Sunshiyn — Artwork and blog of Megan Zupan

"Only in dreams do we hear the speech of our minds unguarded, blatant, emerged from the folds of a day's curtained existence..."

And so came the words, flooding through my head in the middle of the night...seemingly out of nowhere...I felt the need to write it down so I wouldn't lose it as a dream itself.

When something starts eating at me, I gnaw on it awhile with a pen and paper. I conteplate my emotions and their underlying meanings to the way I choose to live. Scribbles of smudged ink across a lined sheet of paper calms me as no amount of yoga or breathing techniques could achieve.
Today I picked up this water-stained, sun-faded notebook from the backseat of my car-amid relics of a delayed hope-and sat for awhile thinking about the past several weeks and what they've done to me...and what will happen from here.

January swirled into my head, somehow managing to infuse bursts of uncertainty into my calm, collected breaths. I used to know where I was going...I was going two years at the College of Tech. I had a couple scholarships that would pay for a few credits, I would live at home and it'd be cheap. I would try my best getting through with the bullshit classes the U.S. education system affectionately refers to as an ASSociates degree in arts and sciences. Highschool all over again with a fat pricetag, condensed into a couple of stuffy rooms with a robot throwing some generalized information at me that they self-righteously refer to as "knowledge." NO. I didn't drop out of college. I simply withdrew from the COT. There is a difference damnit. I'll get back someday, but not here. Not in Great Falls, MT. There's a whole world out there.

Today I sat in my car laughing hysterically for a good 20 minutes. Just laughing like an idiot. Funny thing is, it was in the parking lot of Benefis. I'm surprised a doctor coming off their shift didn't see me and commit me to the psych ward. I went there to return my unopened, plastic-packaged tuxedo chimp suit, complete with a black apron to make it official or some shit, and thought about the hilarities, the obscene ironies, of being ME.
In all honesty, though I found, find, my eccentricites funny as hell, I wanted to cry. But I wasn't about to let myself give in that easily. True, I don't believe in hiding from my emotions, preferring to let them come at me as they will, but this time was different. I guess peoples' sneers of my slacking, my quitting, got to me more than I would like to admit. Normally, I could give a shit less about what people think, because I know that it isn't true, and that I am a pretty upstanding individual most days, or at least I try to be; but, sometimes, enough is enough, and I detest being influenced by a majority opinion on a shadowy subject. So I laughed instead. Uncontrollably. For 20 minutes. Believe me, the tears came, but there was joy, maybe even defiance in them.

Yeah, I've jokingly referred to myself as a quitter-but that's not how I really view myself. And yes, I've called myself out on my ignorance and naivete, but I don't put all my faith in it. I am a dreamer. I guess that's really the only word that I have to describe my seemingly irrational behaviors. I want to be my own person. I want happiness, adventure in my life. I am a firm believer that it is of the utmost importance to search deeply and passionately for a smile, joyful vitality, wherever you go- but if such things prove impossibly elusive, then get the hell out of there.
We are never trapped. We create our own escapes- we must. I will go where my heart is most content, and if that means I become the fabled "starving artist," then so be it.

Life is the one possession whose worth I refuse to gamble. I will live how I choose, regardless of the whispers. Though I don't have pegged exactly who I am at this point in my life, I am certain that I have and will continue to discover more about myself than anyone who's ever claimed to really know me.

I don't think people necessarilly have a destination- they ARE the destination-for is not a journey merely an extended retreat?