When I Grow Up...

I remember being a little girl and dreaming of walking the runways of Paris and being the next Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford or Nicki Taylor. Well, as I grew up I learned the hard way how belittling and demanding the modeling world is. When I was 15 I was one out of thousands of girls that was picked to be 1 of 50 in a search for models for LA Models. I didn't know it but my best friend's Mom entered me into it. I went into their offices and they tore me apart. They told me I would be great if I changed this and that. It was that day that the little girl's dreams inside of me were torn apart. The next 5 years I was scouted by different agencies, but I would walk into the offices with a shield to protect the little self love I had. Being a teenage girl is hard enough and then put that little girl in L.A. adding that much more pressure to her, it makes it sometimes unbearable. I would not fulfill that dream that I had as a little girl. Instead I chose to pursue the path of academia. I have recently just received my Bachelor's in English from California State University Los Angeles. I am the first in my family to do so and it feels so good. However, the end of something always means the beginning of something else. I don't know what that beginning is. I feel like an aimless wanderer jumping through hoops to get me to my next destination. I have ideas that fill my mind, but nothing that is solid yet. I was watching So You Think You Can Dance tonight and it made me wish that I would have really pursued dance, so I could move the way the people on the show do, but I know that dance isn't my path because if it was I would be there. Who knows though, maybe in a couple of years I will be trying out for the show. I do have until I am 29. I just feel that there is something great waiting for me out there and I just don't know how to obtain it. Maybe I am not supposed to know right now. It is not always the destination that is important, it is the journey to the destination that matters. I just feel so lost that looking around to embrace the journey is hard. I am just trying to catch my balance from the life changes that have happened in the recent months that gaining clarity isn't always easy.

When I was little I was told I could be anything I wanted to be when I grow up. Well, now I am 25 and I don't know what I want to be. I used to think I knew, but now that I am here I am so confused on what my calling is. I often wish that I had some amazingly obvious talent that it was pressing against my face that I couldn't help knowing what it is that I have to be, but it isn't that easy for me. The things I used to think I wanted, I no longer know if I desire them and the things I used to dream of seem so far away. I wish it was as simple as it was when I was a little girl to just say " When I grow up I want to be..." and I would become whatever it is. I'm grateful though as contradicting as I may seem, that it isn't that easy because it makes me keep moving forward as opposed to standing still and being content. It is when you are challenged that you grow.

"The greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising up every time we fall"
-Confucius