Just Wanna Live

I'm not one to take moral codes from Good Charlotte, but as I'm listening to their "I Just Wanna Live," I've realized two things:
1) That whole celebrity "woe is me, I get way too much attention from bothersome fans" bit is about as convincing as Velveeta cheese trying to be food. In other words, it's fake and and leaves a rubber-like taste in your mouth.
2) Minus the paparazzi part, this is what people are searching for in life. We too just wanna live, sans judgment, or fads that change every two seconds, or people telling us we can't act a certain way, breathe a certain way, etc.
God, I hate it when people use the word etc.
 Perhaps you think I'm overreacting, oh reader of blog. But yogis do tell us how to breathe. One time, I was doing alternate nostril breathing like a normal person (block one nostril, breathe in, block the other nostril, breathe out), and the teacher, in a gentle breathy, "no-judgment" voice, told me I was doing it wrong.
"You have to breathe for the same amount of time on both sides."
I looked like a puffer fish, trying to inhale for five seconds.
"Just relax into the breath; deep meditation will help your inhale."
It certainly helped me look like I'd forgotten to breathe. How very Bella Swan of me. Here I was, swarmed by deep thinkers, people who could exhale ommmm for a million seconds, while I myself was gasping for air, wishing I could just be left alone to some chick flicks and a giant bar of white chocolate.

It wasn't until my last breathing class, that I realized my desire to "just live," wasn't based so much on happiness, but rather, on fear. I mistook what was out of my comfort zone, as odd, and only something people with Sanskrit tattoos and vegan diets could do. I actually told myself I wasn't a correct breather. But what hasn't been normal in my daily life before, doesn't mean it's a prison sentence, or that people are telling me how to act.
My way of life, as goofy and weird as I pride myself to be, used to be like every other teenage girl's mode of thinking. I compared. I plotted. I set up hour long battles between my hair and the flat iron, trying to straighten it into submission. When your thoughts are taken over by "she wears it so much better," (I think I may have read one too many People magazines) or "I'll eat that cupcake, only if I can subtract 400 calories at dinner," it's like living on pause. Life has seemed frozen to me, with the promise that tomorrow I'll take full advantage of life, and really dive into it. Trouble is, tomorrow never arrives.
Maybe I'm not as chilled out as I'd hoped to be after yoga camp, but I refuse to keep myself on pause until this hypothetical day where it all makes sense. Yes, I'll have days when I'm self conscious and feel like the answer to "what's wrong with this picture?" But it's helpful to realize rather than react. I can be aware I'm having one of those days (gotta love adolescence), without heaping two tons of makeup on my face. I can realize I'm having a splurging day with the extra cookie, and not run around like a chicken with my head cut off. Because while I'm on this earth, I'm gonna take full advantage of just living.