Emma For Everyone

  Untitled  Food tastes better, the air is sweeter  and everything looks more alive.  You remember why you love that lotion.  The plants are finally watered, toenails finally clipped.  Warmth returns to your fingers and nose,  and sunken eyes are brought forward once again.  Time feels slower, but in a good way. Like it’s on our side.  Soak it in, every last drop. Before we know it, it’ll be back.  Claiming everything that is ours, and whisking it swiftly away. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brave Somehow I’ve convinced everyone that I am brave.  But this is simply not true.  I have fooled the lot of you, and not even on purpose, At first.  It’s the way I feel inside, you see.  The softest tap could make my bones  Crumble on top of one another,  And I would collapse into myself. And so I avoid the world’s touch, and words that are so harsh They could rip the skin...

 Everything that I have written post graduation has been sad. It all feels incredibly un-relatable and not worthy to put into a world that doesn't need more work that is centered around an internal struggle that is extremely personal. This has been a battle. How personal should one allow oneself to get, on the internet? There is a layer of protection of course, me writing this down on a blank page, for another person to click on and read if they so choose, maybe leave a comment, and that be the extent of the interaction. But oversharing has always been something I struggle with. Am I oversharing by allowing people to take a glimpse into my mind? They way it works, thinks, and processes? The words on this page are coming straight from my mind and onto this no longer blank space. That feels like a very personal thing to me.  Being an authentic person is actually really hard. I think about it, probably, way too much. How to truly be authentic. How to not be a person that is sayin...

She woke up that morning feeling strange. Uncomfortable in her body. This was the first thing she felt when she woke up in fact, opening her eyes and feeling her toes poking out from the end of the covers, her feet almost hanging off the bed. That was odd, because she actually fit quite nicely into the old bed and frame that came from her grandmother’s house. She shook off the sleep she had just woke up from and rolled herself out from under her covers. She glanced around with half-open eyes. Everything looked the same, but there was definitely something that didn’t feel right. She stood up, missing the ceiling fan with her head by half an inch. Panic. She was not this tall yesterday, or even last night. How tall had she gotten? Rushing to the bathroom she had to duck under doorframes that had never been that close to her head before and started sweating when she got to the bathroom and didn’t fit in the mirror that had held the same image of her for years. What was happening? Her hear...

 I can't talk about being proud of myself without crying. Over time I taught myself that my growth had no significance amongst an entire world that is constantly growing. Maturity was inevitable, everyone around was also going through the same thing and somehow that transferred into never understanding the importance of acknowledging that for myself. The trees changed every season, and so did I.  Big deal.  But now that I am doing less changing of who I am and finding more ownership, there is an undoubtedly large chunk of love missing from my insides. My love. Pride in myself is nearly nonexistent. The trees must be proud of themselves for making it another year. For changing colors and blooming again after a cold, long winter.  I cannot properly grow without the most crucial ingredient.  There is so much to do to get ready for the world, and I have found myself continuing to add to that list, but this has risen to the top. I came to this realization after stumb...

Is it true that we all have an idea in our minds of what "the good life" looks like? Somewhere in the future, a perfect picture of what you would like your life to be. A reality that is curated completely to your wants and joy in life. I have been thinking a lot about my good life, and why we don't consider our current realities to be it.  In a reading called "Cruel Optimism" by Lauren Berlin from pages 94-117, she ponders the idea of the good life. She asks the reader to think about the way that this wish functions in our everyday life, and the hope that we attach to someday achieving a new, better reality. The discussion that my feminist theory class had around this concept was the idea that it may actually be dangerous, in a sort. To constantly be wishing to not be where you are right now. "The good life" could even be argued is a product of a capitalist society, convincing people that even though you don't feel like you have enough right now, i...

 Today I attended the virtual funeral of my Auntie Eva. My great aunt on my mom's side. I am at school in Adrian, but I was able to log onto the funeral home's website and watch via Youtube live the service that was held today for her. It was harder than I anticipated, I missed being able to console my family and physically sit with them and tell stories about my Auntie. I sat at my dining room table with headphones on and listened to the kind words that were shared without being able to see my family's faces that were able to attend in person. This was the first virtual funeral that I have ever attended, and hopefully my last.  It is amazing to me how adaptable we are, as humans. Even though I wish that my country would take a deathly pandemic more seriously, funerals are a tricky situation. We want to be able to honor those who have passed, hence the creativeness that is livestreaming the event. I am appreciative of the opportunity of being able to attend my great aunts f...