Year in Review

Tonight was my Honors presentation. I've been researching and worrying about this topic for the last year; tonight it is over forever. I'm closing the book.

Time to close the book on something else I've been worrying about for a year.

Well, write it, and then close it.
(NB: I am not feeling nearly angsty enough at the moment to do justice to this post...as it is, it's just the prewriting I did a week or so ago. It's really not that interesting--I like my facebook note better.)


Believe it or not, one year ago today was my first kiss. I don't like to give that person a lot of credit, but it really was a huge turning point in my life. My naivete, my romantic notions of how things ought to be between a woman and a man, were shattered forever. This was extremely traumatizing; it took me months to recover, to learn from and be able to use this newfound worldliness and wisdom.

I went into a severe depression.

In my bewildered state of mind, I found myself drunk off my ass at a frat party. I was being outgoing and flirty, something completely new to me--I wasn't quite confident in my appearance yet, although the prior encounter had made me suspect that maybe I could be hott.

Less traumatized but still entirely weirded out--and feeling extremely guilty--I tried to pull my life back together. I found something to do with my time; I quit drinking (lasted six weeks!!); I found unlikely confidants to provide me with perspective.

I was shocked to find myself falling for one such confidant. I'd never really had feelings for someone before, beyond vague crushes here and there. We spent a perfect weekend together and I found myself in my first-ever relationship. I was equally thrilled and terrified. And rightly so; it ended as abruptly as it began. I was crushed; the ecstasy that had replaced my summer funk led to a crash right back into depression.

At this point I was getting bitter.

On Halloween I first found myself at a nightclub. Alcohol, loud music, throbbing basslines. Costumes, masks. I danced with several guys and was horrified when one kissed me. After spending a lot of time stressing about it and trying to determine what it "meant" to me, the next week us girls went out again and I found myself in the arms of some other guy on the dance floor. I didn't care at all this time.

The time at the end of January...

I exchanged phone numbers with this one, a first for me. We hung out--Guitar Hero, movies--but he wasn't really my type. One night I was at a party on campus and was texting him, and he showed up at my apartment, much to my bewilderment. I was drunk and things got out of hand. However, having crossed the line, I didn't see the harm in continuing to do so and we dated for another three or four weeks--until I realized he had been lying to me about something extremely important. I walked out. I was never sad about him...I'd never gotten emotionally involved.

And, meanwhile, keep in mind that these are only my own experiences--my girlfriends were being treated like shit by guys all along, as well. I have very little trust in men at all at this point, seeing extremely rare examples of men who are considerate, nice, honest.

Earlier this month I was at another Drury party and was also flirty and outgoing there, which led to another instance of extreme circumstances.

All this within a year of my absolute first kiss--what a year it has been. I didn't know there was so much to learn about myself that I had been completely blind to. Like that I don't care about physical things. Like that, even as female judgment cuts like a knife, I find myself doing it, too. Like how the love of my friends is so much more important to me than romance right now--yet I can't deny physical desire.

I don't let the dramz cripple me anymore. For better or for worse. I don't get emotionally involved. It really makes it all so much more pleasant...(and, yes, I recognize that this is not necessarily healthy).


A year.

Will the next year bring about such dramatic growth for me?

Will it bring about any?

words 2.0

words

Summer morning and I forget it's only April.
I walk to class automatically,
Almost expecting to see Carly.
Perfect weather soon yields to sticky lethargy,
But in the meantime...

Seasons echo the cycles of my own life.
I'm not the girl I was last spring:
Naive, idealistic, wanting, needing.
I'm not the woman I was last summer:
Needing, desperate, clinging, betrayed.
I'm not even the person I was three weeks ago...

Regrets?
Not really...
I feel so much more genuinely me,
That perhaps it was worth the pain.
I've learned so much more in the last twelve months
Than in the twenty years before them.

I know I can't keep living like this.
It's not, well, sustainable,
To use our favorite catchphrase.
Already there have been calls far too close.

Yet I don't know what else there is.

Before this door of my personality was opened,
Flirty, sexy, confident, fun,
I...I could feel the void?

I don't want to close the door and reclaim that boring-ness...



(NB: I think this is prose, just spaced out to more clearly show my thought process. It's been the English Symposium this week and I've had to go to readings and stuff...I wish I could do creative writing, but I just don't think I have the discipline...)


on a cloudy day it's more common than you think
he's my first mistake

staying

It's kind of like how in junior year of high school I'd proclaim far and wide that, "IF I go to school in Missouri, it'll be at MU." And then ended up here.

Sometimes the right decision isn't nearly so drastic...yet is so much more perfect than I could have ever imagined.

The obvious huge benefits of staying include:
-Being a teacher, YAY
-Not losing my "home" for at least another year
-Not being far from my hometown and the people I love there

I keep thinking of smaller consequences of staying, too:
-I can go to Brett and Micah's wedding
-I can go to the Sherman Alexie convo next year, omg!
-I don't have an excuse to NOT attend MSA 25th-anniversary festivities...

On a different note, for English senior sem we have to write a narrative paper about either our "intellectual autobiography" (what books, etc have shaped the way we think) or how we've changed throughout our college educations (in terms of values and beliefs: intellectual, personal, spiritual, political). I'm definitely doing the latter and I am SOOOO excited about it. I kept jotting down notes during class yesterday and I honestly don't know how I'll fit it all in. I am so excited. Other than no one else would speak up and attest to a similar transformation...oh well, I can be the black sheep I suppose.
I think I'm gonna open my paper with,

Things have changed for me,
and that's okay,
I feel the same,
I'm on my way...

a man, a plan, a canal: panama!

Okay, actually the only part of the title I care about is the "plan." Here it is (grin!):

I am enrolling in classes at Missouri State University to earn teacher certification.
I am living in a beautiful apartment with two of my best friends.

Financing the plan TBD, but I am soooooooo excited! About the specific plans, and about HAVING PLANS itself, omg. It's about time, haha.

I'm gonna be a teacher! :D
And I don't have to leave Ashley and Lindsey! :D
And our new home is soooo nice! :)

it's all been done

It's hard for me to think of anything to write. I feel like in the three months of this blag I've said the same thing over and over. And in two weeks I'm gonna recap it all, anyway (April 27 is gonna be an EPIC post, I'm just sayin', ahaha). What can I say? To quote Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun...or to quote BNL, it's all been done.

Joseph Campbell, one of the foundations of my big research paper. He equates every story from every culture throughout all of human history. Every culture tells the same story because every person can relate to it because it is his or her own life on a more significant level. (This inspired an existential crisis in me sometime last fall, heh.)

If so much of individual existence is the same, the same, the same, where does the individual find his or her meaning?

I can't answer that question. But, I mean, it doesn't matter if the shit I'm going through, millions of people have gone through before; it's new to ME. All I am is my mind, my personality, my consciousness. THAT is what matters. Cogito ergo sum. 'Tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The way I perceive the world, my experiences--even if my experiences are nothing novel, the way I perceive them is 100% unique.

And so what?

I don't know.

One of my professors said the key to bringing about social change, to ending racism, to ending oppression, is a life of the mind. To read, to be aware, to be able to relate and consider and maybe, just maybe, understand. This really struck me.

I don't have any answers, but I'm okay with that for now.

update

and if the timing is right to sneak off into the night
i'll let myself be taken just for the thrill
and if i'm given the chance to be a doll in his hands
i will be sure we shake the mountains while we dance

See my old posts regarding hedonism and such. Still valid.

Not so valid: my old identification with the following lyrics:
you sit there in your heartache
waiting on some beautiful boy to save you from your old ways

I don't want a beautiful boy to save me. Boys don't, CAN'T do that, and it's foolish to expect it. Prince Charming syndrome...I may have grown up on Disney movies, but they're completely unrealistic. Plus, being saved from my old ways--the price of that, as I learned last summer, would be making myself vulnerable. I've witnessed enough hurting, I don't want to go anywhere near that. The best I can hope for, for the time being at least, is to have some fun...while keeping my heart tucked safely away.

i have no doubt that i could love you forever
the only trouble is, i really don't have the time
i have one night only, one night only, that's all i have to spare
one night only, let's not pretend to care

(lyrics: the hush sound, "boys are too refined;" the killers, "when you were young;" dreamgirls, "one night only")

P.S. It's snowing. I do NOT approve. What ever happened to spring??

i don't get marriage.

what's so special about a relationship that happens to involve sex that two people get to commit to love each other for the rest of their lives? why is it okay for friendships to slowly fade across distance but it's the end of the world when it's romance? what i mean to say is, i care more strongly about my girlfriends than i can EVER really imagine caring about some dumbass guy. why isn't there a way to commit to love each other forever, to perform the necessary maintenance on the relationship, to be heartbroken when we're apart...? i mean, yeah, it's a lot more logistically difficult when you think of more than just two people, obviously five people have to go their separate ways i guess, but...idk. i'd rather be married to caitlin lindsey ashley latesa, in the sense of commitment and love and putting effort into the relationships and cohabitation, and just use guys for physical needs without getting emotionally attached.