I’d like to preface my thoughts with something I find myself saying way too often: I am glad to read how much our voices echo each other’s. As if the abyss that we so claim to be lonely, is just violently muted by the overwhelming laments of a generation that can just politely offer a ‘same’ in hopes we all find saving. There is some sick comfort I feel to know I am not the only one a little lost and a little unmotivated. Is it that all of us as leaders sacrifice some part of ourselves? Or it is that we are much more similar than we care to acknowledge? 

Anyhow, I hope you guys can find some relatability in the following poem, and if it resonates, I am sorry, and I am here. 

I had no agency over the start of my story,  

though I take on the duty to develop its prose. 

And in my new setting, there is only so much concrete left to tag.  

This semester feels like last semester and that felt like the last one.

Maybe it is not quarantine.

Or a pandemic.,

rather, the numbing fog lurking in the deep shadows, locked in a box, deep in a closet. 

How can I stand out

in a city of lights?

Who am I? Or better yet who can I be?

But you’ve read the cliché

Often, I find myself self-absorbed in my own grandiose

engorged in my own little tales

as if truly the world moves as I do.  

Is that not how we should live? With our heart on our sleeve?

Is that not who we should seek? Those who seem to whisk away the clouds with every wink,

delicate lashes furiously beating the landscape around them.

I imagine this is how a dark hole must feel like. 

So focused on its insatiable hunger, on more and more and more and more…

Oblivious.

Around it? Destruction, rubbish and darkness 

Why is it that even after all is gone it was never enough?  

Why is it that school and work and work and school and school and work… 

The last three years I’ve housed my own dorm, comfortably yapping in my thoughts;

the passive aggressive roommate who wants order,

the sloth who doesn’t do anything,

the child who throws tantrums,

the runaway dog, digging holes everywhere,

and the one who claims to have it all together, so transparent behind tinted windows.

What will I challenge myself with this semester?

To be kinder, to me. 

Even when kinder means tough.

Even when kinder means boundaries.

Even when kinder may seem not so kind, after 22 days though it just might.

What do I expect this semester? 

Change, closeness, resilience.

To feel close enough to change and foundationally strong to adapt.

I guess it was better than a quiet house,

But to think was keeping me from living as if the wind and the leaves and the sun are all there

for me,  

to touch my skin softly,  

gifting me what I need to stay here.