Burning Out

Sometimes life gets too complicated to find the words to explain every detail of what you're going through. I wish I could find those words… I love words. They give meaning to your heart's emotions and simultaneously liberate you from them. Lately, I've been struggling with words… mostly because I'm tired. I've grown weary and the fire that ignited my passion seems to be dimming. I need rejuvenation.

I remember feeling this way often during the first weeks of college. I would lock myself in my dorm for days, glued to the pages of my schoolwork. I was obsessed with the idea of working hard to get out of the hell hole I had somehow dug myself into. I remember my skin turning pale and my hands seeming lifeless from the hours I spent writing notes on the corners of my textbook pages. The arrangement of the dozens of post-it notes on my walls started to look something like an early Picasso painting. I needed a break, but somehow I could never give myself one.

Luckily, I made a great friend who seemed to always have the cure for this. She dragged me out of my hermit-like state and took me on my first 'college adventures' – parties, road trips, thirsty Thursdays, etc. Although she never told me to relax my ambitions, she taught me how to have fun and how to keep that fire going. I owe a lot of my sanity to her. I'm not saying that this is what college is all about, but it should be a substantial part of it… the ever-so cliché concept of F-U-N.

The Road Not Taken

My mother's favorite poet is Robert Frost. She used to recite this poem to me often as a child. Frost wrote...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

We recognize this archetypal dilemma countless times in our life and yet how often in do we actually take the road less traveled by? In my lifetime, I'm not sure how many times I've done this or how many times I even realized that it was, in fact, the road less traveled by.

I had a boyfriend freshman year of college that went to school in a different state. He was kind and bright, with a promise of a great future. But more importantly, he was my greatest friend and companion. The only boy I had ever kissed. I was certain that I would miss him often and that long distance relationships were harder than most, but he brought out the best in me and I believed in the hope that brought.

After the fall semester, the visits to see each other started to diminish, the phone calls started becoming more rare, and the casual fights became a frequent routine. I thought this would be it... we're reaching that bettersweet ending. I knew I had a choice to make. I could break up with him and become another number in the statistic of failed college relationships. Or I could try to work it out and maybe get my heart shattered in the end. Two roads, both with equally heavy consequences leading in two opposite directions, with uncertain destinations.

'And be there one traveler, long I stood.' I stood for months debating, questioning. Until a voice inside me told me it's not over yet. So we tried to work it out. It's been three years since then... and he's still my boyfriend and he's still the only boy I have ever kissed.

I'm not sure if the road I took was the one less traveled by. Many have made the argument that it was. Even more say that he and I have defied the odds. I've been living in Europe since the beginning of the new year and I haven't seen him almost a month. I still miss him and I still know that long distance relationships are harder than most, but making that choice 3 years ago has stayed with me to this day. And somehow I know 'that has made all the difference.'