. I remember learning about the Clinton/Bush election in Social Studies and mapping sentences in Language Arts. I got my first bra (which I initially hated, but then thought was awesome) and since I got braces two years earlier, I got to be one of the first kids to show off perfectly straight teeth to my class when I came back from the orthodontist the day I got those train tracks off my teeth. The whole class oooed and ahhhed and
I. Was. So. Cool.
It's not that I'm not "cool" anymore, but I just like to remember that feeling. I am cool. Currently, I mean. When I say cool, I don't even know what I mean. Sometimes it's hard for me to think good things about myself, but I still always know I'm cool. There's something about me that I like and I can use descriptive words like funny, motivated, or loving, but really it's kinda that same feeling of when I was in 5th grade. I probably didn't know what cool was then either, but I just knew I was special for some reason. I had no concept of what I would realistically be when I grew up, but I knew I would somehow succeed. I was going to be a professional dancer, duh! And that is success. Even now, I don't know what my life will be like, but I know I will succeed. Somehow, I will be "cool" my whole life because EVERY PERSON IS. I wish everyone knew this. I wish everyone knew that they were children of God and that they have the potential to do more than they can even imagine, and even when they don't use their potential, THEY ARE STILL SPECIAL. I've just been writing what's on my mind without knowing where my thoughts would end up, and now it's like an epiphany that I know where these thoughts are coming from. It comes from the state hospital where I see cuts and pain and young people who I know have tried to commit suicide. It's extreme and disturbing and more than anything it is so sad. I go back in my mind to my thoughts during high school and they were SO self-destructive. If we only knew our potential. If we could just see ourselves as our Heavenly Father does.
Wow, this entire post has been so easy to write and now I'm stuck, I've got nothing to follow that last sentence up. I can't tell you how good it feels to go back to 5th grade in my mind. I'm going to be 21 on Sunday and I want to live this year knowing that I'm cool. I want to recreate my confidence and recreate my attitude. My future is just a long path of more and more potential and I will not waste it.
Those are my contemplative thoughts for today.

1 comment:

  1. I loved reading this post. In fact, it was the best post I've ever read on a blog... It's well written, interesting, funny, and just--- good. But that's not really why it's my favorite. Really it's because I have been feeling the same way! I love the "cool" feeling that is indescribable. The thing is, I never really felt that cool feeling until senior year of high school, and even then sometimes it was fake. I never really felt that until this past year, to be honest. I think marrying Ben and his friendship has helped me grow so much and realize how cool I really am and can be. I wish I didn't let myself be self destructive through growing up and had had more self confidence. I wish ever person could just know how cool they are, too. Anyways, I know what you mean. :)

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