Beauty of Your Dreams

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" - Eleanor Roosevelt

These are the words written on the card my aunt sent me for my last show that I didn't get until exam week. It sits in the X-terra and looks up at me everyday when I haul myself in there and off to my new, completely unorganized, chaotic, and frantic new life. My friend Sarah and I talked the other day about the safety of structure that school gives you. For all its stress and horrors, Wake Forest gave me the structure I so desperately needed to keep myself in perpetual motion. I gave me the safe four concrete walls I loved to hate, and the hourly day by day break down with little milestones marked in papers and homework. It was overwhelming, it was crazy, and it set me free.... free from myself. Free from my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own history. It set me free to never truly look at myself in the mirror and see the big picture. I was too busy surviving to care who I'd been, where I'd been, and what I'd wanted. This business kept me in motion and allowed me to bypass my negative emotions, my fears, and my failings. It let me keep believing that no matter how bad things were, they'd get better. But things didn't get better, they either stayed the same or got worse.

Now stop and think about this for a minute. There is nothing wrong with survival mentality... unless you've lived in it your entire life. Who is Antonina Whaples? She's certainly not the person you read about in these posts. Sure, that's part of who I am - fitNasti is an extension of the things I've done, and some of the feelings I've had. But it's not WHO I AM. Sometimes I meet people who read this blog and seem to think that they know me. Sure, I air issues that seem personal, but really they aren't. It's easier to write about sucking chicken from out of my fingernails than it is to say "I'm afraid." And what am I afraid of? I'm not afraid of not coming in for my competition... not afraid of working hard and not having it pay off. I'm afraid I've lost touch with the really beautiful things in life - and one of those things is me.

I know a lot of people who are sugar-coaters, and I have to say I've never quite gotten the hang of that (but believe me I really have tried to). Believe it or not I've been in a lot of relationships personally and professionally where I walked the line, tredded water, and walked on eggshells in hopes of never rocking the boat or stirring the stew... but no matter what I do I end up hurting someone. Guess what? People get hurt all the time. I'm hurt, you're hurt, everyone in this whole wide world is hurt. The thing that makes this a problem is that I genuinely think about other people more than I think about myself. As I sat obsessing over whether or not something I had done had upset someone today I made myself imagine what they were doing right now. I asked myself, "do you think they are obsessing over you upsetting them". The answer was no. I know people say that you should imagine people naked when you're nervous. Well try this instead: remember that they have to use the bathroom too. Yep, if I am really in a tight spot and I am freaking out about what someone thinks of me I just imagine they have to really use the bathroom - it'll humanize anyone. That's the deal - I'm super, super human. I think that's what some people like about this blog, that it's really nitty gritty real life human stuff. But it also serves as a mask for the really really really nasti things in life: human emotion.

I'm way into sci-fi TV shows and always have been since I was a kid. What can I say, I've got some escapist nerd in me, I think it's a Whaples thing. But in anycase, one of the shows I like to escape with is "V". The basic premise is lizard-aliens in human skin come to earth to destroy us. They begin to develop human emotion and it's a big fat issue. Yeah, if anything is going to make us humans beat those scaly skinned demons down it's human emotion. Aha, the double-edged sword - it's so beautiful and so deadly at the same time.

So what is the beauty of my dream? What is my dream? My dream is to be the best person that I can be. I want to be the best friend, the best trainer, the best employee, the best client, the best driver... the best at everything I do. My parents always told me that they didn't care how I did or what I did as long as I did my "best". BUT WHAT IS MY "BEST"?! This question tortures and torments me every single day. This is what drives me to do really stupid things like get four hours of sleep a night for 2 years in high school trying to take too many AP exams and get into college. This is what made me walk miles across campus at 3am my freshman year to visit a boyfriend who just couldn't bear to be alone. It's what made me give up on art for so long because there just wasn't any real objectivity. It's what made me compare myself to my brother every single day of my childhood... just wishing that I could be better at math. It's what broke my heart when I found out a boyfriend had cheated on me... what trampled my spirits when I got my SAT score, what caused me to compare myself to others time, and time, and time again. It's what gave me this underlying guilt whenever I hurt someone's feelings, or don't get approval. Wondering day after day, minute after minute what my "best" is.... that's what keeps me from actually being my best. The thought that there is some measurement of what is objectively the "best" thing is what holds me back. If anything, philosophy should have taught me to realize that although there are absolutes.... we have absolutely NO GRASP on what they really are. So why do I keep pulling my hair out trying to figure out what that is? Even though I think in shades of grey and am so open and loving and willing to excuse other peoples' digressions time and time again with no limits, I am unable to forgive myself for the smallest mistakes.

And guess what, this is the craziest part... every single one of you reading this right now is SUPER complicated. You put on your different identities day to day and minute to minute but you are a PLETHORA of people deep down in there - and they are all giving you complex messages each minute you are alive and each tie you make a decision. It's not all a straight and narrow line. It's not objective.

People tell me I surprise them... this happens on a daily basis... surprising people with the things they don't know about me. I know that I do this exact same thing to other people too - I freak out when my solid perception of another person is drastically altered and calls into question my grasp of who I think they are or what they are doing. It makes me lose control of where I stand in relation to them. I bet you're realizing that you do this too (that is, if you didn't realize that already).

Once I heard that the most successful people in the world are those able to adapt, change and re-invent themselves. It's like a mini-evolution in each life. I'm evolving and no matter how painful it may be... I know it's the truth. The thing about the truth... whether or not you say it, or acknowledge it... or realize it exists... it's still the truth. You can't change it, so why be afraid of it? If there's one thing I've grasped a hold of it's that when you embrace that you can't change anything it will SET. YOU. FREE.