It's been a long week, and it's only Tuesday.

Yes, this week has been a long one. And yes, it's only Tuesday. There have been many sensitive, exciting, difficult topics that have come up in the past few days. Death, school, plans for the future, topics of study that bring up buried memories, trials of the heart. You name it, it has probably touched my life in some way in the past few days.

Lets start with death. I had a mutual friend shoot himself on Sunday. While I have a lot of personal experience with death, it always seems to knock me "three bubbles left of center" (as Hawk, my spiritual teacher and Lakota elder would say) for a bit. I have a foundation in place to deal with death and enable me to help others deal with it as they need it. That does not mean however, that I do not feel any guilt for the fact that I had been avoiding this person's calls for the past year or so. He had always been a very troubled man and a few years ago we took a romantic interest in each other. The only thing that ever developed out of this interest were late night insomniac phone calls and my deciding that his intensity terrified me and that I had better not get involved. So I never did. Whenever he would contact me I would often not reply or not answer the phone. In retrospect, there is a part of me that wishes that I would have answered. Wishes I would have took the initiative to get him help. And in the very least wishes that I had just thrown him into an Inipi. I know full well that guilt does not serve anyone. And so it is because of this that I focus my thoughts and energies on his close friends. They are the ones who will be needing help and love now, not him. And from now on, I will always answer.

Next, lets address my plans for the future. I have been thinking a lot lately about joining Peace Corp after I graduate in a year. It is something that excites me, empowers me, and scares me all at once. I feel a healing power within me that just keeps getting stronger and stronger with time. I know that, though limited, the culmination of my experience has the possibility of helping others. It is this knowledge that draws me toward this plan for my future. For, I realize that the future is not just mine, but that it is shared with the rest of humanity. It is this fact that implores me to behave as such.

There are various reasons for these feelings coming to a head. My personal experiences and growth have always called for action. And my experiences as of late have just brought it to the surface once again. The trials and tribulations of my heart that I have been experiencing and taking part in are one reason for the current culminating effects. I am in love with a man 14 years older than I. And in any ways we are amazingly suited for each other. But, the problem we keep coming back to is his belief that I have not yet had enough life experience to be settling down with someone better than a decade older than myself. In many ways I disagree. I have always been experienced beyond my years and I know that I have a very old soul. But in some ways he is absolutely correct. I have not yet taken the chance to explore the world in ways that I have dreamed of. As a youngster, I dreamed of traveling the world and helping people. As I have grown up I have come to realize that this is something that is well within my abilities, and everything that I have been experiencing in the past year has further convinced me of this fact. I will always love this man, and remain thankful for the self realizations I've obtained in his presence, and perhaps with time we will be able to work out our relationship. The only way I will ever truly be happy in a relationship is if I am able to truly be happy with myself. And denying my life callings is the furthest thing from obtaining that.

Lastly, as if creator knew that I might need an extra kick in the butt, the topics we have been discussing in my Women's Studies classes yesterday and today have been difficult ones. I already know a lot about violence against women and the tragedies it causes. But, due to my already emotional state, tonight something clicked. We were talking a lot about rape and aggression and battering. I have always felt like a survivor of physical and verbal abuse because my step father ruled with a heavy fist and a tongue that cut like glass. Surviving a childhood where you felt forced to tell stories as to why you had a black eye or did not show up to school last week because your emotional exhaustion had finally caught up with your health, was an all to common experience for me. I've always known that I am a stronger person today because of surviving this. I grew up, moved out, separated myself from the monster that ruled our family and thought that I lived a life happily ever after. Which is why I felt blindsided when my psyche decided to remind me that no, everything was not happily ever after. I had never really thought about the fact that when I was in my late teens (18 or 19), I had been raped a party. How could someone as strong as I be one of those women who blamed themselves for being raped? I realize now that being black out drunk and disoriented was no excuse for anyone to harm me. I knew that then too, but I was too ashamed and scared of what my friends at the time would have thought. So, it has remained locked up in my psyche for some time. Watching V Day, the documentary on the Vagina Monologues and the effort to end the violence against women, I was reminded of something I had known all along, that things similar to what I had experienced and much, much worse, happen to women everywhere.

If the fuel for my "make change in the world" fire had not been enough before, after the past few days, you better believe that now it's raging. You see, I can't simply be "mad" at the state of the world and create a permanent crease in my brow. Focusing on the problems will be my one-way ticket to a lifetime of unhappiness and probably the mad house. I need to instead focus on the solutions. I need to focus on the good and positive things that I can give back to this world. I need to unfurrow my brow and keep the smile on my face and show the world just what it means to touch people's lives and make a difference in this world.

I am in love with life. I am in love with the world. I am in love with my loved ones: my man, my family, my friends, myself. It is all of this love that keeps my fire burning. It is this fire that I trust to take me where I need to go.
Aho, mitakuye oyasin.