Via Justine De Fant

Challenge Day 1: Introduce Yourself 

I have lived a grand total of 1,070 weeks, which, factoring in the date of my birth is exactly 7,489 days today. This is not including leap year so really I’ve lived a total of 7,494 days. That means I am made up of 10,791,360 minutes of alternating good and bad decisions, lazy days, detours and misadventures, lies, love, 99¢ ramen runs and 1 Rihanna concert. I am 3 inches above 60 and 115lbs of solidified magic and madness. I have been with 3 people, only said “I love you” to one, have 5 close friends I would do anything for, 4 parents I love more than anything, and a dog I would jump in front of a slowly moving car for. I am the 3rd kid in a group of 5, but I am legally an only child. I was adopted 1,089 days from my birth and have lived on the island of Guam for nearly 6,400 days.

Roughly 40.8% of my time has been dedicated to aiming for decent grades, memorizing various literary devices, and trying but failing to find the solutions to limits as x approaches a constant. Since I will be entering my senior year of college in 3 months I still have about 180 days left of school. I spend around 8 hours studying and attending classes 5 days out of 7. That’s roughly 40 hours a week pursuing my academic goals. This number, of course, varies upon the time in the semester, the amount of credit hours, and the type of student, but I’d say it’s comparable to a full time job. That leaves the other 59.2% of my time left to spend with my family, friends, and pursuits towards personal endeavors outside of academia.

As for a few defining moments, towards the middle of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 I experienced the best and worst time of my life. I spent 305 days in a different state, attending 12 hours of school each week and a large part of the the remaining 156 hours mainly focusing on a healthy appetite for social interaction. During those days, I spent 5 months nurturing a relationship, which 153 days later would fall apart once I flew 7,145 miles back home. This, coupled with the fact that I’d be leaving the satisfaction of sudden independence and roughly 25 brand-spanking-new good friends, left me with 213 days battling with what turned out to be the hardest yet most transformative season of my life thus far.

My first day back on Guam I landed at 10 o’clock in the evening, fell asleep around midnight, and 6 hours later woke up to go on a morning hike to distract myself from the pain I knew would be inevitable. The next 2 days succeeding that were spent with tears wallowing in sadness so deep, at times I could do nothing more than curl up in a ball and force myself to go to sleep. It was nearly 3 months of complete devastation and a sense of yearning for something I couldn’t yet name.

On day 3, I had had it with depression and vowed to do everything in my power to never feel that way again. As a result, the 76 days that followed from then on were spent actively trying to distract myself from the hollowness I couldn’t seem to shake; This included watching movies nearly every night at the theatre, going out with friends, cleaning and reorganizing my 4 year plan for university, hiking, running, swimming, eating, and most of all: avoiding. But as ever, that perpetual shadow of what I could only call grief– the loss of what I left behind– continued to plague me for more hours than I wish to count. I spent nearly 22 hours a day questioning why this was and came to the conclusion that my sadness was the result of an idle summer– jobless, purposeless, and holding on to a past I hadn’t yet learned to let go of.

On day 79, I went back to school. I had a reason for getting up again. The sudden routine didn’t provide for me the solace I had hoped for right away, but I started getting back on my feet and focusing on life outside of what use to be and who it had been with.

214 days after that cloud of darkness shaped itself above my head, I had successfully worked with my pain instead of against it and from that blossomed a strength I once thought impossible.

48 days after the new year, about 8 months after my return home and my months long depression, I met someone new. Thus followed a good 4 to 5 weeks of first experiences with a new person, a different pair of lips, and another wave of sadness, which came when it all came crumbling down roughly 47 days later. In those weeks, life grew even more hectic. Final exams and papers worth 20% of my grade approached their due dates, work peaked, family crises rose from the ground like weeds in the soil, and my usual 9-5 at school turned into 9-1. The hands of the universe were arranging my life in an intricate pattern of dominoes which fell piece by piece leaving me to catch them all in the tiny expanse of my 2 hands. It was yet another season of learning and growing, and reaping lessons I still haven’t fully grasped.

I don’t want to dwell on such things, however. I am 151 days into 2017 and 2 full weeks of happiness. This has been a year which has proven to be a fruitful experience of soulful expansion and youthful optimism and it’s only just begun. In the grand scheme of things, if I live up to 73, the average lifespan of females in the world, I have a good 19,723 days before I die. This is assuming that I don’t get hit by a bus or contract e-coli before then and that I pass away exactly at 11:13 p.m. on November 23rd 2070. This is also assuming I’m average- which I’m not– thank you very much. I have about 2,818 weeks left to see Coldplay live, visit 10 countries, skydive from 14,000 feet in the air, and reach my goal of having read at least 2,000 books in a single lifetime. I have 53 years left to grow the seeds of my purpose and create a garden that will continue to flourish even after I perish.

I am the summation of 3,747 nights, 3,748 days, 179849 hours, and 7 very important people. I am chasing life with 2 legs and grasping for experience with 10 fingers clasped tight. I am learning. Although I am made up of numbers which simultaneously increase and decrease as I continue to create myself, I am essentially just 1 being ceaselessly racing towards infinity.

(I wrote this on May 31st, 2017. The numbers should reflect that.)
(Also, I’m really bad at math.)