This semester has been incredibly difficult and brought with it many changes. Academically, it has been very rigorous, and in my social life, mentally and emotionally it has been very trying. There have been many times where I felt completely overwhelmed, lost, and in search for answers. I am still in search of those answers, and do not know if I will ever find them. My friends have been a huge part of my journey this semester. I have had a friend who has been there to listen to every doubt and uncertainty I have had. I have had an amazing friend who got me a job, and got me to start writing these pieces every single week. And I have grown from that. I want nothing more than to be to them the friends that they have been to me. I have learned a lot about life and the experiences of it over the course of the past few months. I have discovered a lot about myself, too.

With all of the complexities of life, as we pass through it and as it passes us by, I wish things would just stop for a brief moment. I want it to freeze.

I want to sit outside, with the friends I hold most dear, and gaze up at the endless sky: realizing that our time here is temporary and that the love we have for each other means something. We are not alone in this world. I want to sit out and gaze at the stars and contemplate the far away galaxies, the depths of a black hole, the incomprehensibility of love, the meaning of a life, and what we're meant to do with our lives. I want conversations that cannot be forgotten. I want to be lost in company. I want the stars to be my example. I want to roam without a destination and not have a single anxiety or worry. I want to relish in the act of doing absolutely nothing, but having it mean everything. I want to dream beyond the realms of possibility, and explore the beauty of the simplest things in life. It is not the end. Far from it. We have our whole lives ahead of us. Why not love and cherish one another in the few precious moments we have?

Life will not always cooperate with us. Of that fact, I am very aware. The hopes we build up, and the emotions we have, while they may be our greatest desires, can sometimes be the one thing keeping us from moving forward. Because the truth is, we don't want to move forward. We want to dwell in the hope and possibility that something will come of our efforts, even when we know the likelihood of failure and disappointment. We don't want to let go because, what if something changes? What if something turns around, in our favor? We don't want to let something that seems so elysian slip from our grasp. And we have no true explanation for it. As love does not need an explanation: it just is. For me to realize that something need not possess an explanation is almost outlandish, but it doesn't require one. You cannot logic and analyze your way through emotion. But equally so, that does not mean that those emotions do not have validity. They are very real.

I know that I have struggled with recognizing emotions as valid things I experience and that it is something I have to address in my life because they are things I cannot control. And perhaps that is the point. There are things that we can control in life, and then there are things that are beyond what we can choose or influence. What matters is how we choose to respond to those situations, feelings, and circumstances. Acting is reacting. That is something I know as an actor. Love, in any form it takes, be it a text asking how someone is, the act of listening, the desire to help someone, affection for another person, no matter in what form it takes, it is important. Our experiences of life and the love we choose to show others, in our friendships, in the relationships we hoped to pursue, in the relationships we are in, in the care that we show for one another, in the conversations that extend for longer than intended, in the dark nights gazing at the starry sky, in all these moments and situations, we can affect the people around us for the better. We will also grow as individuals, too.

I do want to have a night spent with friends, simply looking at the stars, and talking about life. I want to make that happen. We only have one life, and I want those I care about to know the love I have for them, and the time I want to spend with them before our college days are over. There are so many what-ifs. So many uncertainties. I want to discover the realities of now. The realities of tomorrow. And then, maybe, I will understand a little bit more. Maybe we all will. Or, at the very least, maybe we will grow to find it, and the world will be a little bit brighter. That is what I'm hoping for.