to love it all

21:00 december 31, 2016

hello hello hello

so i’m just going to share a journal entry from the hours before the clock strikes midnight here in california. i haven’t been able to muster anything up from inside of me lately, and i think if i just break the ice now and get rid of my cold feet via casual and intimate post, it should make 2017 a bit less daunting when it comes to writing.

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this is going to be very messy and all over the place but that’s okay because that’s a bit how 2016 has ended

so i went on hiatus for my first quarter of college. i didn’t think i would, however it turned out, i really needed it. 

what have you missed in the last 3 months?

well, i turned 18 a few days ago.

i was the lead in the big fall ram’s head show at stanford, the big game gaieties.

i made this video to sum all of it up:

i’ve made some incredible friends and met brilliant people.

as soon as i moved in, i suddenly realized i know way less than i thought i did, about both myself and the world around me and everything in general.

these past 3 months have been very hard. hard is an understatement. it’s been complicated and vibrant and challenging and taxing and exhausting, but i wouldn’t trade it for the world.

do i have any regrets? yes and no. of course, things could have been done differently, however, as always, i believe i had to go through what i did to make it to where i am now. (obviously)

–

now,

what people don’t tell you about your transition to college is that the transition is so much deeper than simply missing your friends and family and home-cooked meals. it runs deeper. it upsets your stomach and tugs at your nerve endings, asking you every hour why you don’t feel completely comfortable and why you can’t find any answers. 

when you’re home, you have control over almost every aspect of your life. you know every action, reaction, and consequence; how to fix things; how to tweak how you feel; how to deal with problems that come up every day. it’s all routine, you have, hopefully, figured out by that time who you should surround yourself with, where you fit into the big picture concerning your learning environment and hometown, how much you’re capable of within the bounds you have had for 17 or 18 years. you somewhat know how to exist, period. 

and this is what i believe to be missing.

i had these aforementioned luxuries, growing up. i pushed my envelope as far as i could, i knew every nook and cranny to my life and my self as it lays in brentwood. with this, i had the luxury of delving even further into myself. i constantly sought answers, resolutions, reasons as to why i am the way i am, why i felt the way i felt in a moment in time.

the issue is that when i got to college, answers stopped being 3 hours of writing away. resolutions made through in-depth analyses of my self could not be made. this felt like a short coming. it feels like a short coming now. i crave certainty and i crave a means to explain things. i want to know why i’m crying, i want to know why i feel numb, and i have really come to dislike the blind anxiety i come to face more now recently than ever before. 

i am built on seeking resolutions. however, if i learned anything in my first quarter at stanford, it’s that, for the sake of my sanity, i cannot continue this endless pursuit for resolutions. the problems are getting larger, more convoluted, more deeply seated. to seek definitive answers to everything i experience is sisyphean in its nature. 

so where am i now?

i am not broken, that’s for sure. i know that.

there were many moments in the year when i felt like i was. as i dug around inside myself, i grew convinced that, as i found more tarnished pieces, i started to believe that i was the sum of my broken parts rather than a whole person. i was scared- am scared- of how much bigger the world can get. i’ve lost a lot of trust in my brain recently, but everyday i work harder and harder to build up my relationship with it more and more. 

being around brilliant people, has undoubtedly taken a toll on my self-esteem and i will admit that whole-heartedly. 

however, that double-edged sword has also taught me that i am so capable of loving and being loved, and that i am just as bright and brilliant and worth loving just as much as anyone else.

i’m about to take a bubble bath instead of go to a party this new year’s eve. i just played a game of scrabble with my family. i got home from disneyland with my brother and his new girlfriend last night. my 18th birthday has taught me that my friends know and care about me a lot more than i thought they do. 

i don’t know when i started to doubt how much love surrounded me. 

i don’t know when i started to evaluate the size of my place in peoples hearts. 

i don’t know when i started to isolate myself in my own

all i do know is that in 2017, i need to stop that.

i need to unlearn any doubts i have regarding my importance, capabilities, and worth

my only resolution for 2017 is to love, others and myself with as much conviction as i can.

i speak in absolutes and i’m currently writing some heavy words, so i’d like to mention that i am incredibly content with where i am now.

i am a bit more sober than i was at the end of the summer, however i do not believe anything i’ve experienced this quarter, emotionally, has dampened my ability to find light. 

this is not a cry for help. 

this is me, opening avenues of vulnerability with you in order to communicate that these feelings are not isolated. 

i wailed to my mother over the phone everyday for the last 2 weeks of school. i threw fits. i fell asleep at 9:30pm sometimes crying. i stayed in. i binge ate. i would stare at pages on my desk for hours on end, overwhelmed. i felt like i was the only one losing it. i just wish that i knew at the time that it was normal to feel that sort of pressure. 

i’ve also learned that one MUST choose your battles. to be the rock when others need it most. to unravel before those you trust, and work to build back up again when others need your backbone.

but i’ll talk about that another time.

—

i’m not sure where any of this is going.

i have so much to say right now. i have so much to say. i don’t know how to say any of it, and that’s more than okay. 

this is where i am right now. i am a vessel that’s housing billions of floating fragments of words, phrases, and emotions and every inch of me is aching to get it all down. every inch of me is aching to share it with someone. get it on paper and make it a reality.

but this will have to suffice. a messy document with no direction. fragments, a lack of capitalization, and no clear narrative structure. no resolution, just the way i’ve learned to like it.

there’s no big take away other than:

hello, i am isabela angus. i am eighteen years old currently enrolled in my freshman year at stanford university. my new year’s resolution for 2017 is to love. to love where i am. to love who i am. to love who i am with. to love the process. to love the idea that i don’t know where i am going. to love others. to love the ups and downs and in-betweens. to love every monotonous moment. to love uncertainty. to love growing up. to love the idea of knowing less as i experience more, rather than being afraid of it. to love it all

here’s to the new year.

with love, vulnerability, and hope;

izzy