TGI...S?

Thank God it's...Saturday? Doesn't have the same ring to it but none the less TGIS!

This week at school was again another killer, surprise surprise! Although the days at school are long and the evenings are filled with homework the weeks somehow always find a way to zoom by! How is that possible!? I am baffled really, but the proof is staring me in the eye. Today marks the eighth Saturday that I have been here which mean only four weeks left, 28 days...crazy. The weeks are flying by, it seems that just yesterday I had six weeks remaining! So although I have piles of homework to do before the weekend comes to an end you will not hear me complaining! I am trying to soak up every last bit of this Quebec experience that I can. I cannot tell you the last time that I sent a text message, probably sometime last week. Early last week, I am trying to distance myself from english and just focus on french, french, french. A litte contradictory considering that I am writing this in ENGLISH but regardless I am trying to do everything in french. I am focusing more on the pronounciation of my words, repeating new words numerously until I can say them right several times in a row.

Other then this experience slowly coming to a close not much has been going on here besides the usual. Of course there is more drama on the home front but I am trying my hardest not to let that affect me. Of course trying is the key word here, I am not going to lie and say that it doesn't affect me, I am not made of stone but by coming here, going away from home, experiencing new things, I have realized a lot of things both about life and about me. I would definitely say this exchange has changed me. I always knew that when the time came that I would out of my house faster then a bat out of hell. I put everything I did behind that, I got the grades so I could and participated in extra-curricular activites all the while holding this resentment and anger towards my family for being the way they are.

My mother was the first one to tell me that you cannot change anything anyone else does, you can only change what you do. At the time I didn't listen to her, I still blamed everyone without making the changes that needed to be made in me. Now I know, I cannot change anything my family does, I can't force them to see anything that they don't want to see. It isn't worth trying and getting hurt over. If they want to change then they, themselves, have to want it.

An example is with an addict, no matter how many people you have go and tell that addict that what they are doing isn't right it won't change anything unless they see with their OWN eyes that it isn't right. We have no control over other people so why do we try to control them? You can only lead a horse to water, you cannot force it to drink.

My mother was also the first one to tell me that other people's actions are their actions, not mine, what they do does not reflect onto me. Again, I was younger and I thought that everyone was ruining my life on purpose. That they did the things they did just to purposely embarrass me. I ignored her again. But now I am coming to the conclusion that she was speaking the truth. What my family does, or doesn't do, does not reflect onto the character of myself. What I do, or do not do, reflects onto the character of myself. Yes I am well aware of the judgmental world we live in, everyone is so quick to assume that if ones family is something, or ones friends' are something, that means the individual themselves are that something. This is not the case. I realize it is hard not to judge someone on what you have heard about them but until you have actually met them, learned their personality, then you have no right to do so.

So yes, I could stay mad at my family for the things they have done in the past, the things they are doing in the present and the things they are sure to do in the future but what would be the point? What would that accomplish besides absolutely draining my energy and creating another hateful individual that this planet really does not need? It wouldn't accomplish anything that's what. This life we are living it is too short to be hateful and judgemental and anything but your true self. I am me, I am not my family, they cannot make me any less imaginative, createful or aspirational by their actions and anyone who fails to see that is leading a very unhappy life and I pity them.

This exchange has taught me many things about myself, it has taught me that I can adapt to a new culture. That I am my own person, not anyone's percieved image of me. And it has taught me that in two years time when the time finally comes for my to spread my wings and fly out into this huge world, to start living on my own and pursue my dreams, I can. Plain and simple, I can.