C O N N E C T I O N(8)

 C O N N E C T I O N

A link. A bridge. Something that bonds a person, place, thing, or idea with something else. A weird little feeling that could come completely out of nowhere. Shocking and scary at the same time. A connection between a person and a place can be a feeling of safety. Safety and feeling almost like you belong right then and there. 

A connection between two people can mean multiple things. They can be strangers, but feel this bond between them. Siblings feel a connection between them that can feel unbreakable at times. A connection between two people who are meant to be in each other’s lives will feel shocking and unexplainable.

 A connection could be something like having something small in common with one another. That starts to form this bond that could change your life forever. Once you understand that connection though, it will be as if it was always meant to come true.

 Connections can come from different people to benefit themselves or others. Like a connection at work to help with a job or a connection at school like to get a tutor. Connections like this might be a little less common than a connection between people might be, but it doesn’t have to be people all the time. 

A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one. 

-JS

H O M E (7)

 H O M E

A place where people say, “... is where the heart is”. Somewhere with a roof over your head, and food is placed on the table. Where you can find shelter from stormy weather. Where someone stands to either tell you “I love you” or something as hurtful as “leave”. Where you can have your heart fixed or broken into a million pieces all at once.

Home can be many things. But, home for many people never changes. To me, home isn’t a place where you live. Home is the people you are surrounded by instead. Home isn’t blood related all the time. Home can mean adding people, or leaving others behind. 

Even though home can be sometimes tricky to find. Everyone has a home. No, this isn’t always the easiest of things either. Home can mean either tears or smiles. Places can be made into a home, don’t get me wrong. But there is so much more to a home than the place you live in. 

Home is not a place. It is a feeling. Home is where your story truly begins. 

-JS

P L A C E S (6)

 P L A C E S

Different walls, roads, and buildings. Different sizes, shapes, and colors. Some are taller than the clouds might be in the sky. Others are small, and seem like holes compared to the big tall buildings. Cities can be either big or small. There is usually one end of the road that seems to stretch for miles. 

Places can go and come in your life. One might be where you have always lived, another could be where you vacation every year with your family. It doesn’t matter how you got there. What matters is how you remember that place. It could be the people you met, the food you ate, the activities you did, and so on. 

Places don’t know how long they are going to stay in your life. You could be in one for only a couple minutes. You could be in another for years to come. A place changes over time too. A place can become new. It can change, and evolve just like everything else in this world. Even in the event of something major, a place is only what it was because of the memories you made there. That won’t change just because the place has to. 

No matter where you go in life. Places may change. But the people who visit them are changed because of them. 

-JS

L I E S (5)

                                                                                L I E S

Something that can hurt. Something that seems right to say at one time, but then wrong in a minute. Something that seems like a shield to cover up some truth a person might be hiding underneath. One lie can turn into another and another because that is what lies do. Before you know it, you can seem like a whole other person because of lies.

When someone gets hurt by a lie, it hurts worse than a broken heart. When someone you trust, and they tell you lies for long enough, you might actually start believing them. Lies can become a part of your life before you know it. Even when you wished that they hadn’t. 

You don’t have to be the one who tells the lie. Little white lies are the tiny ones that people tell on accident, or without even thinking about it. Small ones like, “yes I took the garbage out” even when it is still sitting in the pale. Or something else along those lines. Very small and miniscule that won’t destroy anything when you think about it. 

However, it is the lies that people tell you about yourself that hurt the most. The ones that are from someone who you trust. Those lies are what slowly break your heart in two. Those lies that make you believe everything you aren’t is true. 

Lies make up who we can be or who we are. Even when we think they don’t control our lives, one lie can turn our lives upside down. Right before we know it.

-JS

2025

 The New Year… means what exactly? 

Does it mean we all set unachievable goals? Do we work towards weight loss like everyone says they will? 

Truth be told, I feel like the New Year has so many different alleys you could take that for everyone it means something a different. Most people it means that they want to reinvent themselves. 

For me, it means less of reinventing myself but more of small actions that make me feel better about my life and about my actions. These could be small things, like walking a mile everyday, or bigger things, like handling my own health insurance. Whatever you do doesn’t need to seem important for your new year to feel like it is different from the last. Everyone puts an unmanageable amount of pressure on themselves to make the new year a “new them”. But do you truly have to do that?

My vote is no. What’s yours?