Tag: News

Bettering Myself

Posted on by Emilyn in Life, My Journal (My Life)
  • Rise With the Sun: Let the Sun Kiss Your Eyelids Awake. A New Day Starts With Fresh Morning Air.
  • Be Kinder to Myself: Love Every Bit of Yourself. You are No Less of a Person. Don’t Be Afraid to Hold Your Own Hand. Don’t Be Afraid to Hug Yourself when You Need to. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Your Own Hero.
  • Say No: It’s Not Always to the Bad. Sometimes you must to what you see as Good.
  • Take Deep Breaths: Ten of Them. One for your Lungs, Two for the What Comes Next, Three to the Way you Hold Breath When you’re Nervous, & Four for the Words you’re about to Tell Yourself: “It’s Going to Be Okay”.
  • Take Care of Yourself: Remember This.
  • Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself: People Make Mistakes. Including You.
  • Be Careful With Your Heart: Don’t Let People Back Into Your Life So Easily.
  • Give Your All: Give Everything.
  • Don’t Wait Too Long: When Something or Someone Doesn’t Come. Wait… A While – For Your Heart’s Content. When Something or Someone Doesn’t Come. Don’t Be Mad at Them. Leave the Moment to Rest. Don’t Wait Too Long, the Moment Needs Rest Too.
  • Choose Your Words Wisely: …but when they don’t come, don’t force them to.
  • It’s Okay to Love Too Much: Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, and Love.
  • Never Leave Anything Unfinished:
  • Stop Doubting Yourself: You Can’t Predict the Future. You Don’t Know Your Potential. Stop Acting like you’re already a Failure. Life’s Just Beginning.
  • Give Yourself Second Chances: A lot of them.
  • Drink More Water: Hydrate Your Roots, You Must.
  • Give Lots of Compliments: Too Many. You know you Love Making People Smile.
  • Love Unconditionally: Don’t Be Afraid.
  • “It’s Going to Be Okay”: No Matter What May Happen, It will be Okay.
  • Don’t Take Anything Personally: I Know Your Heart. You Don’t Want to Wrong Anyone. You Don’t Believe in Making Assumptions, but You Cannot Control What Other’s Think of You. Sometimes They Are Wrong.
  • Leave Toxic People & Things Behind: Leave the Parts of You that Try to Hold You Back.
  • Don’t Forget A Thing: Remember Where You Came From. Remember Who You Are.
  • Let Yourself Free: Go Explore Places that Leave You Breathless.
  • Go To Bed Early: The Sun is Waiting for You – To Kiss Your Eyelids Again. Remember, A New Day Starts With Morning Air.
  • Hold Your Head Up High: You Deserve More than What you May Think.
  • Forgive Yourself: Much Like You Forgive Others, but Don’t Let the Same Mistakes Repeat Themselves.
  • Live Life Like You’re Not Waiting For Something Better: This is it Do Your Best to Make Sure it’s Enough.
  • Currently Listening To: Ordinary Human By One Republic
  • Rise With the Sun: Let the Sun Kiss Your Eyelids Awake. A New Day Starts With Fresh Morning Air.
  • Be Kinder to Myself: Love Every Bit of Yourself. You are No Less of a Person. Don’t Be Afraid to Hold Your Own Hand. Don’t Be Afraid to Hug Yourself when You Need to. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Your Own Hero.
  • Say No: It’s Not Always to the Bad. Sometimes you must to what you see as Good.
  • Take Deep Breaths: Ten of Them. One for your Lungs, Two for the What Comes Next, Three to the Way you Hold Breath When you’re Nervous, & Four for the Words you’re about to Tell Yourself: “It’s Going to Be Okay”.
  • Take Care of Yourself: Remember This.
  • Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself: People Make Mistakes. Including You.
  • Be Careful With Your Heart: Don’t Let People Back Into Your Life So Easily.
  • Give Your All: Give Everything.
  • Don’t Wait Too Long: When Something or Someone Doesn’t Come. Wait… A While – For Your Heart’s Content. When Something or Someone Doesn’t Come. Don’t Be Mad at Them. Leave the Moment to Rest. Don’t Wait Too Long, the Moment Needs Rest Too.
  • Choose Your Words Wisely: …but when they don’t come, don’t force them to.
  • It’s Okay to Love Too Much: Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, and Love.
  • Never Leave Anything Unfinished:
  • Stop Doubting Yourself: You Can’t Predict the Future. You Don’t Know Your Potential. Stop Acting like you’re already a Failure. Life’s Just Beginning.
  • Give Yourself Second Chances: A lot of them.
  • Drink More Water: Hydrate Your Roots, You Must.
  • Give Lots of Compliments: Too Many. You know you Love Making People Smile.
  • Love Unconditionally: Don’t Be Afraid.
  • “It’s Going to Be Okay”: No Matter What May Happen, It will be Okay.
  • Don’t Take Anything Personally: I Know Your Heart. You Don’t Want to Wrong Anyone. You Don’t Believe in Making Assumptions, but You Cannot Control What Other’s Think of You. Sometimes They Are Wrong.
  • Leave Toxic People & Things Behind: Leave the Parts of You that Try to Hold You Back.
  • Don’t Forget A Thing: Remember Where You Came From. Remember Who You Are.
  • Let Yourself Free: Go Explore Places that Leave You Breathless.
  • Go To Bed Early: The Sun is Waiting for You – To Kiss Your Eyelids Again. Remember, A New Day Starts With Morning Air.
  • Hold Your Head Up High: You Deserve More than What you May Think.
  • Forgive Yourself: Much Like You Forgive Others, but Don’t Let the Same Mistakes Repeat Themselves.
  • Live Life Like You’re Not Waiting For Something Better: This is it Do Your Best to Make Sure it’s Enough.

Currently Listening To: Ordinary Human By One Republic

–             Emilyn Nguyen, Bettering Myself

Meghana

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

In the reflection of the sunrise,
a cloud disrupts the clear sky with one single tear,
and I can see the joy in the eyes of those who held you first:

White, and pure into their hands, before it evaporates. Notice how she smiles, molding into the palms of your hands, but she may stay or leave you, no matter what she’ll leave you a mark of goodness, reminding you that it exists. It might be an unparticular date, January 27th, but the clouds still form. There might be rain, maybe snow today, perhaps hail, but this cloud stands alone, brushing dust off the back of her hand to start waving, whispering her wishes in a bashful hush. “Something ought to come out of those clouds, something out to come of me.”  Twisting through the white-blue sky, a background of blue snow, her words are a reason to become winded. She becomes all of the elements of the sky that one holds between their fingers while their head is tilted back and up blinded by the brightness of the sky. You don’t even know. Within you, you’ve shared stories, and painted in breezes. Illusions unfold, and rewind together within you sometimes you escape once again though… you always return to watch over me once again. Sometimes, you will not say a word, but in visuals you write in strength, smiles and hope – aspiring to inspire. You grow in shapes and sizes, aside the bright sun, and you’re a cloud. You can become everything and anything here or even beyond the white-blue skies.

It feels like a cotton breeze,
as I watch the sun rise, and you appear.
“Meghana,” they call you.

–               Emilyn Nguyen, Meghana

Bittersweet

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I am bitter.

I am not sweet.

I am not even a taste of in between. I am not bittersweet with a glimpse of both lemon taffies, and my grandmother’s lemonade. I am so very bitter.

I admit I will never stop appreciating the beauty of – yellow custard lemon tarts, for its ability to be sour, and at the same time: tasteful. You see, I am very good at using useless metaphors, weak symbolism, and analogies that speak like chimes to the people of the gray.

I over analyze life, but I am very bad at telling people how I feel – so he interrupts me, and says that I am sweet, never bitter, “and if you don’t believe me, you’ll believe me when I tell you that your voice is my favorite sound, no matter what words you use – from your analogies, weak symbolism, and useless metaphors. I must be the people of the gray.”

You don’t understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you. I repeat that it is because I am very bad at telling people how I feel, but especially because he is too sweet, and this might mean that I am in love with him still. I am very bitter at even the idea love.

I will admit though, that I am starting to believe in him. His eyes are too soft for me to handle – too sweet, and I don’t think you understand my fear when you look at me with those eyes and tell me that you think that I am sweet, that inside…

“I love you.”

I am not sweet. I am bitter. I am not even a taste of in between. I have repeated, and don’t you dare repeat those words, because I don’t believe in love. I don’t know what love is. I am no one to love. I am not bittersweet with a glimpse between my mother’s key lime pie, and my father’s burnt lemon tarts. I am bitter. You don’t understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you. He is too sweet, and I am too afraid to admit that I am vulnerable – so I am bitter as a hypocrite confessing my feelings to the people of the gray.

They tell me that I shouldn’t invite them into my life if they are inconsistently in love, but love is anything but inconsistent. For since the second I have met I fell in love with his sweet eyes.

You couldn’t possibly understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you and it is because he is sweet, and I can’t fight the bitter sweetness to be vulnerable to admit for the first time – to any one:

“I love you too.”

–            Emilyn Nguyen, Bittersweet

 

 

Blank Canvases: New Beginings

Posted on by Emilyn in Life, My Journal (My Life), Photography, Prose

In a bundle of blankets wrapped around my legs, my toes still wander among them. They curl in a cold numbness, but move slowly outside of the sheets, only crawling back for sanctuary when it had decided to wander too far, sending a glimpse of the winter air invading the warmth I feel.

In retrospect, there are several candles burning simultaneously. Scents intermixing and seemingly to interchange with each other – “Vanilla Bean  Noel”, “Leaves”, “Vanilla Frosted Cupcakes”, and “Apple Orchids”.  The beginning of the wax melting and the ends of the wicks burning into the glass Mason jar, their aura of entitled seasons and settings – colliding with memories gathering at the frontal cortex of my mind, telling me to “remember…”

I remember faintly, but waking up to a New Year, my eyelids are heavy amongst morning light, but I can still feel the ache of my body against the hardwood floor beneath me. There is a mess of my books scrambled amongst the polished hardwood floor. Paint brushes and pens are spread apart messily from each other next to opened paint palettes, and untouched new sketch books – all lying still as if I were painting still life; a beautiful mess.

My journals are opened up to my favorite entries, for I was frantically flipping through them for inspiration; in a frantic search for a new idea. I have a fear to become a closed, quiet, and reserved mind, but against the wall, a blank canvas is still at the head of the mess is white and waiting patiently for a painting anew.

I think I must have fallen asleep staring at the canvas. There is still a paintbrush in my hand, wet with moisture. I reached for my brown journal the simplicity in the page catches my eye. It says, “If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.”

Useless.

I must admit I have been an empty mind, searching for what my mother calls a “lost cause.” Empty canvases are bad luck.

I can taste the candle burning now, overpowering in the memories they have connected to this room – this home. I drag my blankets off my legs walking to the window, and the snow is too bright for my eyes. A new sheet of ice has appeared on my window, but the white sheet of blankness and stillness appeals to me, leading me to start wandering.

I am falling into a white abyss.

There are indications of where I am, but I am inclined to find the root of its origin. There are parts that remind me of my childhood like a flashback of photos – quickly, so you feel like so much time has passed. What you don’t see is all the time that is coming.

You don’t know how much time is coming, but think far. Think far ahead. Dream far ahead, and only look back when reflecting, to better improve yourself. Wander. Wander far ahead with your dreams tucked behind your ears.

I recall memories of comfort and dread and in between them now is where I lie. It is something that I am sure of; something I am connected to. It is a tangible feeling that I feel. One minute you imagine that you’re eight, and others an age of sixteen.

To realize, I quiver in a dream walking as a paintbrush on a white-as-snow canvas, letting myself fall heavily into a white abyss. New snow falls for a new year; this lost cause is a new beginning.

–

I’ve picked up the paintbrush and begun to paint.

Photography By: Michelle Dee

Currently Listening To: Move Together By James Bay

–           Emilyn Nguyen, Blank Canvases: New Beginnings

Twenty-Fourteen

Posted on by Emilyn in Life

Hellos are met at the front door with sincere waves and smiles. Notice the curvatures of their lips – their off-white teeth and cracked lips shining like moonlight towards an opening of one’s heart and letting someone in. The creak of the porch served as a stoic warning, but I entered. My awkward posture, fidgeting hands, and a discrete smile, I entered with such caution, and propriety; still feeling the uneasy step in to a white abyss: a new year. A blank space it was. In the depths of my persona, I was a pair of bright eyes, very little of a voice, and an overfilled brown leather journal. On the twenty-fourth page of it, I wrote:

 “Twenty-Fourteen is about an evolution; a change in time with an entirely different meaning; an emerging voice; another side of fear; laughing endlessly; loving ceaselessly; running regularly; remembering the smallest moments; reading hundreds; writing even more; an exploration somewhere near, and somewhere far; an adventure; learning something new, and something old; freely living – infinitely, and fearlessly.”

Now, I think:

Changing. Perhaps.

Evolving. Entirely.

I finally found my voice, and it was no longer in the symbolism of neither my poetry, prose, nor strokes of my brushes, but the sound waves when I spoke. I didn’t believe my mother when she told me that “you’d grow into your voice. It’s okay to be shy,” but eventually I did. My anxiety when speaking eventually evaporated and my voice did emerge along with an obnoxious laugh, the way my mother says my father tilts his head back and squeals in silent laughter, and a contagious chuckle. I evolved. I was no longer just entering the front doors with sincere waves, and smiles, but I was letting people enter with a darling hello. I became observant of the smallest of memories in book characters, and new found friends. I was the greeter at the door by the end of Twenty-Fourteen.

I let people freely enter my life. I welcomed them. I met people that loved me, changed me, cared for me, but also love, and cherish in return. I met people for days a time, only a week, to grow as sisters – still growing, still evolving. I met people that laughed and loved me for one bad joke and an obscure giggle. I met people that understand me, and that don’t; people that were distinctively at the opposite end of the pole of where I was, but those were where the adventures were best. For once, I was content with not being able to understand content with having neither an explanation nor reason for all that I do in my lifetime. I can love science while loving religion as an old blanket; I can be creative while being innovative…

 

“With a mind like yours, stay true to what you believe…”

I was blessed with adventures, small and large with these people. Explorations with them, I found pieces of myself in each place I found myself wandering in, the good and the bad: my plan to start anew. I was met face to face with my fears and my failures, and this alone was a blessing. Through my books, my long strolls, running reminiscing in the rain, spinning in summer dresses, getting lost in old libraries, biking in the woods, I was no longer afraid to let go, be wild, be free, and be misunderstood. Twenty-Fourteen loved me, made me, broke me, and changed me.  Until now, I realize that I’m surrounded by such energy in this life, of both love and such fearlessness, I am no longer afraid to wander alone into a welcoming white abyss: this New Year.

 –            Emilyn Nguyen, Twenty-Fourteen

 Currently Listening To: Your Song By Elton John

 

Collection of Memories of Twenty-Fourteen:
(Opening My Memory Jar)

  • Beyond the Microscope: (January) Medical Center Science Research Symposium – With Claire, Matthew, and Allison
  • Love in 14 Ways: (Valentine’s Day, February) Carnation Giving at Hospital – With Claire, Juliana, Meghana, and Allison
  • Discovering Water Colors: (March) Rediscovering Water Color Paints! How Beautiful!
  • First Large Canvas Painting: (April) C’est Paris! Painting of Paris Completed!
  • Honored: (May) National Honor Society Initiation Ceremony
  • First Fears: (May) First Science Research Presentation – With Matthew, Allison, Claire, and Science Research Class
  • All Dolled Up: (June) Junior Prom – With Allison, Claire, Juliana (and Meghana in spirit)
  • Claire Bear: (July) Claire’s Birthday Surprise! – With Meghana, and Allison
  • Motivational Friends = Motivation is Contagious: (July) CURIE Academy at Cornell University – With CURIE Girls Internationally
  • Carolina Shores: (July) Outerbanks – with Lily, and Family
  • Hurricane Arthur: (July) Maryland for Sanctuary – With Ethan, Emma, Lily, Danny, Timothy, and Family
  • Land of the Free: (July) Little Ethan finds comfort in my arms for the Fourth of July Fireworks in Maryland – With Lily, Emma, Ethan, Danny Timothy, and Family
  • Seventeen in Ithaca: (July) Birthday Insomnia Cookies, Breakfast, Presentation, Lunch & Dinner – With CURIE Girls, Lily, Timothy, and Family
  • Broken Humerus, Not Humorous (July): Timothy’s Surgery
  • Running in Place: (August) Rochester Scholars Session B: Biomedical technology: Engineer, Doctor, or Both?
  • I’m Listening: (August) Rochester2014 Session B: Cochlea: Microphone of the Inner Ear
  • “I Can’t Pose!”: (September) Senior Photos – With Michelle
  • More Bitter than Sweet: (September) Last Year of High School
  • Trojans, Trojans what’s Your Cry? V-I-C-T-O-R-Y: (October) Spirit Week/ Homecoming! – With Friends
  • Last Season: (October) Meghana’s Last Tennis Match of her High School Career: She won! – With Juliana, and Bethany
  • At Hallows: (October) Cat for Taekwondo Halloween Party, Zombies for Halloween Trick-Or-Treating – With Lily, Danny, and Timothy
  • Before Thanksgiving: (November) College, College, College [Applications]
  • Thankful Thanks: (November) Thanksgiving at Lynn’s House – With Lynn, Michelle, Lily, and Family
  • Midnight Rumble: (November) Black Friday – With Lily & Mom
  • With the People of the Era, Where I Belong: Senior to Senior Intergenerational Dance – With Kat, Meghana, Claire &
  • Elephant Santa: (December) Gag Gifts Secret Santa – With Friends
  • Baby, It’s Cold Outside:(December) Holiday Party – with Allison, Claire, Meghana, and Juliana

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