personal

Alrighty, then.

/ Mariana Rodrigues Cabral / Leave a comment

6407_10200376853125253_1437698959_nI’ve always been the kind of person that needs to be occupied in order to feel sane. Maybe that’s because I’m a Leo and, according to an immensely reliable yahoo.com article, “if not actively employed in some work or purpose Leos become melancholy and despondent.” I’ve come to terms with the accuracy of this statement, especially lately.

Recently, while dealing with this whole ‘I don’t know where I’m going with my life’ and ‘who am I?’ nonsense, I realized that I feel worthless unless I am actively working towards a particular goal. This constant dissatisfaction is what drives me to accomplish anything in the first place. It’s ironic that during this particular period in my life in which I want to accomplish actual things, I am stuck inside completely immobile. Well, not entirely incapable of moving but stuck inside and in need of crutches.

Just yesterday, I found out that I have a stress fracture on my left hip and that the healing process takes six weeks of absolutely no pressure on my left leg. Definitely not the end of the world. People get injured all the damn time. It’s just interesting that all of these life-altering circumstances are piling up on top of one another right at the beginning of this year. I mean, I just dropped out of college and was about to get a job so as to get my life together only to find out that now I have to be content with solitary confinement. When I hear myself actually say all of this, I can’t help but laugh. I’m sitting here, leg propped up on a cushion, laughing at myself.

My only way of coping through all of this is to believe that there will be a triumphant calm after this storm. Though, honestly, as bad as all of this sounds, I am pretty content with my free time. Today, I only had two mental breakdowns, which, for someone who loathes being without plans and stuck inside, is definitely reasonable. My breakdowns usually stem from my obsession with not wasting time. If I watch T.V for an hour, I feel guilty. If I’m on the internet for too long, I feel guilty. I need to be occupied with activities that feel rewarding. My goals for these six weeks are as follows: Read, a lot, because I have no excuse not to at the moment. Write. Eat well, considering my immobility could turn me into a ball. Play and write music. Basically, stay creative and motivated. Like I keep telling myself, “Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride”.

I Love You?

/ Mariana Rodrigues Cabral / Leave a comment

The words “I love you” have been on my mind today. Mainly, I’ve been thinking about how they’re used and whether or not people think twice about their meaning when using them. The word “love” expresses an emotion that, to me, not even a word can accurately convey. Typically, we use it as an attempt to describe a feeling within us toward someone in our lives that we cannot be without, or whom the thought of losing is unbearable.

The only reason I’m explaining all of this is because I hear the phrase “I love you” directed at me countless times a day, from the most unsuspecting people. For the most part, I hear it from female acquaintances or “friends” and usually feel obligated to return the favor as part of a social code or something. I just find it hard to understand why girls typically feel the need to say “I love you” to each other so early in a relationship. It feels insincere and also usually leaves me feeling like some of the relationships in my life are dishonest. I was raised with the notion that the word “love” was meant to be saved for a select group of people in life, in addition to family, who deserve my utmost affection. I use the phrase “I love you” so often that I’ve forgotten to consider its worth. When I direct it towards the people that matter most, it feels worn out and unsatisfying. This makes me wonder if the people I truly love know how much I mean it, with every fiber of my being. I almost wish I could give those select people a quick peek into my head, show them all the ways I see them so that they know I set them apart.

As far as I can remember, I’ve had a hard time speaking that seemingly simple phrase to people. It makes me feel exposed. Like, here I am loving you, hope you feel the same way! I don’t know. I think it has to do with the fact that I grew up in a house with people who actually loved each other in a very real way. I recognize that love can be divided into separate categories, for very different people in our lives. I just don’t think it’s necessary to say things like “You’re the greatest person in the world” or “I love you so much. You have no idea” during situations that don’t merit those intense reactions. This happened to be all the time in the beginning of college during those first few months when everyone’s racing to form as many friendships as possible. Half of the girls I was friends with then aren’t even in my life anymore. Looking back now, thinking about all the times they said they loved me, it’s hard not to laugh.

Growing up in a house with parents that truly loved one another, in an environment that felt honest and genuine, I developed a real distaste for people being fake. I think I have an eye for spotting when people are being manipulative or insincere, which is definitely both a blessing and a curse. Overtime, it’s made be very selective of the people I choose to surround myself with, which can be a little isolating. I think everyone does this more and more as they get older though. We begin to see that quality is vastly more important than quantity.

All in all, I hope to continue saving my love for the people who really deserve it because people who surround themselves with meaningful relationships are the most fortunate of all by far. I intend to be so lucky throughout my life, but also to continue valuing genuineness as one of my favorite human qualities. I wish there was more of it.

Temporary College Drop-Out

/ Mariana Rodrigues Cabral / 4 Comments

A few days ago I dropped out of college. Well, not entirely. I’m taking a semester off to save money and to “figure shit out” as it has been frequently put. I should start out by mentioning that the whole college process has irked me since my junior year of high school. I wrote a whole paper about how much I detested the process for a creative writing class final and everything. I remember dreading my parents’ lectures regarding the threat of college debt and also recall thinking that they were over-exaggerating. Of course, I only realize now that they were annoyingly right. Junior and senior year in high school go by so quickly, there is hardly enough time to catch a breath between searching for colleges, completing the common app, asking for recommendations and writing a sublime college essay. This leaves students with nearly no time at all to make informed financial decisions. It just so happens that this topic is the least talked about throughout the entire process. Students are often told that tuition should not be a deciding factor if the school is of great quality or valued name. Well, I can say right here and now that this is complete bull shit. Of course college representatives are going to tell students that! A salesman wouldn’t tell his customer that overpaying for his product might be a longterm bad decision. What’s sad is that my generation is probably going to suffer the most as a result of the college financial crisis. It’s those of us who can visualize the debt we are putting ourselves through and somehow avoid it by making informed decisions that prevent life long financial troubles.

Anyway, back to my dropping out of college. I realized halfway through my first semester as a freshman that the price I was paying for the education quality I was receiving and my living arrangement was absolutely absurd. I learned more in every high school English class I had ever taken than the one writing class I took in college. Now, I know every college is different so I figured that this particular one was not the right pick for me and that it wouldn’t be worth throwing fifteen grand out of my ass for a school that I was already so unpleased with. If I could offer anyone dealing with the college process right now any piece of advice it would be not to rush the process or feel the need to do what everyone else around you is doing. It is unbearably tempting to choose the school with the name so as to compete with your classmates but, ultimately, unnecessary. What often goes over students’ heads, which passed right over mine as well, is that one can still have “the college experience” and do so by making financially informed decisions that will only serve to make life easier and more pleasurable down the road. That is precisely why I have made this seemingly drastic decision to take this semester off. I need time, time I didn’t have when it was most necessary, to think ahead. This time I want to make sure that I pick the right school, in the right place, with the right tuition so that I can pave the way for a life of success and little stress.

18 and Lost

/ Mariana Rodrigues Cabral / Leave a comment
I feel suffocated. When did it become so difficult to feel even an ounce of inspiration? Flashback to nine years ago, 2005, and that is when my creative streak peeked. I’m only eighteen years old and I already feel like I have nothing left to give. I keep hearing that it’s “normal” for me to feel as though I can never be as creative, imaginative or spontaneous as my ten-year-old self but I refuse to believe that age is the only factor in this equation. Like always, I question if it has something to do with my generation as a whole.
Though I participate in social networking, youtubing, tumblring, etc, as much as the next eighteen-year-old of 2013, I also tend to be the harshest critic of my particular generation’s flaws. We are constantly connected to some life-sucking device that manages to feed our every desire. Facebook makes you feel social and wanted through “likes” while Instagram allows you to document your entire life, day by day, through pictures. When we’re not texting, liking, following, reblogging, posting, tagging, chatting, etc, what are we actually doing? I don’t mean to sound cynical, especially because I, too, find the impulse to stay connected almost addictive. I’m merely trying to voice that I am scared. I fear that I’m losing myself as well as my potential. I wonder sometime if my life would be any different as an eighteen-year-old in the late 60’s or early 70’s before cellphones and the global internet takeover. Maybe instead of telling myself I’m going to use my computer to write and, instead, go on youtube or tumblr for an hour, I would actually get a notebook and start writing.
It haunts me to think about everything I would get accomplished without the lure to connect constantly on the brain. I miss being ten-years-old, with “nothing to do” when the possibilities in my bedroom were endless: from drawing to creating a movie with my dolls or even pretending to be in music videos in front of my mirror. Now, after years of googling, every time I want to create something my brain conjures up hundreds of images of people who already did it, which forces me to think, “Oh, well. Someone’s already done that so what’s the point?” That, right there, is the internet’s most damaging flaw. My generation is terrified to create because everything has been done and is paraded in front of our very eyes every time we log on to the internet. It would be an understatement to call this discouraging. Back in the day, someone would have an idea for a book and write it instead of realizing first that their idea had already been done. If people thought that way all the time, nothing would ever be created. I used to think I was so unique when I was child, that I could create something rare. Recently, this feeling has begun to diminish. I don’t know what’s creative anymore. It feels like everything has been accomplished and I’ve lost sight of where to start. Nevertheless, my goal for this year is to stop feeling this way.
I’m forcing myself to consider that I never lost the ten-year-old girl who constantly made something out of nothing when I turned eighteen, I just lost sight of her through years of unnecessary and, frankly, unrewarding media distractions. Enough is enough. Unfortunately, in the world I live in today, it would be unwise of me to completely detach myself from all social-networking. I have grown to recognize that there are aspects of it that are advantageous as well. I merely want to step back and remind myself frequently never to allow the internet to control me. I want to be the one to, instead, break the code and find out how to use the internet for my own creative benefits. If I can achieve this, I think I will regain the passion for creativity I had when I was a kid again instead of falling into the internet’s often tempting trap. Like Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up”.