Today was a snow day.  I slept until noon, and went to lunch with my friends from the dorm.  Upon returning, I took a four hour nap.  When I woke up, I went to the drumline building to practice for a few hours.  Then I went to dinner, came back, and spent the rest of my night reading, writing, and in the company of some friends.  It was a relaxing day.
I am feeling a bit under the weather, however.  I have a cold and it’s cold.  Nothing to worry about, though.  I just need to rest well and keep my diet consistent and I’ll be over it in a few days.  I think I’ll be returning to that rest part now!

Today completed the introduction to my new classes (which started yesterday), and I even had enough time to go into town with my friend, Kelsey, to find books.  Of course, I ended up getting all of them online for much cheaper, but the walk was nice!  I will give a synopsis of my first impressions of my new scholarly endeavors.  This list will only include my academic classes, and not the extra classes and activities I’ll be doing (of which there are many).
Yesterday I had biology 101.  This is the next step in what I took last semester, biology 100, and it builds off of it.  In other words, if you took bio 100, then you take bio 101.  The only difference seems to be that we have new instructors.  For bio 100, our professor was a man named Randall.  He was blunt.  He was sarcastic—at our expense.  In a word, he was amazing.  His approach to teaching such difficult material was brilliant, and I feel that I learned more from that class than any other I’d taken.  He was also a neuroscientist, and he helped me to personally find my way and how I was going to go about getting where I want to go.  My new professors seem to be more akin to dried up hippies.
Today, I had three classes: Intro to Afro-American Literature, followed by Medical Ethics, follow by Calculus.  Afro-American Lit is a course that I have almost no interest in taking and am only doing so to complete a Gen Ed requirement.  It seems to be a rather boring class, and so far this has proven true.  But to my instructor’s credit, she is not jumping to slavery and slave narratives as the only literature worthy of dissection.  In fact, none of the books we will be reading are written by slaves or about slavery.  I think that the discussions may be more exciting than I originally thought.
Medical Ethics was the class that I was looking forward to the most.  But so far, I am most disappointed by it.  The professor is a pretentious “quantum theorist” who spends his time teaching here and as a visiting scholar at MIT.  Okay, so that’s alright.  But that doesn’t mean he’s bringing in the good money.  Indeed, his wife is a doctor.  Furthermore, he has made it clear that he “doesn’t care what [we] think,” stating that we have never taken a philosophy course before, and therefore our opinions are essentially base and unimportant.  This was where my appreciation of the man flatlined.  How many courses do I need to take to know what my opinions are on abortion?  Furthermore, I have five adopted brothers and sisters.  During their pregnancies and in the early stages of their life, they would have been considered by a man like this teacher “babies who should have been aborted.”  My little brother was shaken, beaten, and abused.  He had severe brain damage and was expected to be a vegetable.  He is now one of the most brilliant and intuitive seven year olds I’ve met.  My little sister was neglected and near-starved when she was found in an abandoned apartment.  She was completely unresponsive to all stimuli for several months.  Now she is one of the most vibrant, playful, and well-natured kids I’ve ever seen.  My experience compels me to believe in a greater purpose and a greater good than this man’s ideologies could ever proffer.  I have a feeling that the material we’ll be covering in that course will be a big topic for me over the next few months, and it will be hard to stay on his good side while fighting the urge to argue with him.  Of course, it may be too soon to judge such things, and I will certainly remain objective to the situation until he completely proves himself one way or the other.  My last class was calculus, and it will be run much in the fashion of the math class I took last semester.  I even have the same teacher!
After classes I went into town for a bit, and later settled into my friends’ room downstairs to watch television and talk into the wee hours of the morning.  I’d say that today went pretty well, and I am looking forward to another great day tomorrow!

It’s finally time to return to the grind of schooling, and I’ve moved back in and restarted my academic life.  With it, I shall begin exploring all of the wonders of college life once again.  My break was too long.  I had borrowed a vibraphone to keep me busy, and I took a class for three weeks (forty hours a week, 8-4 M-F).  The class was to become certified as a nurse’s aide, and although it’s better that I took it (significant increase in wages, will have no problem finding work), it stopped me from getting the rest I needed for a long while.  When I started this break, I was rather depressed at the way that things were going.  And when I am depressed, and I am given time to think (for instance, a month-long break with no obligations), I dwell, and I brood.  And it gets worse.  So at first glance, it would seem that this class would be a good way to keep my mind busy.  But it ended up keeping me adequately tired and incapable of thinking clearly at all.
The reason I bring this up is because after the class was finally over, I started resting and thinking healthily.  It gave me the opportunity to set a lot of things straight, and do some serious soul searching.  Much of this revolved around Toni, and it was really the first time I had really gotten the chance to sort things out for myself and not have people interrupting me or shoving ideas into my head about it all.  About a week before break started, I had told her that I couldn’t talk to her anymore.  It hurt to think about her, much less talk to her, and it was better for me to look forward than backward.  She didn’t take this so well (obviously), but it had to be done.  How could I rightly detach myself from her if I was still pursuing her in so many ways?  This was fine at the time, as, like I said, I was distracted by my classes and my friends.
But shortly after coming home, the entire situation hit me.  I missed her a lot.  I fell deeper into depression than I had yet been.  I went to class and came back, exhausted, and brooded.  It wasn’t for a few weeks until I started dealing with my feelings in a healthy way.  It went like this.
I love Toni.  A lot.  She made me feel emotions that I didn’t really believe existed.  She changed me.  But there was something deeper in all of it.  One of the main things that I wanted in a relationship was someone who could understand me, and understand the intricate and often senseless ways that I work.  I thought that I had found her.  Indeed, Toni is a very kind and sweet girl, and she has a heart of gold.  But I saw traits in her that did not exist.  I made her into something that she wasn’t, and it is for that reason that I began to expect more out of her than she was capable of giving.  When these things weren’t there, I got frustrated.  The reason that our relationship wasn’t clicking was because we were on two different pages.  We are on two different pages in life.  My mind is in one place, and hers is in another, and we’re both young.
I could elaborate, but I think that that is a good summation of how things were.  It is obviously more complicated than that, and indeed the issues weren’t entirely of my doing, but that is the gist of it.  So where does that leave me?  Well, it leaves me in college, pursuing my dreams, making friends, and continuing on.  And her, immersed in her own struggles.  At this point, I finally feel at ease with the entire situation, and can once again lift my head.  I no longer dread the thought of us being apart, and I feel as though I could continue on as her friend.  In fact, I’d like to.  But I’ve tried to get in touch with her, and she has not been so receptive.  I can’t really blame her.  None of this was fair to anyone.  That’s the nature of a breakup, and I didn’t expect her to wait for me.  Life doesn’t wait.  It moves on.  And now, so too must I.
All of that aside, yesterday was move in, and today was day one, and I am loving it.  I got to see many of my friends, I went to classes, I went to the dining commons (it always tastes good at the beginning of the semester).  I have to say that in one way or another, some strange amount of optimism has struck me in this past week.  I was sure that I would be going back to school as depressed as I was.  I could no longer see the bright side of anything.  And in the final week preceding move in, my entire outlook has been revamped, my spirits rejuvenated, and my mind is fresh and ready for more.  I’m so happy to be back!  I have a good idea of my goals for the semester and I am excited about making even more friends, and I know that there will be so many new experiences and opportunities.  I can’t wait!
Which brings me to my final point of day one and of this entry.  The song “Good Weather for Airstrikes” has been quoted here before.  It remains to be one of my favorite songs.  The last lines of the song depict darkness and loneliness (“Total silence / No answer”).  But the final two lines make up what has become the most profound quote in my life: “The best thing that God has created / Is a new day.”  I think that darkness is not only an inevitable part of life, it’s an essential part of life.  For without darkness, how could we ever appreciate the light?  And although today might not be too satisfying or happy, there’s always tomorrow.  This is the first thing that I tend to forget when I am down.  I believe that there is no way out and that I’ll be there forever.  But somehow a new day comes.  And with it come new revelations (that I will discuss more later) and new ideas and thoughts, and new hope, and new optimism, and new courage and wisdom.  As Reese Roper said, “Only [God] can make every new day seem so new,” though I often forget it (and will likely forget it again).  I must also thank my friends and family who see me through these problems time and time again.  It seems as though I’m prone to these situations, and sometimes support and prayer is the only thing that gets me through them.
So I did my share of growing over break—I became a better musician, learned a lot about nursing and the medical field, and learned a lot about myself.  But the learning has always just begun.  Welcome back!

Every day as of late has proven only to immerse me deeper into certain ongoing struggles.  Most of which I have stated before, only they are more developed and complex now.  I turn on the television.  There’s war.  There’s unrest.  I read the ads on the campus bulletin boards.  There’s war.  There’s unrest.  I am beginning to wonder how anyone can be happy.
In fact, I was at a party the other night, when I spotted one of my friends sitting in the corner, looking down.  “What’s up?” I asked him.  “I’m just depressed.  A lot of things.  I don’t know.”  He replied.  I don’t know… an interesting answer.  I don’t know either.  “They say alcohol is a depressant,” he continued, “but look at all these people.  They don’t look depressed to me.”  In fact, at that moment I felt like only two people in the world were depressed, but only one of us were willing to admit it.  Most people say that it is a matter of acknowledging it and getting over it.  Most people will offer solutions: religion, friends, drugs.  I guarantee that all of those things will cure your depression for some amount of time.  But you’re bound to be depressed.  It’s inevitable.  It’s like an airplane, which only flies as long as it has fuel, and must land eventually, or come crashing to the ground.  For me, I should have seen it coming.  It hit me at a time when I least expected it.  As my new life bloomed around me, my former life withered, and I lost the best relationship I’d ever had.  That was where it started.  Over the past month I’ve been experiencing many different types of emotions and trying to make sense of everything that is constantly and violently changing.
I feel as though I have succeeded in one realm: I am well liked.  This is something that I am afraid to embrace.  My self esteem leaves me assuming that people are always only tolerating me, and no matter how hard I try to beat such defeatist feelings, I am overwhelmed.  But lately I have been warming up to these new people, new friends, and this new life.  And with the introduction of the new comes the ending of the old.  As for Toni, what was once the apple of my eye, and a precious gem, is becoming bittersweet memories.  The pains and the heartbreak that still linger on after what has happened are best buried, and I must look forward.  Love letters, gifts, dreams, promises—all in the past.  It is difficult to comprehend that, because, if three months ago you had told me that I would be saying “I can’t talk to her anymore,” I would laugh.  Our relationship, our friendship, was such a strong, immutable thing.  I wanted to be with her forever.  I never could have imagined any of this.  But I guess that is a testament of how young and naïve I still am.  That’s high school, I suppose, and although I’m beginning to accept that this is all happening, I am upset that I am accepting it.  It is an awful situation in every sense, and I have learned that trust and love is as sturdy as cardboard in many cases, and that a small amount of rain can melt your heart into nothing.
My heart is nothing now.  The confidence that I began to build over the past couple of years has been severely shaken, and once again I am questioning my own worth.  Other problems, perhaps even greater, surround me as well.  But they are for another time.  Things are nowhere near being sorted out, and I suspect that they won’t be for a long time.  In the meantime, there is a passage from the book No Country for Old Men which I found particularly interesting.  It has to do with the sheriff—now retired—recounting a dream he had recently had about his father, who had been dead for many years now.  Sometimes it seems that the only comfort you’re going to get has been dead for many years.  Sometimes it is in transitory dreams that will be remembered but not felt in the morning.

“it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.

And then I woke up.”

The more I search for words, the less come.

Gloria by Brave Saint Saturn:

Gloria, in excelces deo.
Glory, gloria.

Too weak to wonder,
too tired to care,
Jesus Christ, are you really there?
I’ve fallen down,
Can’t pull myself back up.
I’m going to drown, have mercy,
Have mercy.

I need you now,
Not words or a feeling.
But Jesus Christ,
I’ve hit the ceiling.

Your love,
Your mercy,
Your light unending.
Your hope,
Your peace,
Your strength my heart is mending.

The lyrics to a song that the band has been performing for four months.

And So it Goes by Billy Joel.

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

As of today, the band season has come to a close.  These past few weeks have been a crazy push.  I’ve written an essay.  I love you.

______

This is nothing new to me.  I did band in high school.  It’s always the same.  The seniors will be missed, but next year, it’s even more your band than last year.  But as I stand in the field, behind the band as George Parks conducts My Way for the last time this season, I get a feeling I haven’t felt before.

There’s a different element to this entity.  It’s not just a band.  It’s a society.  It’s a community, and the bond that I share with every member—even those I don’t know—is something unexplainable and illogical.  And the love that I have for each member of my own section, the pit, is indescribable.  I am only a freshmen, and I’ve been in this band for just one year.  But being with these people, whom I’ve spent the majority of every day, week, and month with since school started here, while we smile and wave to the audience one final time, my heart is warmed.  I look at them and I don’t only see fellow musicians, I see brothers and sisters.  And the seniors and section leaders, they are like parents.      This family is inseparable, and we’ve proven it.  Through cold, dark nights, broken instruments (staying up until two AM to repair them), playing in heavy downpours, unloading and loading the trucks multiple times a day, and some of the most gruesome hours of rehearsal imaginable, we have stayed close and persevered.  When one of us falls, each member is there to help.  In some ways, I’ve never been happier than when I should be sleeping, but I’m laughing with them at midnight trying to dry off the instruments after a rainy performance.  At the beginning of the year, we had nothing but dusty instruments and a few sheets of music.  From these things we created some of the best music ever played.
This year has given us the best of conditions and the worst.  In both situations, we, and the entire band, have prevailed.  The magic is real, and you can see it in the expression of the people whose jaws are dropped in amazement, and you can see it in the eyes of the little kids who mimic you playing your instrument, and you can see it on smiles of high school students, who feel important because they were hanging out with members of the UMASS band (I was there once, too).  To have the power to make someone’s day, or touch their life is what makes this band special.  To bring a smile to one more person’s face, or give them such a memorable performance is the definition of our pride.  But the memories aren’t only for the audience.  In fact, most of them are for us.
In one semester I have made more memories than I could have ever imagined.  The people, the places, and the music are permanently in my heart—and I’m only a freshmen!  I can’t begin to think about how the seniors must feel, who have four years of great memories with this band that they will carry with them forever.  They have made this experience so much better.  But the end is near.  The long rehearsals, the late nights, the early mornings.  They are all in the past now.
The last song that we play at every performance is My Way.  It is a classic song, and the final chord in it denotes the end of another performance.  It is a bittersweet chord—although I am no music major, it seems to be comprised of two parts.  When the band is holding it out, you hear a beautifully built major chord.  But when they end it, one part sticks out in my mind.  This one note that renders the chord still unresolved.  That is the sentiment with which I leave every performance—happy, but with more work to do.  However, today that chord represents something different.  It is the end of the season.  An extremely happy ending.  But when the final breath is taken, and that last note rings out, echoing around the football field and the stands, that bittersweet quality is still there.  I look at the family around me again.  Everyone is smiling.  The seniors have tears rolling down their cheeks.  Now I do, too.  This entity, the power and magic, the show, are now nothing more than a memory.  This band will cease to exist until next year, when we create the magic again from the dust.  But some people are out here for the final time.  And, today, this song goes out to them.

Transcontinental by Pedro the Lion

Engine severs lower legs.
I feel my bruised heart beating.
Spinal cord remains intact, still sending and receiving.

Lying back on shoulder blades, the cargo rushing past.
Missing limbs beneath the cars, twitching on the tracks.
Click Clack now handicapped.
North Am Transcontinental.

I remember, as I bleed, certain tails of bravery.
A man whose legs were crushed beneath a fallen evergreen tree.
He decided he would chop them off above the knee.
Sacrificing shins and feet, to make his torso free.

The luxury of having been spared the hard part
you’d think would be enough for me to pull this off.
But I’m left to bleed to death, now all the man I’ve ever been.

North Am Transcontinental.

It’s Friday night, and there’s a game tomorrow…  Bright and early!  We’ll be out brighter and earlier (probably before the sun rises) rehearsing.  The good news is that the game is at twelve, so we will get out before nightfall and have the opportunity to rest and have a Saturday night.
Every day my emotions and my mood are a wreck all over again.  It’s like a vicious cycle.  I’m trying to regain my optimism, but I feel like, in these past few weeks, there has been a lot of negative energy and a lot of negativity against me, and much less happiness.  For a long time, you try to continue to be optimistic, but eventually it gets to you.  So lately I’m just very confused, very tired, and very depressed.  However, today and yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to curb these thoughts, and have succeeded to a certain extent.  It will take a lot of meditation and care, but I will get back to where I was.
Band is almost over.  We have two more performances, then band banquet.  The semester is coming to a close.  Spring class registration has started.  Things keep moving forward, and there’s no time to dwell, or to look back.  I guess that’s all I can say for sure at this point, except that tomorrow is another busy day, and hopefully next week will be more calm, so I can continue to try to collect my thoughts into any sensible meaning.

A lot has happened since I last wrote.  For instance, a new president was elected.  This has, according to the reaction by my fellows here on campus, given Americans a reason to live.  Other than that, it’s been pretty dire.  I have not had time to write, but I believe this is my last spurt of busyness of the fall semester.
A month ago, I was convinced that not much could have been better about my current state—about college, and friends, and grades, and people, and all of these new experiences and responsibilities.  A month ago I was happier than ever, and in disbelief that it was actually as fun as they say it is.  Today, I am miserable.  I hate to admit it, but I have been beaten down enough.  Nothing is quite adding up anymore, and everything is out of place.  My life at the moment consists of me constantly trying to ward off negative thoughts, and I’ve stopped sleeping at night.  My schedule and my mindset are all out of whack and it’s not getting easier.
Needless to say, my optimism is shot for now.  I need to find a way to recuperate and do so very quickly, because the state that I’m in is worse than I could have imagined, and I’m becoming very frustrated, anxious, and upset.