I guess this is goodbye.

I was 12 when I arrived and 20 when I left.

Gon’ Get Married

All the couples I know my age seem to have marriage on the mind. My BFF and her boyfriend are super cute, and he insists that one day they are going to get married. My roommate and her boyfriend pretty much already have a wedding date. My friend’s friend has a boyfriend, and as my friend said, “They’re going to get married. It’s just one of those things.”

I don’t doubt the sincerity behind these claims; my friends are in love. But it just seems strange that I suddenly know so many young couples who Are Going To Get Married. Maybe it’s because at this age, we’re all experiencing love for the first time, and that first experience suddenly opens the door to the possibility of forever. At first it’s really sweet, but the more I hear college freshmen talk about marriage, the more jaded I feel. I’ve stopped “aww“-ing, and instead I offer a half-hearted, “That’s cute.” 

I like my boyfriend. I’m not quite sure if I’m in love yet (which is supposed to mean that I’m not, right?), but he has great potential to be my first luuuv (YAY!). We’re probably not going to get married. Not because I don’t want to (I don’t want to even think about marriage yet), but because that’s the way life works, isn’t it? I once read on a Herbal Essences shampoo bottle that 2/5 of people marry their first love. So it’s not like it never happens, but it probably won’t. Not only does he currently live 6 hours away, which will probably prove increasingly difficult, but I’m only 19. I want to study abroad and join the Peace Corps and travel and be free for a while. I really, really like him, and it would be ~*fantastical*~ if we made it work, grew up and changed at the same rate and in the same ways, and stayed together forever, but that’s just what every girl dreams of. It’s not reality. And if I suddenly do decide that I can see myself marrying this guy, I almost feel like it’d be nothing special, since apparently all couples my age feel like that. 

But there is nothing wrong with love and hope. And who knows? Maybe all three of those relationships really will end up lasting forever. Wouldn’t that be sweet? 

 

 

I wish I wasn’t normal

You know what I like? Reality TV. Cosmo. Pink. Taylor Swift. Painting my finger and toe nails. Wearing make up. Katy Perry. Desperate Housewives. Ellen DeGeneres. Chocolate. Traveling. Sunshine. 

Blockbuster movies.
Big network TV shows. 
Top 40 music.

I’m not quirky or weird or alternative or nerdy or geeky or unique. I don’t secretly love Star Wars or Star Trek. I can’t tell the difference between the two. I don’t harbor a fascination for obscure musical artists, dead painters, dead philosophers, or just dead people in general.

I’m not clever or witty. I’m not sarcastic or quick-minded. 

I’m a nice person. I’m friendly. Great. That sure sets me apart from everyone else. 

amerilove

if you’re lookin’ for luuuv, join americorps. i found 3 guys there.

the first one was a conservative christian from alabama who wanted to marry me. i didn’t want to marry him. then he attempted to video tape his roommate having sex and got kicked out of americorps.

the second one was a blue-eyed east coaster who never REALLY liked me, he just liked girls. and since i’m a girl, well… you know. he broke my heart. and my friend’s heart. ha, what a douche.

and now i’m smitten with a third (who also has blue eyes!!). met him within the last few days of americorps. he lives in nor cal. idk why, but we kept in touch through august, september, and october. went up to nor cal last weekend to see my grandpa. boy came to see me. 

and now

all i want to do is think about him. think back to our most PERFECT date at the golden gate bridge. think back to what he said to me. think about our last phone conversation and how fun it is to talk to him. think about what we’re going to do when he comes down to visit me in 3 weeks (18 days!!!). think about if we’ll last and how and for how long. 

and i wonder if FINALLY MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE i found someone who won’t leave after a month. wonder if he’ll ever break my heart. wonder how often he thinks of me. wonder what he’s wondering about.

we’ll see.

 

The Now Me

The other day, I was thinking about Tim, the guy I was “dating” during CTI in October. I realized he is a perfect symbol of the person I was back then. With him, I was still figuring out who I was and what I wanted. Fresh out of high school, I was the epitome of innocence. I had never gotten drunk, hadn’t kissed a guy since I was 13, rarely cursed, didn’t go out to bars, etc.

I’ve changed since then. And I know Tim would look at me now in disgust. But I like the new me. In AmeriCorps, I got drunk for the first time. I made out lots with a guy. Although I still rarely do it out loud in public, I curse more often and see nothing wrong with it. Bars are not an unfamiliar place to me anymore. And a couple weeks ago, I went to a gay strip club with the girls on my team. I even stuck a few dollars in the strippers’ teeny briefs. 

I told Tim in October that I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to save myself for marriage, but I know now that I don’t want to. I will never again date a conservative super-Christian, and I will no longer be concerned with the fact that I don’t believe in God. Big fucking deal.  

I’ve become stronger and more independent since October. I’ve learned to get along with different types of people. I’ve learned how adaptable and flexible I am. I’ve been perfectly content with moving to a different state every couple of months and never knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. I just knew that everything would turn out right in the end, so going with the flow was easy. I never minded living in tiny, cramped housing with 10 other people. As miserable as I was with some of the work we’ve had to do, I could always count on my teammates to make me smile. 

Sometimes I want to reach out to Tim and tell him that yeah, I might’ve hurt him when I ended it, but it was for the best. He’s probably convinced that it was God butting in, steering him clear of getting involved with an evil atheist like me. But it was just me not knowing who I was. I want to tell him I’m not who he thought I was, I’m not who I portrayed myself to be. I’m done being sheltered; I want to experiment with life. Everything from going to a gay strip club to confronting a jerk face-to-face and telling him our friendship is over – I want to do everything that scares me.

I remember sitting in the airport the morning of October 14th, crying for a straight 45 minutes because I was absolutely terrified of getting on that plane and leaving my childhood behind. Now, ten months later, I’m done. I’ve had the most amazing year of my life, and even though the October Me might be shocked at the Now Me, I absolutely love who I’ve become.

I’m smitten and I’m dumb.

I meet him at dinner at around 5:45 when he sits next to me at my table. We become engrossed in conversation, and Kelsey and Kelly leave me talking to him, so we end up being the only ones left at the once-full table. He finishes his food slowly as we talk (is the only reason we talked so long that he wanted to finish his food and I was blabbing too much so he was forced to eat slowly?), and soon the cafeteria workers are cleaning up around us. We leave the now-empty cafeteria around 7 to the talent show. He had to drop something off at his room, so he said, “I’ll see you there!” We exchanged a few words at the talent show and that was that.

What a nice encounter with the cute boy with blue eyes. Good conversation is always pleasant to have. Maybe he thought I was as cute as I thought he was, but who knows? Maybe he’s just a slow eater and thought I was nice for keeping him company while he ate. It shouldn’t matter. I should just go back to my room and focus on other things, like packing and catching up on TV shows and reading.

But no. I’m smitten and I’m dumb.

I pray he’ll knock on my door. When someone does knock on my door, my heart skips a beat, but it’s not him. Then I wander the building hoping we’ll run into each other. As I am about to walk down the stairs, I see him walk across the hall. I become very aware of the unflattering, tiny, purple PJ shorts I’m wearing and I don’t want him to see me in them. My heart pounds as I stand at the top of the stairs like a coward, afraid to meet him. I wait till he’s gone and curse myself for not pretending to accidentally run into him. I walk around some more, but I don’t see him again. I give my phone the occasional desperate glance, hoping he did some snooping and got my number.

When the clock hits 10, I give up hope that I’ll see him again tonight, but I think about all the other ways I could run into him again. He doesn’t have Facebook, so internet communication is out of the question. Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow at breakfast or lunch or dinner. Maybe I’ll run into him somewhere on campus. And then he’ll ask me to hang out over the weekend, and we’ll spend all weekend together, laughing and talking and getting to know each other.

Then we’ll exchange more contact information and keep in touch even after my flight leaves. We’ll talk on the phone and text and e-mail, and one of us will plan a road trip before school starts (at least he’s in the same state, right?). He’ll decide to transfer to a city college near me. We’ll fall in love.

My imagination will stop at nothing after that one encounter.

Isn’t it disgusting the way my girlie mind works? 

What is heartbreak?

I don’t know what I felt back in April. Was it heartbreak?

Sometimes I think, absolutely it was. No question. What else can I call that violent, heart-wrenching misery? When I saw him beckoning her to lie next to him in the tent so they would sleep next to each other… that’s the moment when I thought to myself, This is it. This is heartbreak. Right now. Right here. When people describe how it feels like someone is ripping out their heart, that’s what it was. It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest and was being stomped on over and over again (and again and again as the month went on). My head was clogged with pounding agony, and I wanted more than anything to melt away and feel nothing. For the rest of the 4 day weekend, I could feel only two things: pain or numbness. I can easily call it one of the worst weekends of my life.

But on the other hand… wouldn’t it hurt more if I was actually in love with him? And wouldn’t it hurt more if he and I had been together for a longer time? Wouldn’t those be the grounds to classify actual heartbreak? 

All I really know is that whatever I felt fucking hurt.

It. Fucking. Hurt. 

I’ve known since December that he wrote poetry. I was hopeful back then that maybe one day he’d write a poem for me. I would have never guessed that when he finally did, it would be one of sorrow and regret, apologizing for his unforgivable behavior. Isn’t it odd the way life works?

A New Perspective on Prestige

In high school, my friends and I were all about college. We researched colleges all over the nation trying to decide what to do with the next four years of our lives. Yeah, four years. We never really considered community college, automatically assuming we were “above” a two year college. Even state schools were a safety, if we even applied to them. We wanted to get into the most prestigious university possible. The smaller the acceptance rate, the better. My friends aimed for colleges like USC, UCLA, NYU, MIT, Harvard, Northwestern, the UCs, and various small, top tier liberal arts colleges. To impress the admissions office, we took Honors, APs, and more math and science classes than we would have liked. We took extra classes during the summer, volunteered, played sports, joined the yearbook or newspaper, marched with band or orchestra, participated in unique extra curricular activities, founded clubs, studied, and did our homework. We complained about our above average grades because surely no decent college would accept us with our less than perfect report card. We spent hours working on our college applications, writing and editing our college admission essays, asking teachers for recommendation letters, and stressing over our futures. 

I didn’t realize until I joined AmeriCorps that this wasn’t what every high school student went through, that this wasn’t always normal.

Most people I’ve met here went to a community college or are planning on doing so next year. Others went to schools with acceptance rates well over 50%, and very few actually went to prestigious universities. A year ago, I was in the mindset that a school wasn’t good enough if it didn’t reject more applicants than it accepted, but you know what? I’ve met so many amazing people who had amazing college experiences. Prestige was never a priority. One girl recently got accepted to Evergreen State University in Washington. She was jumping up and down in excitement, sharing the good news. Its acceptance rate? 95%. Another girl ran yelling down the halls after being accepted to Southern Oregon State. That school’s percentage isn’t even reported, and us CollegeBoard junkies know that that means it’s not very low. But these girls didn’t care, and I envied that.

My top college was tiny and unknown, and with its acceptance rate of 39%, I was absolutely convinced I wouldn’t get in. There was no way I was going to a CSU or community college. I just felt so above them. I applied to AmeriCorps, partly just so I wouldn’t have to go to a safety school and would have something else to put on my application for the following year in the likelihood that I would get rejected. I ended up being accepted, which blew my mind, but I deferred and joined AmeriCorps anyway. To sum up that experience, I just tell people, “I didn’t think I’d get accepted to college, but, crazy enough, I was!” That statement is always met with blank faces. I’m so used to people understanding that the word “college” implies prestige, so I probably just sound like an idiot, saying that I didn’t expect to be accepted to college. It’s actually quite embarrassing to sound that self-deprecating and stupid. 

I’m still really excited about starting college this fall, and I am hopeful that it will be a good match for me. But I wish I had met some of these community college/state university people during my college-panic months. I wish I had known that prestige isn’t everything, that a college experience can be just as amazing no matter what the acceptance rate is or how high its rated by US News & World Report. I wish my bubble had been expanded and I wish I hadn’t cared so much about the stupid number next to that percent sign.

All I hear are chainsaws, my heavy breathing, and my rapid heartbeats

Yuck, I felt like I was going to throw up this morning. It was probably a combination of coming back to work after a weeklong vacation, going back to the dreaded Winn’s property (steepest yet!), and the freakin’ heat. I never thought I’d be upset over 74 degrees, but here, that translates into even more exhaustion and sweat. Oh, and Mother Nature introduced a new bug to us: meat bees. At any point during lunch or breaks, I can count roughly 15 of them sitting on my leg or flying around me. And they sting. Wonderful! At least they don’t land on your face like stupid gnats.

I’m also seeing a lot more ladybugs. Two landed on my shoulder today. I was told that’s supposed to mean that I’m going to fall in love in the near future, but a ladybug landed on my shoulder in December, too, and my love life has been far from lovely. (K, I just googled it, and a ladybug on your shoulder just foreshadows good luck. Well, I need some o’ that!)

I just need to get through this week and next week, then we leave on Friday! I’m so excited to be back in Denver with my original team, and I’m so excited for my next project working with Operation Purple!