what is that college readmissions essay supposed to tell you?

i was depressed, but you don't acknowledge mental health as anything but a lazy made up excuse to not work as hard as the people whose shoulders i stood on did.

"what have you learned, and how will you apply that as a student at our university?"

how do you define growth?

i'm going back to school, and that's what i want to talk about, but i can't help but focus on why i left. i can hear myself and others, battling the war in our heads called "pragmatics vs empathy".

i can't tell who's losing.
i can only tell who's participating in yuppie culture, i can only draft so many letters to my parents, and the congruence of my academic self and every other version of myself.

what does a gap year mean (to my family)? what about two?

i've had this stand alone identity, and it's cost me a lot.

i miss learning.

there are so many barriers, so much omission.
do i only make one-year commitments out of fear for anything longer?

i'm jumping into a lot of different identities, with their own different paths, but we ultimately come back together as one, as me. it's meiosis. only one of them has to eat or sleep. i could keep working and running forever. parts of me are really and only good at that.

how do i fulfill the expectation of living up to what my parents see?
how do i get recognized for "growth" and how do i identify areas for it?

i'm sorry, dad. this was a really long voicemail. i'll talk to you later.

We are waves of people
We don't accept defeat
Carrying generations of their blood
Etched on the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet
We defy the laws of gravity, our cosmic bodies in orbit always revolving
We possess a transformative skin
Continuously moving, constantly evolving

Current crashing, ripping through the earth
Roaring tides behind us, our vicious flood fights
The foundation of millennial’s - conscious, violently beautiful beings
Our loud waters, impossible to ignore, amorously painting our rights

The right, the will, the intense appetite
Flavored by salty words with a sweet impulse for action
Drowning all numbness, consuming the calm which once was
Thinking like philosophers, walking like warriors, as they record our reaction

Thin, musty white air trying to cover the shifting blue hues
The water never stops moving
the ripples inconceivably vast,
Our wave leaves masterpieces of celestial proportions
Our space is here now,
our tomorrow will not echo the past

Ours roots are planted and grown in our cities
Perfectly immortalized in a valiant state of existence
We are waves of people, waves of voices
A digital age of collective resistance

- p.m