The Paved Road

Sometimes when I desperately need to move, I freeze. Sometimes when something desperately needs to be said, I'm speechless.
The fear of taking the wrong step, or conveying the wrong message is somehow greater than the looming apathy that ensues when there's something to do, but nothing's being done.

A friend once told me that she didn't want her indecision to be the deciding factor. For her paths to be taken over and accepted back into the uncharted jungle of opportunity because she just didn't feel like keeping it clear anymore. Looking down the road less traveled, considering all the work it would be with no guarantee of a safe return, and choosing the paved road instead to live a sure life of normalcy.

Not applying to my dream school because I didn't want to write my life in 1000 words or less, to be judged by a stranger who decides whether or not my existence is worthy of their acceptance. But it was only one essay. One essay too much, for which I'm sorry, UCSD. You've been crossed off the top of the list, a transcript left unsent. Watch me slip into normalcy at SDSU should have tried harder.

I turned onto that paved road, and now I walk along it, looking at my shoes and the black asphalt beneath me. And it looks dark. I know I can raise my head, and there will be blue skies above me, filled with white puffy clouds and silver linings galore. This school will be fine for me, I can enjoy my home and showers sans sandals. But I can't help but wonder what that sky would have looked like a few miles off the well-beaten path. And whether there would actually have been any room for me.

But here's the moral to this all too true story:

If there's something you love beyond a doubt, never hesitate to seek it out.
Press Send.
Write the damn essay.
Ask them out to prom, the worst they could say is no. The best they could say is hell yes. And you'd be surprised, maybe there's a room full of people waiting for the chance to say that to you, if only you'd ask.

And so to neutralize the sad story of the time I was too scared, here is a story of bravery:

One day a girl was getting ready to see her best friend's band play their first big gig. He was her best friend, but he was never just a friend for her, not for the two years they'd known each other. Her ride was on the way when an idea popped into her head that she couldn't shake out. She grabbed a marker and poster board, and quickly wrote a message in all caps to be held up during the last song. Before she could think twice her ride was there and they were on their way. They arrived, the band played, the final song came along, and with sweaty palms and shaking hands she held up the sign that read "Encore, Will you take me to homecoming?" Little did she know, and would later discover, that was all he needed to work up his courage to finally ask her out, officially, after two years of uncertainty. And they couldn't be happier together, four months later and counting.

This story is all too true. But it only happened because I asked.

~Kat