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Yeah, so I'm back. I'm trying. That's all I can say. The publishing of my thoughts is getting harder and harder the more friends I have. They all know where this is, they've all been here at least once... I now have to write under the assumption that it will be read by people I will actually see the next day. And that's hard. I'm used to writing without regards to other peoples' feelings. So I've been writing some in the notebook I carry around with me, and I'm discovering that there really isn't anything in there that would hurt anyone.
And so here I am, trying again. We've missed a lot. I'm back at school. A really good friend of mine died... throwing my world upside down, as death always does. You'd think by now I'd be ready, you'd think by now I could handle it. and I have a girlfriend. and she makes me immensely happy. and she wrote a poem that I'm in which also makes me very happy (go here, read them all, and then e-mail her because that'll make her happy. e-mail makes everyone happy. I'm in the one called "One Way") and I've been coming out to people on campus and that too is making me incredibly happy... I have yet to have a bad experience. The girl who lived next door to me last year already knew (arg... look in the entries for late april, early May, I wrote about that...) but when I actually told her she e-mailed me a coming out day card and I walked around smiling for the rest of the day. I'm a happy girl in general right now, which is incredible. I'm never happy. It scares me, really, because I can't expect it to last. I keep thinking of all the things that could go wrong, of the fact that I know it will end eventually, that I'll graduate in May and all my friends will graduate in June and we'll all move on. I'm trying to stop my life, to live right here, right now, and enjoy it... but I worry too much. For a long time I had no plans for my life after May, until I started thinking along the lines of, "What would I do if I knew I were going to die in six months?" and the answer I came up with is that I'd get a job. Not a career, not an "entry-level position" but a job. At the grocery store or in a coffee shop. And a cheap apartment. And I'd live. My big problem was assuming I have to do something important next year. School or the peace corps or the americorps or at least get a "good" job. and I don't have to do any of those things, I can just be for a while, and I think that'll be okay. I've been regressing lately, and I see this as a very good thing. I did everything in my life several years too early, and I think that is the root cause of all my problems. I need to slow down and back up and be a teenager for a while. I'm 17 years old. And I'm living by myself. I own my own car, which is almost paid off and will be paid in full this weekend. I buy my own groceries, I do my own laundry, I make my own food. I come in at 5am on weekdays and there is no one here to care. I'm taking only upper-division college courses. and it's very hard for me to remember that No, this is not normal. That there is something slightly absurd about a 17 year old in a 400-level literature class called, "women, sex, and food." So I've attached myself to people slightly younger than I am who do normal things for people slightly younger than I am... we are loud and obnoxious in OUR booth of the coffee shop, and we play pool but only on ladies night when it's free, and we go to the duck pond and feed them 2 day old bagels we got free at the coffee shop and we talk about drinking and smoking a lot more than we actually do it. We just "hang out" until 4am listening to music and being silly and playing with electrical tape. I carry metallic pens and black post its with me wherever I go, and we leave notes on cars that have cool bumper stickers. We eat absurd amounts of chinese food and spend more time doing nothing than any adult could possibly understand. and most of all, we like it that way. I've been pretending, to the best of my ability, that I don't actually have school. That I live here and the fact that I go to classes is just a small annoyance that shouldn't bother me the rest of the time... roughly translated that means I haven't been studying. Last week was midterms... my congressional politics midterm was on three books, I didn't open any of them until an hour before the test and even then I didn't actually read anything, I sat there with the books open eating chex mix pretending to read. I got an 81 on the exam which made me extremely happy considering the circumstances. I've been doing most of my work late at night when it's due the next day. and surprisingly, this doesn't bother me. Last year when I put things off until the last minute, I had panic attacks about it. This year, my apathy level has hit an all time high, and I don't care how bad the paper is, as long as it gets done sometime before it's due. and I think this is okay. My priorities have shifted. and thye're not where my parents think they should be, they're not even where some of my friends think they should be, but they're where I think they should be. I've spent years studying, This is my fourth year of college and it should only be my first. You could say I'm burnt out, I suppose, and that would probably be fairly accurate. I used to work at it, and I used to care, and I used to have no live and no friends. and now that's shifted and I'm much happier this way. and if Kat's death taught me anything, it's to live life so that I'm happy, because it could end at any time, and if I torture myself "because it's better in the long run" and then die, what good was it? Isn't it better to just be happy now, and let the rest come later? I think it is. That said, I intend to redesign this website soon, if I can find the time... I might also move it, so now would be a good time to join the notify list if you haven't already, because if I do move it I probably won't leave a forwarding address. ~me |