It Is What it Is? No way. It is What I MAKE it.

I have not changed. I am an overacheiver. I always have been, and I always will be. And I'm okay with that. But lately, I've almost learned to relax. (Much to the chagrin of my nearly-Catholic, self-flagellating guilt.)

Toward the end of this semester, there was so much emotional turmoil in my life that I essentially shut down. First my body shut down: refusing to sleep, developing sinusitis, causing me to take an hour longer to finish a marathon than I should have, dropping pounds when I wasn't trying. (I finally slept last night for almost 16 hours. I haven't been keeping up with my blog, and I have not been able to work out this week.) Then my mind shut down: studying became impossible, work became difficult, substances became more interesting. I spent so many nights wondering what to do and how to get it right and where that colossal motivation of mine had gone and why the fuck my heart couldn't stop beating so hard.

But, somewhere along the way, I remembered that I'm the same girl who refused to let {inserting laundry list of issues here, you've read about them ad nauseum in my other blog entries } stop her from becoming a first-place age grouper at her first Olympic tri or from flying to a strange(ish) city solo to run 26.2 miles or from learning to tell people what she really thought of them.

That girl can't be stopped. That girl lives by my dad's credo "there are no victims, only volunteers." I wanna be just like her when I grow up. I wanna be her when I grow up. (Assuming I ever grow up.)

Yesterday, I pulled my grades from this very troubled semester, which included missed classes, all-nighters, dropped courses, and research papers that I could never seem to finish. Imagine my shock when I saw in front of me a big, fat A plus. And, even though I'm still struggling with my mind (motivation is waning) and my body (so tired but can't sleep) and my heart (just don't feel like I'm worth a whole lot right now), a little part of me realized today that I already *am* that girl. The girl who refused to let herself be stopped by the shitty hand she was dealt, who refused to accept 'it is what it is' for an answer. The girl who, instead, said "It is what I make it . . . motherfucker."

Yeah. She's still in there. Somewhere. And I don't think she's going away. Not without a helluva fight.