Everyone wants to say that they've changed. I kept telling myself that every new year's: "Oh my god, I've changed SO much this year! I can't believe I used to be that person." But that's not true. I've been the same for years. There were maybe three years total of my life during which I underwent a serious change, and those were all normal parts of growing up. So what?
Truth is, I'm the same exact person I was in high school. I thought I would change. I thought I would get to college and have an epiphany about being a free, wild spirit who partied and still maintained cool nerd status. That didn't happen. I thought I'd be free from the mass bred stupidity I experienced daily at both of my high schools. But I'm not free from it and no queer ever is.
Just because my surroundings changed doesn't mean I have. In high school, the tree in front of my principal's office, the long charcoal-covered desks in my makeshift art room, and the guy I tried to ignore in the hallways did not shape who I was. They were just objects. They were not me. They are not any more me than my dorm room is now, than my college's 24/7 library is, than my acne-inducing queer student union is. I am not these things. I exist despite these things. I am just drifting, and objects and people and places are floating in and out of my life and I'm not grasping them because I learned long ago that nothing is truly graspable. Go with the flow, my guitar teacher always told me. What the hell does that mean?
I'm still the girl who is too embarrassed to speak up when it matters most. Still the girl who hid in the bathroom or the library during high school lunch. Still the girl who doesn't know how to make friends, only now I have lost the desire to do so. I'm still the girl who would rather hold and smell a book than a person, who would rather look at pictures of food online than eat it, who would rather pet cats than go meet someone new. And these are not things I'm proud of.
I'm still the person who resents what happened instead of senior prom. I'm still the person who refuses to promote her own music. I'm still the person who hates anyone who has the balls to do so. I'm still the one who is nasty, mean, sarcastic, and over emotional, or sometimes not emotional at all. I'm still the one who feels sick every time she eats, who dislikes everyone off and online, who has no idea how to begin or finish conversations, and who has lost every ounce of wanting to appear like I am the opposite of any of these things.
I have always been the person who gets hurt at a passing comment not meant for me. I am still the person who gets defensive over her fellow queers and atheists and vegans and feminists, and even when I know getting pissed won't solve a damn thing, it's still the only thing I'm proud of. I'm still the one writing angry blog posts. I'm still only playing nice with teachers and no one else. I'm still hating everything about everything and loving nothing about the world, because every time I do, something happens to remind me that everything is doomed and I'm still the 14 year old girl who blasted My Chemical Romance when she felt sad, sick, and desperate. Still the girl who refuses to see a psychiatrist because I don't want to cry in front of any more people than I already do. Still the girl who refuses to see a doctor about why food makes me sick because I know they'll blame it on my veganism. Still the girl who hides when she sees people from her high school. Still the girl who is too fragile to not get hurt by people's words online. Still have no idea who I want to be, but unlike my high school self, I know now that my surroundings can not influence that. I have to choose it for myself.
And I still have no idea what to call this blog post.
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
20 January 2013
23 November 2012
the future
i am writing this on 3:35 am november 23rd, 2012. it is thanksgiving break, and we are home from college. you are sleeping hundreds of miles away and i am laying on my back with my laptop propped up on my legs. safari tells me that my tumblr and facebook and vegan recipe and goodreads and musiciansfriends tabs are waiting for my attention. just now i was trying to get some sleep, but then i thought of your warm body behind my back and i had to write this down.
i doubt these will be complete thoughts, but they will be thoughts nonetheless.
we are sophomores in college. i only chose to go to our school thanks to a desperate last minute search on collegeboard.com. ours turned out to be not too far from my house, in an area familiar to me, and they had a good english program. they accepted me past their application deadline, and i almost peed myself with excitement.
and then we started talking on facebook and i thought "this is one cute lesbian and i am scared i may have feelings for her some day." but you know that. you know all of that. you know how i knew before you came out to me and you knew how i fell for you because we've talked about it a dozen times already.
we've been dating for over a year, and our future is not too far away. and when i say the future, i mean the "real world." that scary faceless entity that i've feared for as long as i can remember. and that "real world" is barely 3 years away. whether we choose to go to grad school or not, wherever we choose to live, whatever we choose to spend our lives doing, it's all so close. decisions are zooming toward us like it's no biggie. and though i doubt i'll get over my fear of death any time soon, i think i'm starting to get over my fear of the future.
in college, we take turns buying groceries and cooking and washing dishes and doing laundry and making the bed (ok, that's mainly you) and taking the trash out (pfft mainly me) and other chores. we both get lazy sometimes but we push each other to get the hell out of bed and do our work. and it seems meaningless, all of our school work, because when you're there i don't know why i'm writing about jane austen when i could be telling you some little story about my childhood. and yes, women's studies is relevant, but if i'm not sharing it with you, what's the point? but there's not time to share everything about our homework, and it makes me sad that so much of our time being together at college is spent doing... well, college things. but when we're not at college, we're 7 hours apart and it hurts.
but you know what? fuck that pain. because i have you, and that forces me to realize that we have a chance in our crazy futures. i have you, and we've already made decisions that could take years for other people. i have you, and i have made decisions that i could not have come to without you.
we will get an apartment in some city that has a lot of gay people. and we will try out a lesbian bar and laugh if there's any shanes or alices or helenas. we will look for tumblr meetups in the city and meet all the weird foodie bloggers and doctor who nerds and liam hemsworth lovers and i'll laugh and go "yshisha marryyyyy" and you'll crack up and we'll get weird looks. and then we'll leave and try to find vegan cupcakes but there won't be any so we'll go back to our apartment and plan our own vegan bakery. and then we'll open it and get rich from all the vegans who desperately wanted more cupcakes in their lives.
and every day we'll wake up and i'll be sprawled out with my left leg on top of your stomach and your arm pressed up against the wall - oh, wait, no, it won't be that way, because we'll have a real bed and not a mini college twin mattress with egg crate foam that slips off every so often. it will be a king sized bed, set up in the middle of a room that could be a closet or a master bedroom and i probably wouldn't notice because you'd be there. we'd have 3 cats. one of them would be calico and two would be black cats from the shelter, because black cats are cheaper on black friday and we'd be jumping on that as soon as possible. and we'll have a framed map of middle earth on the wall and an endless supply of candles.
and i will dye and cut your hair and you will rub my feet and read me to sleep and i'll clean our room and it won't be perfect, but i won't care. i will love you until i lose my ability to love, and then some.
and when you get home from work, i'll smile and say "baaaaby" until you come over and lay on top of me and we smile and roll around and hug until we're smiled and rolled out and we will just kiss because words will be too overwhelming. i will rub your belly and be glad to see you and we will be making our own living and our relatives will visit us with advice and we might take it or we might laugh it off. and we will have published books and go on book tours and play concerts in the local bookstore sometimes and we will have comfortable furniture
and an exorbitant amount of gay books.
and the rest is up to you.
i can't wait to live the future with you.
i doubt these will be complete thoughts, but they will be thoughts nonetheless.
we are sophomores in college. i only chose to go to our school thanks to a desperate last minute search on collegeboard.com. ours turned out to be not too far from my house, in an area familiar to me, and they had a good english program. they accepted me past their application deadline, and i almost peed myself with excitement.
and then we started talking on facebook and i thought "this is one cute lesbian and i am scared i may have feelings for her some day." but you know that. you know all of that. you know how i knew before you came out to me and you knew how i fell for you because we've talked about it a dozen times already.
we've been dating for over a year, and our future is not too far away. and when i say the future, i mean the "real world." that scary faceless entity that i've feared for as long as i can remember. and that "real world" is barely 3 years away. whether we choose to go to grad school or not, wherever we choose to live, whatever we choose to spend our lives doing, it's all so close. decisions are zooming toward us like it's no biggie. and though i doubt i'll get over my fear of death any time soon, i think i'm starting to get over my fear of the future.
in college, we take turns buying groceries and cooking and washing dishes and doing laundry and making the bed (ok, that's mainly you) and taking the trash out (pfft mainly me) and other chores. we both get lazy sometimes but we push each other to get the hell out of bed and do our work. and it seems meaningless, all of our school work, because when you're there i don't know why i'm writing about jane austen when i could be telling you some little story about my childhood. and yes, women's studies is relevant, but if i'm not sharing it with you, what's the point? but there's not time to share everything about our homework, and it makes me sad that so much of our time being together at college is spent doing... well, college things. but when we're not at college, we're 7 hours apart and it hurts.
but you know what? fuck that pain. because i have you, and that forces me to realize that we have a chance in our crazy futures. i have you, and we've already made decisions that could take years for other people. i have you, and i have made decisions that i could not have come to without you.
we will get an apartment in some city that has a lot of gay people. and we will try out a lesbian bar and laugh if there's any shanes or alices or helenas. we will look for tumblr meetups in the city and meet all the weird foodie bloggers and doctor who nerds and liam hemsworth lovers and i'll laugh and go "yshisha marryyyyy" and you'll crack up and we'll get weird looks. and then we'll leave and try to find vegan cupcakes but there won't be any so we'll go back to our apartment and plan our own vegan bakery. and then we'll open it and get rich from all the vegans who desperately wanted more cupcakes in their lives.
and every day we'll wake up and i'll be sprawled out with my left leg on top of your stomach and your arm pressed up against the wall - oh, wait, no, it won't be that way, because we'll have a real bed and not a mini college twin mattress with egg crate foam that slips off every so often. it will be a king sized bed, set up in the middle of a room that could be a closet or a master bedroom and i probably wouldn't notice because you'd be there. we'd have 3 cats. one of them would be calico and two would be black cats from the shelter, because black cats are cheaper on black friday and we'd be jumping on that as soon as possible. and we'll have a framed map of middle earth on the wall and an endless supply of candles.
and i will dye and cut your hair and you will rub my feet and read me to sleep and i'll clean our room and it won't be perfect, but i won't care. i will love you until i lose my ability to love, and then some.
and when you get home from work, i'll smile and say "baaaaby" until you come over and lay on top of me and we smile and roll around and hug until we're smiled and rolled out and we will just kiss because words will be too overwhelming. i will rub your belly and be glad to see you and we will be making our own living and our relatives will visit us with advice and we might take it or we might laugh it off. and we will have published books and go on book tours and play concerts in the local bookstore sometimes and we will have comfortable furniture
and an exorbitant amount of gay books.
and the rest is up to you.
i can't wait to live the future with you.
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