Sometimes, I think that I may have lost the beat that inspired me. Five years ago, I wouldn't have known what I meant if I had that thought.

When I was a child, I had some sense of stability in my life. Stability in my hope that life could improve, and within its core, life was meant to be beautiful. I don't know if I believe that anymore.

I think life is supposed to be hard. People are meant to struggle. People are meant to build themselves back up. But why? When do you lose that hope and the drive.

Teachers and adults would always applaud students for projects that benefitted others. As if, that all disappears when you reach a certain age. You can't find hope or you know better than to be tricked into thinking it exists. I see colleagues and professors and classmates who think like this. Everything is a circle-jerk. Then why are we here? What are we doing this for? If you honestly believed that, wouldn't you just give up and call it a life? Or do you live just to feel the few moments of bliss that happiness can bring?

I'm not sure that I know the answer, but I know that feeling empty isn't it.

I'm knocking on your door today. Answer, please.  Beause I have been standing on your porch for hours. When I got here I felt lost. Lost- I couldn't even feel my legs, and my mind was full of empty thoughts. Can God fix lost? How about confused?

God, I'm knocking. Isn't this your door?

This morning was a struggle to get out of bed. But I did. 

I went to Lakeside Middle School and interviewed the last child on the CASA case I am working on. Today, I decided to take the 44 to the law school. On the bench, I met a man who had just lost his wife and was trying to sell me a bottle of wine. 

But then, I got on the bus and I sat across from someone whose soul spoke to me.  It was practically screaming at me.... I just wish that I knew what it was saying. 

Wooden Deceit

The wind was blowing softly, and I sat down on the neglected wooden swing in the backyard. Green leaves popped out of the decaying section of the next tree. Swinging back and forth, I thought about what we would all write on your headstone. My words seemed harsh and unnatural- perfectly fitting for  a concrete memorial to a young life full of regret and pain. But I didn't want my words to be fitting. I wanted my words to left you up to everything that I knew you could be. As if words in death could re-write life. 

Let's re-write life with drawn out adjectives and over emphatic verbs. Let's infuse the drab misgivings of yesterday with a colorful fire that strangers would be envious of. Let's deceive ourselves with the beauty of language...

Jersey

Jersey this is what I miss about you:

1. Climbing up on Life Guard Stands to have serious conversations
2. Summer dried salty curly hair
3. Garden State Parkway Signs
4. Driving around late at night
5. Best friends and trouble
6. Wawa
7. A gaint excuse to have an attitude
8. Recording thunderstorms

............ and maybe that's it.....

My connection to you still allows me to be teased by by Constitutional Law professor. Every. Other. Day.

Whoah Flashback

In 2012, I started this blog when I first decided that I would spend a year traveling in Europe. That did not happen. I think that was largely to do with my struggle with mental health and a broken heart. My writing used to be so rich. I reminisced about experiences and positively strode on and on about adventures that I had. 

I am so glad that I wrote about them, because I can't remember them nearly as clearly today. However, that makes me think that I should keep blogging. Despite being quite boring this year, I have had experiences that I would like to recall and grow from. 

Can I make a new vow? Yes. I will. I will try to blog at least every other day. This summer I will be in Birmingham, Alabama for an internship so there should be some really interesting material to write about. 

However, I decided not to take the bus to the deep south this summer. I will be flying I will also be making a trip to Boston.. and possibly NYC. 

Judge Me, Because I am Judging Myself

I judged myself today when I dropped my phone on my toe.
And the entire screen shattered.
I cried. The real salty kind of tears.

Perhaps yesterday was a more apt day for judgement,
when I drank tequila silver alone while lying on my bedroom floor
over a criminal law textbook.

Or maybe today..
My brother called me collect from prison
I wonder how much the recollection of his crack induced burglary will cost
Or coaching him through the GED process
As I pushed my law books off of the table

Once

Once I read this book that told me to start a poem with
"Once"
"Once," every line
"Once," like I owned it- as if it was mine
"Once," like that time
I took the greyhound line, and told myself once
Only once.
Not twice, because I could only handle a cross-country bus ride once
I only wanted to be bitten by a stranger once
But then I remembered that happened twice- once
On a bus, once in basketball game
And then "once" turned into twice.

My blog now functions as the only means to edit my papers for law school, because Microsoft Word has insisted that I cam attempting to write my papers in french.

I am not sir. I am not.

Being Native

My mother told me when I was a little girl that she was Native American. Her real parents were and she wanted to find them. She never told me directly that I was Native, but I knew that since I was her daughter I could infer my decent. For years I watched her toil with her heritage. We went to reservations and museums. All of her artwork was made on reservations. It was her most prized possession. I do not think that I ever saw her as empassioned by something as when she was searching for her birth parents. 

In her pursuit, she would forget that she had children of her own and that we were part of this struggle with her. I was young then and my mom had already become abusive, but she had moments when she would share the freedom and hope that she gained from connecting with Native culture with us. When I was six, I think a major obstacle came in her way and she became ill. I remember how distraught she was over the thought of her search for her parents ending. She wanted to hire a private investigator. 

Hey mom, we are still here. Hey mom, I don't know if this is you or the drugs but you are hurting me. Hey mom, you are turning my curiousity about you into hate. Hey mom, you are someone else's daughter, but I am yours. 

After I left my mother's care, people could tell I was native because of my skin tone in the summer, my face shape, and my body type. I never owned being Native American. The choas growing up in drugs, abuse, and poverty became the only culture that I was exposed to. 

In college, I tried to connect but I am not native "enough." What is enough? I know I didn't grow up n the reservation and my skin is so light I pass for fully white. That is the Irish half of me washing the Native out. I never wanted it to be washed out-- I didn't even fully grasp what it is. I want to, because I can feel the missing part. Native spiritualiy calls to me. But I am an outsider... forever an outsider. 

Isn't it funny how people can feel sorry for you, but when you grow up without a family on the outside of any community, no one will accept you later.. 

Funny. Today I began reading a book about writing and the writing process. I have realized why I felt stuck in the writing process for the last year. I need to warm myself up before I begin writing. I need to let myself get out the mess and the stress becfore I can say something that is powerful. For some reason, I had become so overcome with a fear of the audience that was reading that I began writing horrible work product. 

The essay that I just wrote may have been the most powerful thing that I have written in the lest six months. Realizing this has been a little frightening, because my friend, I am in law school and I am writing all of the time. This realization means that what I have been writing has been crap, which is evidenced by my journaling for the past year. But yeah know, who is paying attention anyway? Law school is just biting off bits of my soul little by little.. oh well. Oh, and perhaps I should more heavily edit my material because I accidentally handed in a mid-term that did not have a complete sentence, and that one point mark-off means something here. 

Is it okay to turn a blog into a free writing catalog? I actually do not care what the rhetorical answer is because I am going to make it so.

Dear Committee

Thank you for presenting today during the lunch hour about admissions at UW. I am writing because when we were speaking, I felt that there was some tension. I just wanted to clarify my perspective.
As a first generation college student that was able to attend Stanford on through a targeted program, I have thought a lot about inclusion in institutions of higher learning. I am white, but I was also in foster care and my siblings are incarcerated.  I did not think that I was going to attend to law school, because I did not have any reverence for the law. I decided to come to law school the summer before my senior year of college when I advocated for change in the U.S. child welfare system. When I applied, I was not supported through the process and I did not study for the LSAT at all. I think many students that come from diverse backgrounds my struggle to find the time that it takes to prepare for law school admission. Not all people of color come from certain socio-economic backgrounds, but if we look at the spread of wealth in the U.S. it is undeniable that we may need to address issues surrounding poverty and inequality when looking to broaden UW Law's diversity in the classroom. (Especially if UW wants to be a leader in public service law, as well as a leader to finding new ways to engage disparately affected demographics of people in the legal profession).

Before I came to UW Law, I chose to take a gap year to work as a policy coordinator. I worked on issues affecting current and former foster youth. The majority of the youth that I worked with were transition aged (18-24) youth of color. When they came to the Capitol to give testimony they exhibited an initial resistance to government structures and a strong distaste for the police. If I talked to them about their future, many of the youth said that they would never be able to attend law school.

If we are serious about making UW a more diverse place we need to address support issues in recruitment and retention. We need to reach out to communities to see what they want to learn about the law and perhaps tailor visitation days to teaching around that goal and exposing youth to the legal profession.

Today was a day about reflection. When I engage with black letter law and legal concepts it is really easy to spot where the disconnect often occurs for various racial and ethnic groups, and socio-economic classes of individuals.

I received a phone call from an old place of work to give me an update. After hearing the news, I took to google. Researching is what new and lawyers-in-training do. I researched the name and the news was the first thing that appeared in my search bar. I looked through the other people who were arrested in the "sting." Unsurprisingly, the majority of those arrested were of color, and present in the population were a disproportionate amount of transgender people of color. Sad. Sad. Sad. I have serious doubts about policing practices in the U.S. and this only serves to further solidy my thoughts.

Mondays have a bad reputation. Yesterday didn't help that reputation much. After I had to complete a take-home mid-term over the weekend, I think I was ready to crash. My only evidence is that I was supposed to go to a dinner, so I went home to changing. Before I began to change, I laid down on the floor. Three hours later I got up, and I had missed the dinner.

Judge me. That is a judge-able moment.

I can't wait until tomorrow. Em will be here and I can make her do things to make my life easier for a few days. I am feeling overwhelmed by life right now. My introvert self is being extended in ways that are too exhausting.

In other news, it is looking like I will be taking a visit to the Deep South again this summer. I have two interviews with Federal District Court Judges in Tulsa, OK and Birmingham, AL. The universe is telling me to put my feet to the fire. I talk a lot about social inequality and racial issues. Where better to confront all forms of social oppresssion and socio-economic issues than the Deep South? I have my skirt suit ready. Hopefully, I can maintain some sort of verbal eloquence throughout the interviews. I also need to remember my biggest strength and weakness... I always forget when I am sitting in a chair across from someone I don't know. Maybe the distance of electronis devices will ease that anxiety.

Before I had time to post this blog, I had to send out emails to three of the student groups that I am in. Wow. Maybe that is where I went wrong. I need to reign myself in, or maybe it is too late.

State of the Union

Sadly, I will be unable to geek out and watch the State of the Union tonight. I will be sealing juvenile records in the U-District, but with some lovely people. While drudging to the 5:30 bus, I was thinking how in 100 years students may be studying the oratory of President Obama like we study President Roosevelt, perhaps even more so because Obama is the first black president and utilizes such skill in all of his high profile oration.

Now, I would much rather watch the State of the Union of Poverty, a talk that was given at Stanford a few weeks back, but I will take the State of the Union on podcast for tomorrow's morning workout. I can dig that.

I learn fastest when mortified. Proof- today. I had an interview with a U.S. Attorney for the 7th Circuit for a federal 1L clerkship, and of course, I mixed up PST and CST. It was comical how fast I went through the transition from nervous to blaise because I thought that I had ruined the entire interview process. Luckily, he was patient and moved me on to the next round.

Next round, judicial interview. Next interview with the ABA… Friday. Hopefully I move through the ABA so that I can ensure some funding for my summer.

Embarassment #2 of the day: Going out to the bar with other law students to review finals, ask the waitress for water, she goes to the public pitcher for everyone and pours your glass. Ouch, did not mean to seem privileged. Bam. The worst part is- she remembered me from previous visits and was being so nice… I just never ordered water before. (maybe that says more about me then her going to get me water…)

…..on that grind.

Vivid Dreaming

Alas, my dreams have caught up with me. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but when I wake up at 5 am on the weekdays in order to go to the gym I always wake up during a dream cycle. This morning my dream was particularly violent, and although I do not always enjoy waking up at such an early hour, I was very glad to have this dream interrupted before the injuries that I was seeing become exposed in more detail.

The funny thing is, I have no idea where my mind gets this violent and graphic images from. As a child I witnessed violent things, but never to the extent that was revealed in my dreams. Maybe I caught a glimpse of injuries on the television, but this makes me wish that I hadn't. Why would you want to expose yourself and others to such trauma on a daily basis via media sources. I can't watch graphic violence in movies or on television anymore because I find it disturbing, but I didn't find it as disturbing in elementary or high school.

Ok, for example, my dream this morning featured a couple on a beach. The beach was somewhat of a geographic wonder. The winds were very strong and the beach was more like a series of cliffs covered with greenish yellow algea. There were a few other people out in the cliffs as the tide became to come in, but the couple had an argument and the male tried to leave. In an attempt to leave he jumped from the cliff hoping to drift in the wind. As soon as he jumped, the wind let up and he crashed into the rocks.

I have never seen a climbing ot rock accident in real life, and I hope never to see one. But how could my imaginiation be so vivid as to picture the damage that could occur from such an accident? Wild.

Conversely, maybe this is an extension of the nightmarish dreams that I have always had in association with the ocean.

Funny, because I just visited Wesport, WA this weekend and saw a coast line that is very different than the east coast and the Northern California coast.

Good morning world. I woke up up this morning feeling fatigued and unready to open up the curtains. Can I stay in bed all day? No, no. Get up. Get somewhat ready, because you have commitments to follow through on. Get up. You don't have to be perfectly put together together today- you just need to be there. Emotional shrapnel is lodged into my skin. I don't want to go out, because I don't want othr people to see it. I feel like I need to spend the day picking it out.

Can someone else pretend to be me for a few hours today?

Souvenir Socks

Watch cars as they pass.
Make names for the drivers.
As your skin melts toward the ground
And your mind reaches to the moon
Their made-up futures pulsing through your brain

You are a transit center
Travelers pass through
Leave socks that fell from leather luggage
A Stranger's socks-- Black tubes, and Hanes
Musty with the regret

I knew the owner once
She slept in my bed
And kept her hand in my heart
I knew the owner once
She caressed my skin
And squeezed my spirit tight

I don't know when she left
But I felt the air as she passed
Traveled through-- this transit center of a heart
Leaving socks as souvenirs.

--Crys

Introverted iNtuiting Feeling Judging

by Marina Margaret Heiss

INFJs are distinguished by both their complexity of character and the unusual range and depth of their talents. Strongly humanitarian in outlook, INFJs tend to be idealists, and because of their J preference for closure and completion, they are generally "doers" as well as dreamers. This rare combination of vision and practicality often results in INFJs taking a disproportionate amount of responsibility in the various causes to which so many of them seem to be drawn.

INFJs are deeply concerned about their relations with individuals as well as the state of humanity at large. They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people -- a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world. On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few from among their long-term friends, family, or obvious "soul mates." While instinctively courting the personal and organizational demands continually made upon them by others, at intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates. This apparent paradox is a necessary escape valve for them, providing both time to rebuild their depleted resources and a filter to prevent the emotional overload to which they are so susceptible as inherent "givers." As a pattern of behavior, it is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the enigmatic INFJ character to outsiders, and hence the most often misunderstood -- particularly by those who have little experience with this rare type.

Due in part to the unique perspective produced by this alternation between detachment and involvement in the lives of the people around them, INFJs may well have the clearest insights of all the types into the motivations of others, for good and for evil. The most important contributing factor to this uncanny gift, however, are the empathic abilities often found in Fs, which seem to be especially heightened in the INFJ type (possibly by the dominance of the introverted N function).

This empathy can serve as a classic example of the two-edged nature of certain INFJ talents, as it can be strong enough to cause discomfort or pain in negative or stressful situations. More explicit inner conflicts are also not uncommon in INFJs; it is possible to speculate that the causes for some of these may lie in the specific combinations of preferences which define this complex type. For instance, there can sometimes be a "tug-of-war" between NF vision and idealism and the J practicality that urges compromise for the sake of achieving the highest priority goals. And the I and J combination, while perhaps enhancing self-awareness, may make it difficult for INFJs to articulate their deepest and most convoluted feelings.

Usually self-expression comes more easily to INFJs on paper, as they tend to have strong writing skills. Since in addition they often possess a strong personal charisma, INFJs are generally well-suited to the "inspirational" professions such as teaching (especially in higher education) and religious leadership. Psychology and counseling are other obvious choices, but overall, INFJs can be exceptionally difficult to pigeonhole by their career paths. Perhaps the best example of this occurs in the technical fields. Many INFJs perceive themselves at a disadvantage when dealing with the mystique and formality of "hard logic", and in academic terms this may cause a tendency to gravitate towards the liberal arts rather than the sciences. However, the significant minority of INFJs who do pursue studies and careers in the latter areas tend to be as successful as their T counterparts, as it is *iNtuition* -- the dominant function for the INFJ type -- which governs the ability to understand abstract theory and implement it creatively.

In their own way, INFJs are just as much "systems builders" as are INTJs; the difference lies in that most INFJ "systems" are founded on human beings and human values, rather than information and technology. Their systems may for these reasons be conceptually "blurrier" than analogous NT ones, harder to measure in strict numerical terms, and easier to take for granted -- yet it is these same underlying reasons which make the resulting contributions to society so vital and profound.

Tegan and Sara,

Can we hang out tonight?

http://youtu.be/WZHGeg_0Rlo

An INFJ Explosion

I am having an INFJ explosion right now. It started last night and then I felt the deprivation of art. I think an INFJ explosion may be better explained as an implosion, but I am so disoriented that it is difficult to tell the difference.

Over the last year, I felt more that I was criticising myself, when this just happens to be my personality type. We have types and that is okay.

I need abstraction, and novels, and thai food, and a bandaid for my heart.

I could fell it for awhile, but I had been so distracted by school and the mission that I am pursuing that I didn't realize that the person that I loved was being entangled by someone else's affections. I knew in October/November. It changed, and that is why I couldn't be open. I was defensive.

How odd, how you can love a person and even though they love you, it is muted or altered because of the strong feeling (or I would even venture to say love) that someone else has for that person. And, its like, how didn't you know. How didn't you know that they loved you and they thought about you two being together for so long. There must have been more signs, and I wasn't even there and I could feel them. I could feel our dynamic change.

I thought that I had fallen out of love, but I could really just feel that the love was faded in some way and it wasn't genuine and untouched. And now its like a movie reel in my head. All th moments that I felt it. The same feeling that I felt last night when I read those texts, I had felt that before and now they are stringing themselves together like a movie- a really horrible movie.

I just read them over and over and over again last night, and felt it permeate into my heart. Truly loving someone is dangerous and you don't even know how deeply you feel that until you know what made that love change.

"wandering between two worlds-- one dead, the other powerless to be born."

Time to Turn Those Scars Into Action

"...but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of dirct action'; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptence is much more bewildering than outright rejection."- MLK Jr.