Follow your own path

Me and my amazing siblings. My sis is 10 years older than me,
and my bro is 2 years younger, all from the same marriage.
(Apparently I was born black... to this day it is still a mystery)

     A middle child in a catholic household, I was always an obedient infant. My mother says she was even worried I had learning disabilities, as I was an unusually quiet and calm kid. My brother and sister had the strong tempers, but not me. I was always known as the more tranquil one in the family. This behavior made my mom so worried, that she scheduled meetings with all of my teachers in order to find out what was going on inside that tiny little brain of mine. And the results finally came: I was apparently a very smart kid. My brother and sister were (and still are) both incredible singers, they knew they wanted to be artists for the rest of their lives and were always "too cool for school". On the other hand, there I was: the “brains” of the family. From then on, my life was pretty much figured out for myself: I was to forever be a math/science geek.

     But I didn't always stay put as the quiet good girl I used to be. At 10 years old, after five years of begging, my mother finally decided to enroll me in violin lessons. By then, I was already becoming the extroverted ball of energy that I still am to this day. They say music and mathematics are the languages of the universe, which is I guess why for a math geek, music seemed to come naturally. And thus I found my second passion... For 10 years I played the violin on a daily basis, and I loved it. Pretty quickly I gained the artistic respect in a family full of musicians, as I kept my place as the first violin in my town's local orchestra for years.

Ugly duckling - exhibit A

     After those awkward years as the skinniest (and definitely not prettiest) metal-faced teen in my school, my braces were finally off at 16, I got a new hairstyle and the “ugly duckling syndrome” hit home. I then became a cheerleader, mathlete, orchestra kid, nerd and fashion model all at once. It was initially overwhelming, but life was good... as I felt like I had the very best of both worlds.
     Up to this day, I've tried really hard to hold on to all of these diverse aspects of my personality, along with all those others that have arisen from my life experiences. In all honesty, the only part I hate about it is the pressure from all the different people in my worlds who pull towards opposite directions. I hate how my “cool” friends or people from the fashion industry look at my “geeky” life and say: “Ugh! Why would you play video games or do this and that? It's not cool.”. I also hate how my other friends look at my job and at my friends who are involved in the fashion industry and automatically think themselves to be smarter, better, or more interesting than anyone inside of it, judging only by their looks.

Modeling for BCBG

     When people look at me now, I think they mostly only see the fashion model and fail to notice all the other parts of who I really am, the parts that I believe even dominate over anything else. Having this experience myself has taught me there's more to everyone than meets the eye. "If she's too attractive, she can't be a real nerd." You can't even begin to imagine how much I dislike hearing this expression, whether it be regarding myself or somebody I don't even know. And now I shall sin by generalizing on stereotypes just like I advice others not to do... but the truth is many nerds have a huge intellectual ego (trust me, I know). They believe that if they think someone is more attractive than them, then most certainly that person cannot be nearly as smart/interesting as them. I am constantly intellectually underestimated, and it sucks.

ALL RIGHTS FOR ALL KINDS OF LOVE!
LOVE DIVERSITY!

     One of the hardest obstacles in my internal journey was letting go of religion. I was raised under a very catholic family, and I went to a catholic school ruled by nuns from first grade all the way through high school. Looking back, I now understand why it was so hard to let go off the idea, for whether it was intentionally or not, I was brainwashed. When I got to college and moved away from home, I got to experience life from many other perspectives, and interacted with people whose reality was very different from mine. Eventually, I wasn't able to wrap my head around many of the things I knew as absolute, unquestionable truths. Today, to the disgrace of many of my close-minded family members, I am not only unreligious, but I am also a strong and active advocate for gay rights, as it is a cause that I hold very close to my heart for many personal reasons.
     Scripts are rubbish. I have struggled with them throughout my whole life, and I would be lying if I said I don't care about them anymore, or I'm completely over it. The truth is that we all care about what other people think, or what image they have of us. I don't buy the whole "right brained/left brained" thing, and the fact that we have to choose which one suits us best, or which side is more developed. Today, I choose to be me. I am proud of who I've been, and I am proud of who I am: an ever-evolving creature that is still finding her place in this immense world of infinite possibilities. That's the script I want to follow.

Left... right... who cares? We all have both, don't we?!

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? - Running Brave

     As complex as a human life may be, regardless of its many twists and turns, it can be summed up in one simple word: decisions. Life is in itself a collection of choices that each people makes that, when combined, make up a common result. These choices are clearly influenced by our own experiences, as all of the moments in our own individual histories are what makes us who we are, what impulses us to make the decisions that we do. Billy Mills made numerous choices throughout his journey that took him from place to place, physically as well as emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

     Contrary to popular perception, a “place” does not always have to be physical. When we're having a hard time, it is common to make use of the expressions: “I'm in a bad place right now” or “John is really in a dark place”. Do we ever stop and think about what it is that we really mean by this? Each person has inside their mind an enormous world made up of their imagination. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that this made up world is any less real than the physical “reality” of this dimension.

     Billy Mills had the opportunity of traveling a lot during the course of his life as a young adult. All of these trips are what make up his external journey, a physical one. First, he traveled 650 miles outside of his home to go off to college, where he confronted a whole new world very different from the one that he had grown up in. Once in school, he took time off to work with his own very personal concerns, which also made him travel 10 hours home and back as he oscillated between Billy Mills the runner and college student, and Billy Mills the small town indian. Aside from this, he also had the chance to travel the world because of his career, making it all the way to Tokyo to represent his homeland in the World Olympics.

     As real and active as this passage was, Mills also experienced a very personal and emotional trip: his internal journey. This one was made up of all of his thoughts, insecurities, expectations, feelings and ideas about the world and the life he was choosing for himself. Billy's internal journey is evident from the very beginning of the film. As perhaps a stereotypical quality as a native american indian, he was always a very reflective and meditative young man. This means that even if he was seemingly quiet or static, his mind made him travel at uncountable miles per hour inside his own world. All of us are really like this, some more than others, but Billy was very conscious about his journey and constantly seemed to be trying to figure out where he wanted it to take him, who he really wanted to be.

     One of the clearest examples of this is his constant internal conflict between the regular college kid and the american indian that he felt like he used to be. When Mills goes off to college, it almost seems like he has slowly lost the strong connection with his refugee life, but he still doesn't seem to quite fit in with the modern world. As a result, Billy feels lost in his internal journey, as he no longer has a clear idea of who he is and who he wants to be. This is clearly visible in the dorm scene where he yells back at another boy saying “I am not a chief!”. The fact that he gets so angry over his schoolmate's immature remark is indicative of how much his internal journey was affecting him emotionally, and how much more in his internal journey he had yet to go.

     All of the decisions that Billy Mills made guided his internal and external journey, and made him arrive at the psychological and physical places that he went to. Both of these traveling experiences were always interconnected, as some decisions in his physical journey affected his emotional, mental, or spiritual state, and vice versa. Every person has in their hands the power to write their own story through the course of their internal and external journeys. The charm of it all is that it is sometimes almost impossible to figure out which one came first, which turns life as we perceive it into a beautifully blended mixture of endless voyages.