Resolutions 2011: How I Did; And, Resolutions 2012

Aaaaaah, hey, so remember these?  That was 365 days ago!  Man, I simultaneously do and do not want it to be last year again.  2011 was fucking awesome, mostly, which I’ll tell you all about one day in my year-end recap, but for now, let’s just recap those resolutions and see how they turned out!

1.  do some reflecting and some really hard thinking in the first few days of the year.  First few days of the year?  This was more like ALL OF THEY YEAR, EVERY DAY, ALL THE TIME.  I think now, after this year, I finally and fully understand the term “navel-gazing”.  What can I say, I think about myself a lot.  But really, I said then that I wanted to learn more about who I am and figure out how to be more comfortable with that, and whoooooooo GIRL.  Thanks, 2011, you can throw up that “Mission Accomplished” banner now.  I think I not only grew, but really liked who I was growing into, more in these past twelve months than ever before.  And fortunately, I think grad school and my program will only facilitate more of that in 2012.

2. eat more fruits and veggies and keep walking.  The fruits and veggies thing was hit or miss.  Summer was weird, and I didn’t feel at home, so I spent a lot of time avoiding the common areas like the kitchen and hiding in my room, snacking on things that were bad for me.  Things have gotten better.  The walking thing was a big old FAILURE.

3.  become the girl who reads at work again.  You only wanna know the people who are into her.  Hmmmm.  I did read at work more, but I still managed to kiss inappropriate people and feel vexed by my coworkers and my interactions with them until the bitter end.  Mostly, the problem was there weren’t really any people at work who wanted to know and hang with a girl who read.  I worked with typical a-hole college kids, is why.

4. try harder to be better.  A better sister, daughter, friend, roommate, employee, student, human.  Kinder, more patient, sweeter, more loving, harder working.  You’re kind of lazy and you know it.  Just work on it.  I certainly didn’t make a concentrated effort every day (see mention of laziness, above), but I think I had moments where I would catch myself being uncharitable or awful and try and work on it.  This one, though, is, and probably will remain for a very long time, a work in progress.

5. write more.  I made it my mission one year ago today to write at least three posts per month here, just to keep myself chronicling my life, for my own sake, and reflecting, and de-stressing, and I’m so fucking proud of myself for doing it (as of this post!) that I wish it were possible to do some sort of running high-five with me.  Go Team!

6. try and be braver.  Trust others, make things right with the people you need to, face the future with optimism, a sense of self-efficacy, and your chin up  The trust thing is…..still a thing.  I made things right with the person with whom they weren’t, and it didn’t blow up in my face, and that’s mostly due to this other person’s generosity and good humor.  The optimism/self-efficacy/upwardly-pointing chin thing didn’t happen so much, but hey, things still turned out really well, so perhaps in the future I should REMEMBER THAT, huh, self??

So, overall, things were spotty, but mostly completed.  2011 was such a great year, with some rough patches here and there, and I’m really hoping things can continue at an even keel in 2012.  I don’t have as thoughtful or profuse hopes for next year, just a few general resolutions that have been floating around in my mind, so here they are.

1.  I want to read more.  I’ve tried and tried to make myself quantify this one somehow, but I can’t.  I don’t want to say “x number of books per month” because what if I try (again) to read Anna Karenina?  That shit’s a doorstop, yo!  So, instead, in my mind, this is more like, “read at your own pace, several nights a week, even if it’s just for ten minutes, but for the love of God, READ, and don’t stop”.

2.  Cook more.  Or learn more cooking-type activities?  I don’t cook.  Grilled cheese was a fucking revelation when I finally mastered it.  This year, I’ve got a few easy things I can make that still really surpass my super-low-bar standards (chicken salad, devilled eggs), but for 2012, I think I’d like to try actually, I don’t know, baking things?  Putting things in the stove for a pre-determined amount of time, and then taking them out when they’re golden-brown and ready to eat (aside from frozen pizzas, don’t worry, those are my bitches)?  Perhaps I will chop things.  And season!  I’d like to know how to properly season!  And….cook meat?  I think I could bake a potato easily enough, but broiling a steak sounds harder than getting a phD at this point.  Basically what I’m sayin’ is, the art which we call cooking is something upon which I would like to improve…forthwith.  Posthaste.  Henceforth.

3.  Embrace my program more fully.  You guys, though, seriously, you would be so impressed about how much I contribute to class.  Like, I’m legitimately pretty sure that there were people in some of my undergrad classes who probably thought I was an actual mute, but now you can’t shut me up.  In some classes, at least.  So, more of that.  That is good.  Also, developing more rapport (ah, look at me with my counseling lingo) with professors and peers, get involved perhaps, and be less lazy about reading/writing for class.  Oooooh, that is setting the bar perilously high for me, you don’t even know.  2011 was a record year for laziness, especially the latter half.

4.  Be a better person in general.  This, much like last year’s resolution, encompasses a lot of things, and isn’t something I can say I definitely finished when the year is over.  It’s a lifetime of work.  Patience, charity, basic kindness and understanding, but also, belief in myself, confidence, feeling comfortable in my own skin.  That’s a big bill, huh?

5.  Well, it worked last year, so I think I’ll amp it up just a bit here for 2012: write four times a month, at least.  That’s at least once a week, you guys!  That is so much, for someone who has a life.  BUT, happily, I don’t, so it should be no problem.  Ba-dum-chhhhh.  No but really, it’s fun to write when I’m happy, and soothing to write when I’m sad/nervous/angry/frustrated/lonely, so I want to keep at it.  I think in fifty years I’ll be glad I did, and what’s even the point of making a resolution if you can’t say that about it?

So, yes, I am still at home, and yes, I still miss my apartment/Athens like crazy, but I gotta say, this break has been pretty great lately.  My sisters are all home, and I’ve spent the last several days with all or most of them, mainly just sitting around in various rooms drinking, talking, and laughing.  I wrapped presents with them just before the holiday, escaped early Christmas Eve craziness with them (and wine), and just today, went shopping and spent an admirably small amount of money, even though we were out for something like five hours.  And, about an hour ago, my oldest sister marched into my room, rolled around on my bed, announced, “I’ve had four glasses of wine!”, and read the back of one of my new books in a ridiculous English accent.  I’m going to miss her when she’s gone.

Another great thing about being home is that I get to see my niece SO MUCH.  Like, every day for the past week, I think?  I’m going to have withdrawals when I head back to school.  I’ve never been one for babysitting or being around infants, so it’s pretty astounding to me how much I love her and want to hang out with her, and miss her when I don’t see her; sometimes, a few hours after she leaves, I’ll already be lonesome for her.   And, watching her grow and learn new things, even just since I’ve been in town, is one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.  She has huge cheeks, fingers I love to munch on, and the loudest baby yells EVER.  Ugh, I love her so much, you guyssssss!

Nevertheless, I was daydreaming in the shower about how I wish there were a way to scoop up my whole apartment in my arms when I get back and hug it.

Project Read

What am I supposed to be doing right now?  Research for my career development self-report, due Tuesday.  But what am I doing right now?  Ohhhh, you know, just  Wikipedia-ing authors.  Got Welty, James, Hardy, and Trollope all open right now.  No big.

I’ve always been a big reader, from the time my older sister sat me down between her bookcase and trash can and wouldn’t let me move until I had mastered Hop on Pop.  I looooooooved the local library as a little girl; hell, I still kind of do, although I don’t spend very much time in Dayton anymore.  From the Betsy-Tacy series, my one true and unimpeachable love which will last until the day I die, seriously, to the All-Of-A-Kind Family*, from the Mennyms (oooooh, which I haven’t read since I was about 8 or 9, I wonder if they’re still just as magical?) to the Rose Wilder books, I was always, always reading.  This habit continued through grade school and junior high, as I discovered the His Dark Materials trilogy, Agatha Christie mysteries, and, of course, Harry Potter.  Unfortunately, my passion fell off a little when I entered high school, and mandatory novel reading became par for the course in my Honors-track English courses.  I hate, hate, HATE being rushed through a good book, and although I’ve always been an avid reader, I’m also a slow one.  The pace of the courses was just too fast for me to get really involved with the books, so even though I discovered a bunch of great writing which I still love to this day (Jane Eyre, A Tale Of Two Cities, Crime And Punishment, Shakespeare, etc.), a lot of the time I was frustrated or stressed while reading them.  I also didn’t get a lot of leisure reading in, which I sorely missed, even through college.

As you may have picked up from reading pretty much anything I’ve written in the past few years here, I was an English major in college.  My decision to become an English major at the time felt like such a decadence to me.  I was already majoring in Psych, but upon discovering that I could seriously finish that major within, like, two and a half years, I talked it over with my advisor and decided, ahhhh, what the hell, let’s add English, too, shall we?  Best.  Decision.  Of my LIFE.  From the introductory course I took my first semester to the high-level, theory-driven courses I ended up taking junior and senior years (plus one Shakespeare one I conned my way into freshman year, which was pants-shittingly terrifying for someone who was surrounded by seniors, knew less than nothing about literary theory, and had only read about three of his plays, but ended up being simultaneously awesome, as well), I loved it all.  Even the shit-tastic Contemporary Fiction course I took one spring (although that was mainly because there was this way cute, very articulate adn intelligent-seeming Graphic Design major in that class).  I just had this overwhelming urge to learn and to know as much as possible, because capital-L Literature captivated me.  Still does.  I wanted to understand the theories and memorize the time periods and who fit where and what their major works were and basically just read everything.  I was introduced to John Donne, William Faulkner, Evelyn Waugh, a new and begrudging appreciation for Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, TS Eliot, and my new literary boyfriend, Henry James.  Even amidst all this literary love, there were some real shitstorms in there, like the freakin’ Brit Lit pre-1600 class that was all Chaucer and Beowulf and basically a recipe for boredom, or the two WD Howells novels I was supposed to read senior year, but seriously, some dude’s paint business is just not interesting to me, I’ll pass.  Also, I was assigned to read Sister Carrie twice, once as a freshman and once as a senior, and finished it zero times.  I’m still bound and determined with that one though, and one day, I’ll make it through.  All this is a really long-winded way of saying that college ignited the thirst for literary knowledge in me that had always been simmering just under the surface, and it hasn’t really let up.  Since I was focused so much on, you know, being an English major, there wasn’t much time for reading for pleasure.  I was too busy trying to force my way through Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man to have time for, like, Jeffery Eugenides or Jonathan Franzen.  Summers became prime pleasure-reading time for me, although I spent them mainly with light and easy mysteries.

However, at the beginning of the year, a roommate and I both dedicated ourselves to reading more of what we wanted, if only for fifteen minutes at the end of the day, mostly to help keep our sanity intact through second semester.  I was so happy!  I read an Irene Nemirovsky work, Emma, and started The Age of Innocence.  I’m not sure what happened, but around March, the habit fell away, and though I tried to re-ignite it with Anna Karenina in June, uhhhhh, June is maybe not the best time to start a lengthy, dark Russian drama, and I failed.  The only thing I’ve really read since July is Betsy and the Great World for maybe the fifteenth time.  So I’ve decided to re-(re-, re-, re-)dedicate myself to pleasure reading.  I know it might seem like, heyyyyy mayyyyyyybe since you never stick with it, it’s not the best hobby for you!  But it is!  I promise, it makes me so, so happy, I just tend to let myself get caught up in other things and let my novel-reading slide, and then I return to that novel like six weeks later and am like “Wait, wait, wait.  WHO is Ellen Olenska related to again?”  But it’s something that is so incredibly relaxing and allows me to unwind after long grad-school days, and fills the literary void in my life now that all I’m doing is learning about counseling.  So I’ve re-picked up The Age Of Innocence and am just tearing through it and have no idea why I put it down in the first place, and I have a six-week break ahead of me and can’t stop squealing about all the good reading I’m going to do.  I’m on a huge late nineteenth/early twentieth century kick, hence most of my authors I’m looking up currently, and I CANNOT wait to start crossing things off of my book list.  PLUS, the time is ripe to start forming my New Year’s Resolutions, and one of them will undoubtedly revolve around reading more in 2012.  I’m so happy, so excited, and so, so, SO ready to read.

*Hoooooly shit, I just looked this series up on Amazon, and the “Customers who bought this also bought” suggestions offered up both Blue Willow, which fascinated me as a young girl and which I had totally forgotten about, and CADDIE MOTHERFUCKIN’ WOODLAWN, which I loved so so so so SO MUCH when I was little and once read in a single afternoon.  Oh my.  Be still, my beating heart.

A Year In The Life, Part Two

Alright!  I am motherfuckin’ determined to get this posted MUCH earlier than last year’s part two.  Fall ’10 is so much happier to write about than fall ’09, so that helps the process.

July was largely spent in Dayton when my BG job went on hiatus for a few weeks.  During those three weeks home, I came to a few realizations: this was probably the last solid amount of time I would ever spend working at Coldstone, and also the last solid amount of time I would spend living in my childhood home.  Both of those things simultaneously wrench at my gut and feel right to me.  I didn’t fit in with the high schoolers at Coldstone and was increasingly just short on patience with my boss, and home just seemed lackluster compared to BG.  Probably because I was in the midst of the best summer of my life here, and didn’t appreciate the interruption to go home, work a job with coworkers I didn’t really care to know, live with my parents instead of my roommates, and spend quiet nights in instead of at college bars.  Not so shocking, then, to have the reaction I had.  The majority of my July was actually spent away from BG, come to think of it.  I drank a bit with friends from home, spent the first part of the month in Dayton like I mentioned, and the last two weekends in Kentucky visiting my sister and in Michigan at a family member’s Christmas tree farm.  Yes, you read that right.  It was AWESOME.  I went tubing for the first time in Kentucky, and four-wheeling for the first time in Michigan, and loved both.  I feel like those are some quintessential Midwestern summertime distractions, right there.  Garsh.  August was a weird month of waiting for things.  The first two weeks were my final two weeks at my beautiful summer home, and I spent them alternately eagerly anticipating moving into my new apartment and holding on like hell to the place and people I was with.  And then I spent the first week in my new apartment lonesome for my summer house and my new roommate, who spent the whole week working all day, and waiting, waiting, waiting for classes to start.  And then, BAM, I was a senior.

Once my other roommate moved in and the school year kicked off, I settled in really quickly.  Summer, as a season, was winding down, but still infusing my first few weeks of school with so much sunshiney bliss.  I guess it helps that I fell rapidly in love with my roommates, as well.  I wore a dress every day for the first week of classes.  Someone professed their deep and intense crush on me, and then left for Europe.  The feeling was not mutual; in fact, I was so weirded out that I shut that person out of my life entirely.  Sometimes I’m kind of a dick.  Don’t worry, though!  Things are better now!  But that’s for next year’s recap.  Late August and early September are practically indistinguishable in my mind.  It was all just breezey warmth, learning my routine, starting to figure out what the year was going to be like.  Mid-September, my grandmother passed away.  Ugh, I remember that morning so clearly.  The texts from my sister implying something was wrong, until I just snapped “WHAT is going on?”  Crying alone in my room, before I told anyone.  My half-hearted attempt to cheer myself up by going to the football game.  It was so terrible.

Fortunately, things did look up from there.  I did not descend into the depths of despair.  The rest of September was a little gray, but October really livened things up.  I think I managed to drink every weekend, despite being the sickest I’ve been in a while mid-month.  I know I started the month off terribly.  TERRIBLY.  Let’s not revisit the decision I made that night.  I kissed at least three different coworkers this month, so you know it was a shitshow.  I think we can measure the stability of my life in any given month by the number of coworkers I kiss therein.  SCIENCE.  Anyway, October, hummmmm, hewwww hawwwww.  God, I think this is the shortest year in review segment I’ve ever written.  It’s not that October wasn’t good, or that first semester wasn’t good, it’s just that second semester was SO MUCH BETTER.  I don’t even give a shit about October, I wanna talk about January and February!  That’s when the real adventures were!  But, okay, focus, focus.  Fall break happened.  It started out really promisingly, with a visit to one of my best lady friends in Cincinnati, where men ten years older than us tried to pick us up at the bar and what we drunkenly thought were members of an opposing campaign (my friend was an intern on a Senate race) ate in a booth behind us at a diner at 3 AM.  Duh, we tried to spy on them.  We were drunk, so I don’t think it was spying so much as me leaning back verrrrrry obviously and then whispering everything I could hear back to my friend across the table.  And then I went home for a few days, got in a HUGE fight with my dad about green olives because my life is funny that way, and drove back to BG angry.

Halloween weekend was one of my favorite weekends of senior year.  The Halloweens of my freshman, sophomore, and junior years were, respectively, the first time I ever kissed a boy at/got drunk at college, completely unmemmorable, and relatively underwhelming with a side of regret.  But this year, we (and every time I say “we”, I’m most likely referring to my roommates and best friend A.) went out and went hard Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  My favorite part, which I didn’t tell anyone about, was drunkenly holding hands with the guy I liked on Saturday’s walk home.  We got lost, peed in a front yard, A. knocked over a mailbox on a post, and all went our separate ways eventually.  This is kind of a bittersweet memory now, but again, that’s something for the Spring ’11 recap.  And then November rolled in.

One of my favorite people, my friend C., came up to visit just when I needed someone around to whom I could confess this burgeoning crush I had goin’ on.  She was in a remarkably similar situation, and it was incredibly comforting to me just to hear her story.  We were ladies unlucky in love together that weekend.  Then I went to a concert with said crush, and….MISTAKE.  My darling roommate H. has a hypothesis that it’s dangerous territory to listen to songs you love with or start to recognize the smell of the guy you like, because that’s when the heartstrings REALLY start to get tangled, and….yep.  That’s all I can say.  Yep.  I was a bit lovelorn in November.  But I don’t mean to make this sound more serious than it really was, because I still managed to flirt with some bad-idea people and crush on yet another coworker (this one the worst idea of all, no lies). 

Jesus.  From the way I write in these recaps, you’d think all I ever did was flirt and make out with coworkers and develop crushes that go nowhere.  I promise you, in November I did do some positive, productive things.  I fucking rocked out on the GRE!!!  I scheduled myself a much-needed haircut!  AND my classes for the spring!  What else, what else.  November seems pretty unmemorable, too, which is frustrating because I know I was happy and the world felt sweet, I just can’t remember any of the specifics.  I was listening to crappy music, spending time at the summer home, seeing movies for cheap, going to classes and doing homework, TFunding.  Regular life.  OK, so I did some Facebook excavating, and also roommate M. and I were really obsessed in November with that one AFLAC commercial with the goat, too.  So there’s your random memory for the month.  Thanksgiving was lovely but uneventful.  I went, as I have for the past I-don’t-know-how-many years, to the Christmas tree lighting in downtown Dayton, and then got STUPID drunk by ten that night and confessed that huge crush to A., who was a mutual friend of the guy and me.  OK, so December.  I got a haircut, I drank some wine, I went to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party, I kissed a pretty consistent KUI, and struggled through finals week.  Roommate M. actually needed emergency transporting home mid-finals-week, which led to my first all-nighter of senior year.  That was an eerie night.  All of us had been in our beds, but none of us had been sleeping when the bad news hit.  We drove her halfway, to be picked up by a family friend, and then roommate H. and I drove home in the wee small hours of the morning, wailing along with Tegan and Sara, and ate breakfast together while the sun rose.  I had a paper to finish, she had a final to study for.  Shortly thereafter, we had finally, mercifully made it to Christmas break.  And within a few days, I had figured out my future in more clearly defined ways than ever before, so that was neat.  I feverishly shopped for Christmas, loved on my family, got in a lot of good sister time, and was overall a decently happy girl.  Nevertheless, I was still overjoyed to come back to BG for a night on December 31st.  I spent the day with A. shopping for dresses, and then started drinking.  I was a little blue welcoming in 2011, because of that GODDAMNED crush, but not to worry!  In just a few days, life got AWESOME and so so so so much happier than I realized was possible.  I thought, throughout all of fall semester, that I knew what happy was, but the fall just doesn’t even compare when I think about the last five months.  Stay tuned for 2011, Part I, y’all, cause everything got SO GOOD.

Things, And Things

• Hi.  Once again, it’s been over a month.  I’m making New Year’s Resolutions, and one of them is going to be to post here at least three times a month.  If it kills me.  Goddamnit. 
• I’m at home for Christmas break, and it still hasn’t sunk in that I’m allowed to have a night like this where I just bum aound in sweats and read salacious gossip and think about what books I’m going to read for pleasure.  I don’t have discussion questions to answer or data to analyze or a textbook I should be reading or a paper I should be thinking up a topic for or a class to attend that’s so hard for me to get that it’s begun to diminish my sense of self-worth?  CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.
• I finally figured out last night that I do not, in fact, want to get into a Master’s Psych program somewhere, and I’ve never felt more positive about my future.
• I have yet to start my Christmas shopping.
• I haven’t been good solid drunk in a good solid few weeks.  Look who’s finally turning into a girl headed for grad school.  Kind of.
• I really want to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s someday soon.
• WHICH REMINDS ME, I have the beginnings of a Life List compiled.  I was on a super Life List kick over the summer, and then that sort of dwindled when I had that class that made me hate my life and I started to become more and more convinced I wasn’t going to get into grad school.  I started thinking nothing on that list would ever actually become a reality, and got really turned off of it.  However, now that it’s break and my mind is starting to relieve itself of some seriously warped misconceptions, I want to start posting ten or so items at a time from my list with my reasoning behinf them.  I think it’ll give me the kick-start I need.
• One of my best friends is drunk-texting me from BG right now, and DAMN, I already miss that town.
• This Christmas and New Year’s are going to be SO much better than last Christmas and New Year’s.  2010, I love you.

End Of An Era (Or At Least A Decade…) Part TWO

Welcome back!  Look what I FINALLY did!  I really did mean to get this up by the beginning of July, so that it had only been at most a year since these events transpired, but, eh, you know, it’s summer and I’m on my own schedule, but anyways, here we finally fuckin’ go!  It’s time to recount the last six months of 2009, for posterity’s sake, I guess!  Let’s go!  (I’m so excited, apparently, evidenced by the superfluous exclamation points after each and every sentence!!!!)

One big thing I remember about July is that it was wet.  It rained or was misty and cool for the good majority of the month, and it didn’t feel like summer at all.  I was cooped up in the house a lot.  Oftentimes, I’d get home from work around five and not leave until work again the next morning.  I could completely be exaggerating this, of course, but that’s how my memory sees it.  I probably spent a good majority of that time driving my parents crazy with a practically DAILY countdown of when I’d be back in BG.  ”Only a month and a half!”   *stony silence*   “I’m so exciteddddddddd!”  *blank stares*  “I miss BG soooooo much, OMG, I’m not saying I don’t love you guys, I just really, really, really, really miss it!!!”  *my mother initiates light conversation with my father about the possible goings-on of other daughters of hers that aren’t currently acting like excited 4 month old beagle puppies*   According to my bank account book, I shopped a lot at the end of July.  I did regular mall, outlet mall, and Easton Mall shopping all within about a week of each other.  The disastrous/COMPLETELY AWESOME barbecue in August has kind of served as the signal to the end of my summer in my memory, but looking back at time stamps on photos (because I’m THAT invested in my journalistic integrity here, folks), it was actually only the beginning of August.  I still had three weeks of summer left.  Huh.  I…don’t really know what I did with them.  I was on a HUGE Mad Men kick and would watch like four episodes a night sometimes, so that’s a good bet right there, I guess.  My August = Mad Men.  I think I also went to a baseball game?  And went dancing probably?  I just honestly don’t know.  We’ll refer to those three weeks as my lost years, I guess, in some hazy far-off future where I’m telling the story of my life to my grandkids.  One upshot of my mostly solitary and extremely boring summer life is that I saved so much money.  Whereas last fall I overdrafted my bank account buying books for the semester and dropped the f-bomb on my mother in the resulting fracas, this fall I had more than enough in the bank on that fateful day when I finally, finally, FINALLY returned to BG. 

And then, the world ended, not with a bang, but with a whimper.  Or something like that.  Ok, not really.  But at the time, it sure as hell felt like that.  The rest of August was ok, a flurry of settling into a new dorm, new roommate, new classes, catching up with friends, getting into new routines.  But when things calmed down and the year started to rev up, I fell apart.  I think I believed that living with who I was living with would be the quick and easy solution to recapturing the magic of sophomore year, and when that didn’t happen, when I realized just how much time she had invested in various organizations, and when I got the news that she was joining a sorority that would take up even more of her time, I fell the fuck apart and ran away from college.  No, you did not read that wrong.  September 1st.  I had had a shitty, awful day, what with finding out that my roommate was getting her bid and most likely joining this sorority and dealing with an atrocious work day as well, so that by 9:00 I was willing myself not to burst into tears while still on the job, willing myself to make it through the last half hour so that I could bust it to my car and just drive.  I didn’t know what I wanted or needed other than to get the hell out of town.  On my way out to the lot, I ran into last year’s roommate’s boyfriend, and I absolutely melted into tears when he asked if I was ok.  No, no I was not ok, but I just needed to drive.  Yes, I can see through my tears to do so.  Please don’t worry about little old sobbing mess me.  Embarrassing?  Oh absolutely, yes, but as it turns out, also completely necessary, because he ended up telling his girlfriend she might want to see if I was ok, and she ended up calling and talking me down from my proverbial ledge, and this is the second post today that mentions just how great this girl is.  I don’t know where I was going or what I had intended on doing in terms of sleeping arrangements that night, but she talked me into turning around and eating ice cream with her instead.  It’s sad to say, but the next four-ish months were a lot like this.  2009 did not end well, and 2010 did not begin well. 

I have never said this out loud or put it down into writing, only ever thought it and re-buried it in the back of my brain, but from late September to about the end of November, I think I might have been battling a bout of acute depression.  That made my face warm just to write.  Things were so bad and so hard, and I spent a lot of nights giving myself a headache trying to cry silently so my roommate didn’t hear.  I was in a panic about my future, upset over a boy and work shit, and missing the support system that had just naturally existed around me when I lived with all of my friends the year before.  Not seeing them on a daily basis has got to be one of the biggest reasons I just felt hopeless all the time.  And I didn’t tell a single soul the whole time how much I was struggling, because I hate to be someone else’s problem.  Now, I have always known that I do not have the balls (if you could call it that?) to actually go through with suicide because I have ZERO pain tolerance, but there were so many days when I wondered what the hell the point was.  My life felt like it was going nowhere, I would never have great friends again, I would never be loved, never get into grad school, never be satisfied professionally; what did I have to live for?  One of the only things that helped me keep my head up was reminding myself that my circumstances were not nearly as awful and lonely and hopeless as freshman year had felt, and if I lived through that, then I could damn sure live through this.  Thankfully, luckily, my blues didn’t last, and I was able to pull out of the funk that I was in; I know that’s not the case for far too many people out there.

And while all of that was going on, there were some bright spots, some moments of happiness and light.  September was still a huge adjustment period, and weekends were hard again because usually my roommate wanted to be out with sorority sisters who, by and large, I couldn’t tolerate, but one Thursday near the end of the month, I had quite the drunken spectacle of a night, which would turn out to foreshadow much of my April 2010.  Meaning I got wasted and kissed someone inappropriate.  BUT, since it was the first time it had happened in a looooong time and not the fifth, it was all very fresh and fun and exciting, and everything I wanted my junior year of college to be.  Sigh.  I was so naive back then… That night actually kicked off a romantic entanglement of epic proportions whose fallout and bullshit I am still dealing with NEARLY TEN MONTHS LATER.  Jesus.  There’s a wake up call for me.

October seems pretty non-descript in my brain.  I went home a lot, I think?  I kicked off the month in Dayton, attending my best friend’s grandmother’s funeral; I heard, in the middle of the month, one of my professors utter the sentence, no, no, the maxim, ”You can’t just go sticking things in other peoples’ orifices” and started a new tradition known as wine night; I ended the month dressed as a pirate wench, soaking wet from head to toe, mascara smudged all over my face, desperately wishing I could rip my tongue from my mouth.   And that’s all you need to know about October.  Now, November.  Things were starting to lighten up a little as I got a lot closer to one of my future roommates, and we started hanging out more and more often.  She got me out of my lonely room a lot, and I (hope I) provided a good listening ear and lots of silliness for her.  I spent a lot of November (hell, a lot of first semester) sick, and also a lot of it stressed out, about school stuff and my future, boy stuff and roommate stuff and apartment stuff.  However, my roommate’s birthday weekend and Thanksgiving break both served to yank me out of the awful funk I had been in for ohhhhh, only most of the semester.  Thank God, thank God, thank God.

And then December.  Hooooo Lord, I don’t even know what happened in December, other than the awful end.  I’ll try.  Honestly, I just….I remember finals week, and how I ended up being so swamped that I laid out a very strict, hour-by-hour schedule for myself and then promptly veered right off course, allowing myself to watch any dumb movie I came across on TV and attend birthday parties and sleep.  But I survived, and made it home, and Christmas was lovely, and then the day after Christmas I got some Very Bad News.  I think the days of, ohhhh, December 26th-January 2nd were the absolute worst of the year (well, the December days, at least), if not my life.  Seriously, at one point, the very very worst day, I took a shower and did not even turn the light on in my room afterwards.  I just wanted to sit in the dark, play Mahjong, and listen “Don’t Rain On My Parade” on repeat for hours.  That’s bad, America.  I cried on New Year’s Eve, threw my phone, drank some champagne with a few very close friends, and went to bed early.

And when I woke up the next day, it was a brand new year, and while things didn’t get better right away, they did eventually, and I promise you the first half of 2010 was so, so good.  In fact, I loved it so much (well, aside from half of January) that I’m going to start the first-half recap now, so I don’t wait until 7 months after the fact to publish it.  Now that would just be a travesty.

I have to leave to meet my roommate in 20 minutes for lunch, so I thought this would be the perfect time to write an update.  I just got back to BG from Christmas break, and people keep asking me how it was, and here are some of the words I have used to describe it thus far: “OK”, “so-so”, “rocky”, “eventful”, “….[extended silence with accompanying staring until they feel uncomfortable and move on to a new topic]“.  So, my break was rough.  Ok, I take that back.  The first week, including all Christmas festivities, was GREAT.  I saw friends and family in just the right amount, was fed several proper meals, got all my Christmas shopping done a whole two days before the holiday, spoiled myself and others, and in general just enjoyed the shit outta being home.  And then everything went to hell for reasons I don’t dare speak about on the Internet, but basically you should know that the last week of December was the worst week of my year by far, and I don’t say that humorously or ironically or expecting pity or sympathy, but just as a hard, cold fact.  Also, there was cursing and phone-throwing and weeping on New Year’s that had nothing to do with alcohol at all, and I think I went to bed by 1:00.  And then last week was pretty cozy.  People would text me and ask me what I was up to and the overwhelming majority of the time the answer was “reading and half-watching football with my dad”.  There was some minor stress and freakouts in there, again, of course, but I tried to chill out and calm myself before my return here.  I was not at all prepared to come back, despite the stress, or maybe because it made me feel like I hadn’t had an actual break and I still deserved another week, but probably mostly because I was getting fed and sleeping til noon and drinking on weeknights, so when I pulled away from my house on Sunday night and reached the end of my driveway, I burst into tears.  It was surprising, because I didn’t realize how strongly I didn’t want to leave, but it was also kind of funny, too, to drive down my street with one part of me sobbing and the other part of me leccturing myself to pull that shit together before I got in an accident.  I kept crying (and, I’ll admit, singing along to my iPod like a fifteen-year-old MESS) until I had to stop at a gas station to clean my windshield.  Then I got out, all sniffly and puffy-eyed, and got checked out by a teenage boy, and then my night started to look up.  I stopped crying but kept singing along to my music and came back to school and within the hour saw the two people I missed the most over break.  I have three back-to-back-to-back classes coming up this afternoon, but I’m feeling pretty equal to it.  That’s the power of my new purple tights, friends.  Lesson learned.

Hey there!  I’ve had a very busy past three weeks!  You?  …Oh, you want to hear about mine?  Well, how kind of you!  Tune into this:

The day after my last post, I and one of my future roommates found our apartment for next year.  MY GOD, how I wish I could move in after Christmas break, because I am so unbelievably ready to be up out of the dorms and into some place that is conducive to real-food-making.  I am typically not one of those people who is concerned with what she eats on any given day, but just listen to the straits that I am in: 2/3 of a parfait, Starbucks, and mozarella sticks intended to be cooked in an oven but actually amateurishly heated in a microwave instead.  IT IS 7:00 AT NIGHT.  Christ on a crutch, I just want a real meal!  I would even settle for being forced to make it myself in my own apartment, as long as it meant meat and potatoes!  So you can see why, after two and a half years of dorm life and dorm food, I am jonesing to move into that apartment, like, yesterday.

The week after was intense and hellish and unbelievable.  Like, just when I thought things could not get any worse, oh wait!  Something else climbed right on top of my load of stress and worry.  I had a major paper/project/exam/presentation every day all week and so was getting less than healthy amounts of sleep, was minorly sick, homesick out to HERE, dealing with apartment ridiculousness, worrying about my job, and ignoring a boy situation that needed to be addressed.  Have you ever had the type of interaction with someone where you go into it thinking, “Oh this is surely just a minor misunderstanding!  I am calm and capable and reasonable and will absolutely be able to deal with this situation effectively and in a timely fashion!” and then you talk to the other party involved and they are just BATSHIT CRAZY?!  I had one of those that week, one so bad where i got off the phone and hyperventilated a little, and then called my friend Morgan and laughed nervously/crazily, because if I didn’t do that I would have launched into hysterics, and I absolutely did not have time for that because I had to be at work in half an hour and hadn’t even eaten dinner yet and ohmygodcanijustbefiveagainthanks!  And then, a solution was offered to the situation, but it was the kind of solution where you’re like, “Well… that’s an option, sure, but it’s like asking me whether I’d rather go blind or deaf.  I know which one I’d choose, but I don’t really like or actively embrace either one”.  I remember lying in my bed on Friday, trying to cry silently because my roommate and her boyfriend were in the room being all cutesy and I just wanted them to leave so I could sleep, and I was stressed out about the aformentioned situation and just wanted to go home, but instead knew that I was going to her house that weekend for her birthday celebration and I would be expected to be happy and cheerful and fun, and those were three things I was not up to at all, all week long, and LORD was I ever a sloppy, sad mess. 

And then, because I strongly believe in the wheel of fortune taking people down and then bringing them right back up, nearly every issue that I had been struggling with that week resolved itself Friday evening.  Academically, socially, romantically, professionally, emotionally.  Better.  And we had a lovely time at my roommate’s home for the weekend, wherein floorboards were ripped up, Twister was played and bruises were accrued, real food was secured for all, babies were brought over, an old friend “surprised” us (except I totally knew beforehand that he was coming because I’m sneaky like that), camels appeared in a parade, awkward relationships were patched, and a LOT of fratty music was listened to.  It was precisely the weekend I wanted and needed after my week of stress from the depths of hell.

And then it was two short days of school and home for Thanksgiving break.  I didn’t get home til almost midnight Tuesday, but when I did, Letterman was on and Time magazines abounded, and one of the first things my dad did was assure me that the new hand-crafted Oriental area rug in our dining room “isn’t from no K-Mart parking lot” in a fake corn-pone voice.  I love home so much.  Break was absolutely perfect: I had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, enjoyed listening to the men in my family watch football together more than I enjoyed the actual game, hung out with my sisters, went out Friday night, only to find myself in a hot tub in Brookville at two in the morning, drunk on wine, had waffles made for me the next day, slept late all the time, flipped my homework the bird, saw people at Coldstone and secured myself hours over Christmas break, and most importantly, was fed real food again some more.  Seriously, you’re underestimating the food situation here.  It is threat level orange. 

This week has kind of been full of minor annoyances and irritations, including rain on my drive home and the worst night of sleep last night I’ve ever had at school.  I literally slept in fits and starts and 20 minute catnaps for five hours.  But things are looking up, as they always do!  I didn’t have to work and am currently engaged in a Billy Madison quote-off with my friend Genna, and am now toying with the idea of lounging around and watching an old episode of Alias or something.  I’m working right now on really appreciating the fact that I have very few actual responsibilities in this world, and those that I do have are easily blown off or simple to deal with.  it won’t be like that much longer, so I might as well live it up while I can.  Stress is for people in the real world, and I’m not living there just yet, so I need to just chill the fuck out.

Mission accomplished, I think.

Trip Around The Sun, Part Two

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, apparently I have so much to say about last year that I ran out of room in one entry!  There’s a reason my father nicknamed me Gabriella von Flappingtongue when I was little.  So.  Here’s the second half of my year, in riveting detail:

July….man, the summer months run together in my head a little.  July brought my best friend to town unexpectedly, so you know it was good.  Honestly, most of the things I remember from June and July are things I already wrote about on here, which cemented them in my brain, so it feels kind of cheap to keep this up.  So let’s move onto August.  The Olympics happened, and I was in Florida with two of my sisters and several cats.  I spent my days at the beach, then reading, showering, napping, and snacking in various combinations, and my evenings out to dinner and then in my sister’s apartment watching the Olympics with some of the people I love most in the whole world.  It was pretty perfect.  It was exactly what vacation should feel like, that feeling of wet beachy hair and old armchair comfort while you just sit and listen to the people around you talk because you’re too golden to function at the moment.  In sad news, August brought the death of the best car known to man, and this death is on my hands.  I have still not dealt with it fully.  I miss that car so hard, all the time.  She was so… so stalwart.  And if I hadn’t totaled her, I know she would’ve stuck with me for at least the next three years.  I’m sorry I’m so serious about my car; I’m not sure how it happened, but I am sure I can’t stop.

August also brought my return here, to BG.  I was so panicked.  And then things turned out okay.  I don’t know how else to say it, because it really was that simple.  The world did not end, it only got better, and I know I am really one lucky bitch.  September flew by.  Really.  My sister got married and looked good doing it.  I got to see the Florida sister for the second time in as many months, which is so rare and so happy-making.  I threw up in the bushes outside of my house one night after a taxi ride home in which my driver may have popped some pills while stopped at a red light.  Incidentally, this was the night before the wedding.  Funny how these things happen!  I feel like mostly in September I just got to hang out with a bunch of cool people and get to know them better.  Did you know that I’m also at school?  You wouldn’t, from the way I would describe my September.  There’s nothing of note school-wise that happened in September, and that’s weird to me.  Anyways, September also brought a job that sort of tumbled into my lap, as all the jobs that I have ever had have.  Again, I am one lucky bitch.  October brought glorious fall weather.  It started to get cool and breezy and the leaves changed and it was gorgeous.  I love the change of seasons, so I was in bliss.  I think that in October I began to find every single boy around me attractive; there’s a lot of eye candy around here, man, and in October I took full advantage of it.  October also brought four migraines in eight days, so therefore, there was one week where basically all I did was go to bed early and lie around moaning and feeling nauseous.  But!  I also went to the doctor and got these magic pills that melt under your tongue and get rid of your headache.  I have never experienced anything that did that ever before, ever, besides an hour-and-a-half nap, and I have literally had migraines for my entire life.  Thank GOD for October, then.  I feel like October was more of the same socially, but that is the furthest thing from bad, because for once in my life “the same socially” is not crying and constantly worrying about what others think of me and wondering if I’ll ever have friends and if I’ll ever fit in and stop wanting to go home and why does nobody like meeeeeee?  Yeah.  No more of that.  As the clock changed from October to November, I cast my vote for change while listening to “Charlemagne in Sweatpants”.  And four days later, surrounded by the people that have been my saving grace this fall, I watched him give his acceptance speech and held back tears.  It was breathtaking.  I remember when the family walked onstage, smiling and waving to the adoring crowds, I freakin’ squealed with glee, “Awww, look how great they are!”  It was one of my favorite nights of the year.

I’m sorry, I know that this second part is sort of a copout on month-describing, but November too feels like it went by really fast.  I went to classes, had lazy weekends, ate lots of bacon, spent a disgusting amount of time dicking around on the internet, probably drank some beer, got new brown boots, ate turkey, called people and asked them for money.  You know.  Same old, same old.  December was a weird, patchwork month, because half was spent at school and half was spent here at home.  Exams were gross, but I attended a silent dance party (glowsticks included!) and ate Mexican food, and spent many a night staying up talking to and laughing with my adorable roommate.  And packing up to go home, I was actually sad.  I had people I loved and would miss over the next three and a half weeks, and I had trouble leaving them for home.  That was a new feeling.  And then I came home and was absolutely engulfed by family time.  I don’t see my sisters enough, but over break I got to spend a LOT of time with them, and I’m glad that happened.  There wasn’t a whole lot of time with friends because of all of the aforementioned family time, but there was just enough for me to be happy, and I know there’ll be some more here in the next few days, so it’s all good.

Aaaaaaand, that was my year.  The first four months? I’d like to keep the tags on and return ‘em, please.  But the last eight were amazing, better than I ever expected, and now I think 2009 will be absolutely magical, so anything less than the absolute best simply will not do.  Even though two hours into 2009 saw me vigorously scrubbing at carpet to get out the vomit stains, I still have high hopes for the next twelve months.  I’m wishing on an eyelash I won’t be disappointed.

Saccharine-ing In The New Year

Things are about to get a little bit cloying.  You’ve been warned.

Right now, after such a mundane but amazing day, I feel so lucky.  I just…. I realize how freaking lucky I am.  I remember how shitty I felt just one year ago, hell, less than one year ago, and I look at the way things are now, and just smile.  And tonight, sitting in the backseat of my best friend’s car, I was just overwhelmed by this strange feeling.  I was hopeful, and I just realized, “You know, everything’s going to turn out all right.”  And then I came home and danced in the shower, and when I got out of the shower I put on two of the songs that make me feel the most hopeful and I danced some more.  And I couldn’t stop laughing, and I couldn’t stop smiling, and I can’t stop laughing and I can’t stop smiling.  I am one lucky bitch.  Last year was, I think, the unhappiest I have ever consistently been in my life.  I am not usually an unhappy person.  I have rough days, or even rough stretches of days, but things always look up, and last year, when they didn’t, it came as a serious shock to my system, and I just did not know how to deal.  Or I did, but I didn’t have the balls to.  I am not generally known as a ballsy person.  But I made a move (literally) to change things at the beginning of the school year, and change things it did, and for that I could not be any more grateful.  I just….wonder.  Things could have been so different this school year, and believe me, there were a few days in the beginning when I was terrified that nothing would change, but then…well it wasn’t even miraculous, or even a big thing.  I can’t pinpoint when or how it happened, but everything turned out fine.  Better than fine.  And again I say: I am lucky. 

Happy new year.  This one’s gonna be great.