Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Hypengyophobia.

I'm sitting here figuring out what I'm going to do for the next 4 hours before photo, and this house is so empty, and I remember when it wasn't like this on campus. There would at least be people coming in and out between classes, half-heard conversations on cell phones, or random knocks on my door when I had skipped a class and Becky had something that she wanted to tell me and only me. I remember how I used to would never be up at this hour if I didn't have to be, and how my dorm windows were covered with navy curtains. The first time I put them up, Becky swore they were black, and in the following weeks, continued to ask me if I was depressed. Now, I have a great big window, and haven't the money to buy blinds, so the sun wakes me up these days.

How is it possible that I have this feeling deep in my pores, this feeling that I've graduated when I haven't even begun this Senior year? Maybe because I've graduated from the typical Union student. I live off campus now, I'm engaged, and I'm a Senior. I think of the future, and pieces of it are exciting, but more of it is scaring me each day. The closer it gets, the more apprehensive I become. It isn't so much a cold feet of getting married. It's cold feet from life. And marriage is a part of this ticking ally, so it's naturally one of the things that I think about often.

I woke up this morning and ate 3 reeses and 2 pull and peel twizzlers from the candy bowl downstairs. I do that often, eat candy for breakfast. I love the way chocolate tastes in the morning. Tasting it as the first taste of the day is one of my favorite things. I only do it every once in awhile, so that it doesn't become routine and so it doesn't lose its appeal. But I have this anxiety that certain things like that are going to fade away from me. I was so much more of an individual when I was in high school. I'm so much less of what I once was. I think college did that, although I don't know if I can blame one thing. College has seemed to have beaten me into conformity, whether I've fought against it or not. So marriage, this next obvious milestone, is it too going to take other things from me, like chocolate in the mornings and watching reruns of the same halloween shows I have taped on a VHS my mother made for me 15 years ago? Will he even like Halloween as much as me?

College was just another high school for me. I had just become confortable with being myself around my Junior year. I wore a childs size batman shirt with a cape on the back, and wore it with confidence. In fact, most of my wardrobe came from the little boys section of goodwill. I had spurts of gothic and punk attire, and I mixed them up until what I had for clothes was anything but ordinary. But then, when I realized I was going to college, I told mom I needed "grownup clothes." So, we bought heels and suit jackets (because that's what they wore in the movies when the kids went to NYU) but tested the waters first to see if I should wear them. What I found was that not many people stood out from the crowd. Most just blended in. At my high school, many people stood out, and it was accepted that you stood out. So, to avoid being too different, t-shirts and jeans was what I wore at Union. Isn't it funny that I chose to stand out back then because it was accepted? Maybe I'm a true poser. I just know that where before I got saved I wanted to be rejected from society, when I got saved, I wanted to be a part of it. And that's actually backward too, isn't it?

This whole history of shapeshifting sometimes has me wondering who I am. I could say that I'm a gothic at heart, but I wouldn't want to wear gothic clothes everyday. I could say I'm just a casual person, but then I would want to wear heels. It's all indecision. And I wonder how much of my "fashion" history was due to what others thought was cool. I was gothic more with my goth boyfriend, punk more with my punk boyfriend. And it scares me and makes me think that now, I'm not necessarily trying to impress anyone, so is this me? Boring, me? But I know that I want to dress differently, and I have this individual side trying to come out, but it's stifled, for whatever reason I still don't know.

And this, of course, is all rambling and digression.

The sum of this is that I am finding myself a bit depressed and worried these days. I'm worried that all of my life's dreams will slip away from me. I'm worried I'll become cookie-cutter and blend in like I have all these years. I'm worried he'll one day wake up and realize we're not as similar as we thought we were, and the little things that I hold dearest he will find unnecessary and silly. Because they are little. Some of them most people don't even know about. Like that I love Halloween so much, that each year I don't get to trick or treat, I actually get really upset. That I will stay on the couch for the whole week before watching nothing but my VHS tape and Halloween specials on t.v. I seriously LOVE Halloween.

Or that I have to have something hot almost every night when it starts to get cold. Hot chocolate is my favorite, but I also like Chai. But my favorite hot chocolate is what my mom used to make, cinnamon hot chocolate. That's what makes me really happy.

We will come together and have favorites from our pasts, and what if the other person can't give that favorite to them? What if I can never make his grandmother's spaghetti like she makes it? What if he doesn't like my Halloween specials? It's all unecessary anxiety, of course. But it just things that you think about when you know that in 9 months, your life will be joined with another's.

We were all sitting around the table in the kitchen trying to name our fish. I sat back, and for the first time since I've lived here, I felt like I hadn't graduated from a typical Union student. The house was loud and full. It reminded me of my sophomore year, what I will currently recall as the best year of my college existance. All-nighters in the photo house, and countless hours in the blazing hot DMS lab. Woods haunted with white t-shirted men, and caravans to various cities for punk concerts.
All of that seems like there's no time for it anymore. I'm working to save up for my life after this place, and what free time I have, I need to spend thinking of grownup things. I hate that there's no time to have pointless fun anymore. The fun must be well-intentioned and thought out. I hope I'm wrong. I really do.


This is why characters like Peter Pan and Pippi Longstocking are created from adult minds. We all try to get back to those days.

I just didn't know that my efforts would come so soon.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Why do I like being sensitive?

I get my feelings hurt entirely too much.
When I do, it feels like the worst thing in the world, as if my whole world is crumbling on top of me. I wouldn't call myself a drama queen; just someone whose universe falls apart when someone (either intentionally or unintentionally) leaves me out, is sarcastic or blatantly mean to me, or just forgets I exist.

I used to stand against the wall in junior high and just try to blend in, that way it would seem as if I wasn't actually being left out from the crowd. I would bring a book with me, and pretend that I didn't care at all if no one on the outside bothered. But I would read the same lines over and over again, and choke back the huge knot in my throat. Then I began to dress in a way that would either call attention to myself (attention that says: leave me ALONE) or just blend in, wear nothing special, and hopefully just become another face. I would wear my hair in my eyes, and a baggy windbreaker, no matter if it was hot or cold.

But this type of behavior starves me. It really does. I'm one that truly desires and wants to stand out in the crowd, someone who wants to be the one that everyone knows, or wants to just be included. I starve little by little. I hate being on the outside of a conversation and not being included at all, especially if the topic at hand leaves me with the desire to comment about it.

It's like when you want to say something really great in response to the topic at hand, and you wait patiently, so as not to be rude, and the topic just whizzes past. You really feel like you could truly contribute to the conversation, and offer an outlook that is worthy, but instead, you are just left with the words in your head, and the imaginary lines that you draw through each sentence, rewriting and revising. But all that work was for not a whole lot at all, but simply to practice your grammatical imaginary people skills that you will never be able to contribute.

I wish I couldn't cry at the drop of a hat. I wish that I would be the type of woman that was so powerful, that she only cried every once in awhile. Like a grandmother. She only cries when things really matter, and that causes everyone to pay attention to what caused her to cry. She contributes new meaning to the subject, and people develop a reverance for it simply because the one who never cries was moved by it.

But no, I cry at hallmark commercials.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Peter Pan syndrome can be overrated.

My room that I've lived in and out of for the past however many years is nearly empty, except for a few miscellaneous things scattered here and there that I chose until last minute to stuff into a box. It's surreal, really. I've moved back to college every year, but this is the first year that I know I won't be coming back again. That's bittersweet. No more momma's girl. I'm going to be a WIFE in almost nine months. It came so much sooner than I expected it to come. I had all kinds of plans growing up.

I visited a r.v. park one year, in North Carolina, in the moutains, and I vowed that when I turned 18, I'd move there to work, and create some new identity for myself. When the pressing knowledge of necessary college education came about, I too vowed I would be someone different. But all of my various attempts at recreating myself always fall apart. I say I'll be bold and make friends, but I stand on the outside. I say I'll be a little less awkward, but my skin still crawls slightly in crowds of societal strangers. I say I'll be less clumsy, but I end up tripping and falling on the sidewalk, or going to the wrong class my first day (true story). Then I think, if I'm so difficult to change, maybe I'm not so bad after all.

After freshman year, I said I would join a journeyman program and stay in a little hut in India. When it was the summer before my junior year, I ached to take a road trip to off the wall places and take a semester off, collecting the stories of others and working odd jobs as I went. Upon the start of Junior year, I said I'd move somewhere outside of gatlinburg and stay in my own apartment, with my own guard dog.

I've had a lot of almosts in my life. Those paths would have all led me down very different roads. But that road would have led me away from my future husband. And even if I would be tempted to go through the "cold feet" syndrome, looking into all of my what ifs and could haves, life has been so much better than the plans I tried to make for myself.

I think the most comforting thing is that I know the one I'm going to be with for the rest of my life would have been absolutely thrilled about taking part in any of those plans that I fantasized about. I think that's why this doesn't seem like such a smothering thing. Some ask me why I'm 21 and thinking about marriage, that I have my whole life ahead of me, and that I need some time to experience the world for myself. But I know that life apart from the one God prepared for me wouldn't be nearly as satisfying. I've never been one to say that I couldn't live without someone, but I know that if I did, I would be missing something so great.

Instead of thinking about what crazy things I'm going to do this semester and making unrealistic resolutions, I think about saving up to make a downpayment for a house, honeymoon, and stephanotis. I wonder how I'm going to balance 18 hours scholastically, 20-25 hour work weeks, and plan a wedding, all without gaining any weight. I scramble to find someone who will use their photographic talent as charity, and take amazing pictures while being offered very little (not due to bad manners on our part, but due to insufficient funds). The pressure to grow into these adult clothes becomes more apparent every day, and that's the scariest part of it all.

I don't like that soon I'm going to be reduced to an 8-5 work week. I can't stand that I'm going to actually want to go to bed at 8:00 every night. I despise that I'll have to dress up everyday for work, when I don't even own more than two good button-up shirts. My heart breaks that I'll have to know the time frame of a bruise according to its color. I'm a hippie at heart, and all I want to do is live in a commune with my closest friends.

But I am torn.

I would never be satisfied being a little kid all the time. Little kids are selfish and naive of the world. They're only concerned with what's going on in their universe, unaware of the heartache that exists outside of it. They don't know much about comforting one another, and they can't give someone a second chance at life. But I will be able to do that. My grownup job requires that I do.

All of this will bring utility bills, schedules, and debt. But it will also give me opportunities to shine light into others' lives. It will give me a life partner, one who will support me in everything I do. It will make me stronger than I could ever imagine.

And that is worth way more than playing with Barbies by myself.