Back In the USA

So I've been back in the states for two weeks now. Things have been going OK, but I feel empty, lost. This world isn't my world. But I don't have a world that I fit into. However, I'm not going to write anything else for tonight. I'm tired. But maybe tomorrow, I'll scribe down my adventures from India. It'll explain the end of April, May and the beginning of June. The most consistently I've written in ages... maybe ever. But then again I had a lot to say and lots of time to say it in.

UIUC - you are my sweetest downfall

I think that I'm using my crazy, bitter grad student persona to hide the real truth. I'm sad. I'm really truly sad about leaving. Not sad in the sense that I'm going to sabotage my own efforts. For sure I'm getting the heck out of here. No doubt about that.

But the things I KNOW I'll miss hit me at the strangest times.

For example, I'll miss walking down the quad and crunching the beautiful fall leaves beneath my feet, or watching the pure innocence of a person's first snow quickly followed by the adulteration of that snow, with snowball fights and snow forts. I'm going to miss how green the quad smells after a rain, hell even during a rain. I can just feel the earth moving beneath and all around me. Even the downpours I've experienced can't alter my love of this campus.

I'll miss the energy (that I claim I hate). The dumb freshman I absolutely love making fun of. I'll miss being looked up to by undergraduates and feeling needed, admired and respected. I'll miss commiserating with my fellow graduate students who share the same sinister love of our great works. The doors of ISR will never be as friendly to me as the night Kari and I went for a run and then mud sliding... only to creep into ISR leaving a guilty trail the entire way to our rooms. And although I haven't been in Hopkins hall since my long ago undergraduate days, I'll miss waking up on the weekends with a gaggle of wonderful man-children finding their place in the world and enjoying the peace of a wonderful Sunday brunch. NHB will always feel like the old, decrepit home I know I belong to, whether or not the faces there remain memorable. The mid-line of the stadium will forever remind me that I should never run a half-marathon EVER again. Fox Meadow will always be full of geese and sleet and slush... and friendship. The pool will just be a MES (Mary, Ed, Sam) of memories. And Crane Alley, a continuoum of my life that makes bad memories pass and always creates new memories. And to Siam Terrace, for becoming friends with Amanda and learning how awkward Bruce really is. To Beckman Institute where I fell in love for all the wrong reasons. And 258 NHB where I fell in love for all the right reasons and never acted on them. For my shower on the 5th floor of ISR where I learned the extent of man's boldness and late-night where I was shown the extent of man's friendship... I'll never forget this place.

Don't Fucking Mess with Me

So I've been on edge a little bit lately. But more than on edge. I've been harboring some serious anger. Anything that goes against my plan receives some seriously negative feedback.

And I wish I could do something about it... but I'm sort of on this steamroller mode. Get with my program or get the hell out of my way.

Now normally I'd like to think I'm a fairly decent human being. Thanks to Borsey confirming that thought... most likely I'm not too crappy on the horrible human meter. However, the last two weeks or so I've been ready to rip people's heads off.

Don't tell me I'm doing something wrong. Don't question my judgment. Don't second-guess me. Don't make me late. Don't give me more work. Don't mess with my schedule. And you better not tell me that I'm intelligible.

Three most recent examples:

1. Borsey and I have a fantastic relationship. We harass each other and demean each other in jest. It builds our bond and I can't help but feel like we truly understand each other. We know that deep beneath our crusty, cranky, cynical exterior: well there is a wonderful person capable of immense amounts of empathy and compassion. Our cranky-ness is our shell.

Anyways, I haven't been able to take the teasing lately. It's nothing against Borsey. And I still appreciate the humor and the depreciation. It still makes our friendship what it is. However, my shell is really thin. It's thin and fragile.

**Tangent**
Right now I need a brick wall to protect me from my terror of not finishing my thesis, not being ready to go to India, not being able to handle my move to Houston. It's a big scary world out there. And to be honest, I still feel like a 7 year old who needs my dad around to protect me and help me make good decisions. I know I've thanked my parents in the past. They've done a thousand amazing things for me and I appreciate them. However, it's not until big life changing events occur that I realize how much I still need them and depend on them. For heaven's sake, my dad is flying down with me to Houston to look at apartments. I know that I don't actually "need" him there, and I'm pretty sure he knows I can find an apartment on my own. I've done it three times already. But I need his support. I need his presence. I need his reassurance that he's there, and he will be there. I'm worried about leaving. I'm worried about putting a barrier between us. And I'm scared. The beautiful part is that I think he knows that I'm scared. Because his love is boundless for me, he's willing to put aside the thought of the cost of the trip to fly down to Houston, and just go. He loves me so much that he's able to let me fly away. How amazing is that? I know he'd rather have me around, but he's so supportive. It's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I couldn't have ever asked for a better dad.

**End Tangent**

2. I yelled at Stacy today. Her and her friends got to Sammy's Diner before me this morning, had ordered and got their food and ate half of it by the time I got there. I was mad that we couldn't go to cracker barrel, and that she had her entourage with her, and it wasn't on my schedule. It wasn't on my time. And I got mad. So I yelled at her for lying to me about when she got to Sammy's. I don't know if she was or not, but it felt like it. (I'm a crazy person!)

3. After calming down from breakfast (I terrorized her roommate Susan and friend Kim.) Stacy and I went to go see The Adjustment Bureau. The movie was wonderful. I really liked how deep it went and how much of a "thinker" the movie was. And I continued to be in a good mood until we drove back to my spot to find a Cadillac where my Nissan should go. Basically we called the towing company and got that car out of there SO fast. I was so mad though. How dare that person take my spot? How dare they cramp my style and waste my time? I was really angry. Stacy took it rather well, but I was P.O.ed. Ugh. I need to go to India... where it's pretty and relaxing, and different.

The Story - Part 2

The lack of anything remotely amazing happening during our meeting could have been a sign that our acquaintance wasn't anything special. And in fact, life went on as it usually did for me. I only saw Alex at our weekly class. He hung out with the "popular kids", if in fact geology students have the capacity to be popular. I had my own issues to be dealt with anyways.

I was the awkward "non-geologist" sophomore in the front row raising my hand and asking a thousand questions. I still led a sheltered life and didn't even know to be embarrassed by my lack of style or sophistication. Thanks to my father, who never apologized for being himself or even thought to try being something different, I never had the self-consciousness of most people my age. My job in school was to learn as much as I could and get good grades with the expectation that one day I would graduate and get a well paying job. In my own mind's eye, that meant raising my hand continually in order to absorb every single detail.

My boyfriend at the time, Kirk, encouraged good grades and work ethics, so I never felt alone in my struggle for perfection. Kirk was a mechanical engineer, a year and a half my senior, as well as my high school sweetheart. We had met when I was a freshman in high school and things progressed as usual. We went to dances, hung out with friends, laughed, fought, supported each other, challenged each other, and were deeply in love.

He had left for college a year ahead of me and we were still working on our closer proximity relationship. To be honest, our relationship was toxic, but not in the way that you'd expect. We never demeaned nor physically intimidated each other. We were polite and expressive of our feelings. The toxicity in our relationship, in retrospect, stemmed from me. I felt suffocated. I loved Kirk with my entire being, but I was afraid to "be me." I wanted to study abroad and experiment in life and carve my own life out of my blank college slate. In some ways I felt that Kirk was superior to myself. He never wavered in his beliefs nor in his confidence of self. I didn't, and still don't have that rigid of a belief structure. He didn't back down in arguments and most times I would begrudgingly cede the point to avoid escalating the fight. To be honest, he was just better at getting his point across and argued like a master debater. I'm more of a negotiator, and I always felt like I had lost something after our arguments, which led to quite a bit of withheld resentment.

I don't actually remember if I had met Alex before or after Kirk and I had hit our breaking point. Alex was in no way a factor in the ending of Kirk's and my relationship. Dan, however, was. Dan was the complete opposite of Kirk. If you could typify a rebound relationship, ours was it. Kirk and I had broken up hours before Dan and I first kissed, and days before we first had sex. I was high on my new freedom and felt alive for the first time in years. I laughed louder, risked more, smiled incessantly and dared others to question or judge me. I almost got fired from my job as a resident adviser for missing rounds and broke curfew constantly. I almost got arrested twice during my short jaunt with Dan. Both times we were rollerblading: once was trespassing on the assembly hall and the other was not wearing the proper night safety equipment while skating in the middle of the road. I also began catching Dan in lies. Some were innocent, such as, lying about what he was doing in his room: studying vs. playing video games. Others concerned me, such as who he was hanging out with at home and how many driving tickets he repeatedly got.

Although Dan and I were together, I was not even close to being over Kirk. I talked about him incessantly, obsessed about what he was doing, wondered what he would think about what I was doing and wanted approval from him just as much as when we were dating, if not more. We tried to remain friends, but the more we held on, the harder we hurt each other. Not used to hiding the truth from each other, everything that happened with other people was laid down on the table every time we had dinner together. It was fresh salt and lime juice on our wounds every time. In retrospect, I'm positive that Dan realized I wasn't yet over Kirk, but never did he mention his concerns.

The most valuable thing I got out of my relationship with Dan was the friends I made on his floor. I ended up becoming best friends with his neighbor Brett, who lived down the hall. I even dated a veritable barrage of the guys from the floor over the course of my time in college. My best snowboard buddy Darius also lived on that floor, although I was actually to meet him later.

Obviously I tired of the rule breaking, the lying and the late nights. During Thanksgiving break Brett and I were hanging out and decided to go bowling. Dan had texted me asking what I was up to. It was the second time in over a week I had heard from him, and was disappointed in his lack of attention. I told him hanging out with Brett. Dan was upset, but his frustration was masked by his constant need to appear a "tough" guy. He wasn't fooling anyone.

The day we all got back, a bunch of us decided to play broomball. Broomball is basically hockey on ice without skates. Running around an ice-rink in tennis shoes trying to score points at midnight is a most excellent way to spend an evening. I was thoroughly enjoying myself when James (a beautiful example of the Aryan human form of man) collided with Dan and sent him reeling to the ground. Dan was mad at being beaten, but instead of taking it, well, like a man. He choose to cry about it. As soon as those tears began to fall, I lost total and complete respect for Dan as a person. I don't care how hard you get hit on the ice, you don't cry like a pansy baby. Not even I had cried when I cracked my kneecap years earlier on the ice. Sadly I still had the title of girlfriend, so I had to back up Dan. I told off James and the good humor of the game was gone. We decided to call it quits. I could barely look at Dan.

Later that evening, with Dan safely tucked in for the night, Brett and I decided to grab some late-night food and chat. By then, we were both quite tired of Dan and all of his shenanigans. We spent hours complaining about his bad habits, making fun of his clothing, questioning his place at a top tier university and began a friendship that evolved a great deal since then. The noteworthy conclusion to that evening was our decision to live together the following year. I couldn't handle being a resident adviser another year and Brett dreaded living with Dan as a roommate. Shaking hands as our agreement contract as well as our goodnight, we decided to give Dan the bad news in the morning. I would be breaking up with Dan. Brett would be breaking off the idea of living with him. Sometime after that we would tell him that Brett and I would be living together. It was just dessert we honestly felt he deserved. In fact, I still don't regret that somewhat jaded decision.

Our late-night chats became a nightly routine we kept for the entire year. It was also probably the cause of my belated freshman fifteen which I eventually acquired by the end of my sophomore year. I had an unlimited amount of food credits due to my job in university housing, and freely shared them with my friends.

Just before Christmas Brett broke up with his girlfriend Ashley. Actually I have to say they rushed to break up with each other. It was honestly a contest to see who would be the first to say it. I wasn't specifically in their presence when it happened; I was in the shower. However, I was the cause of it. Due to our late night conversations, working out, dining together and all around close friendship, Ashley was completely jealous. I'm not going to say that she didn't have a right to be, but up until then, our relationship was completely platonic. During the week between the breakup and winter break, Brett and I spent almost all of our free time together. Jason Mratz was the artist of our favorite ukulele song and we crammed for all of our exams between watching the Simpsons and getting late-night goodies. In the course of that week, I developed a rather serious crush on Brett. I admired and appreciated his humor, wit, self-depreciating jokes and his dedication to improving himself. I was smitten. I was also pragmatic about the situation. We would both be at our respective homes over break, so there was no reason to start up something until the following semester.

A couple of things occurred during break that put a wrench in that plan. First and most importantly, Brett began dating Olivia. I'll never forget the first thing Brett said about Olivia when he met her. He said she was the most annoying girl he'd ever met and never, in a thousand years date her. A week later, they were an item. Even Brett will agree it was a bad decision brought on by too much beer and loneliness. I never forgave him for it. Of course, I never told him that, and we remained inseparable friends for many years.

I also went on a two week trip to Curacao for my geology class. This was when my crush on Alex was supported by time and proximity together. Nothing amazing happened except that I was able to see the fun loving, jokester side of Alex from afar. I had nothing I could really say to him and for the most part, kept to myself. That's not to say that I didn't have fun on the trip. I had an amazing time. I earned the nickname Queen Neptune from my abilities to snorkel down to around 20 meters where as most people could only manage 5 to 10 feet. I tried Dutch cheese, learned swear words in Papiamentu, and reveled in the sunshine and surf of the beautiful island of Curacao. I returned refreshed and renewed.

Spring semester began with a bang, well a banging, ringing head. I was back on campus because of my job; as was James, the guy who had made Dan cry. James was this enigma to me. He was strong, powerful and not just a little full of himself. However the women he spend his time with were weak willed, spineless and allowed James to do whatever he wanted. We exchanged rather steamy conversations more often that appropriate and as things will, it came to a head. One night we decided to hang out, watch movies and get drunk. I think we both knew what was coming and even celebrated it. The night began to get rather fuzzy, but I do remember three things very clearly. 1. James carried me from my couch to my bed, a great distance of about 5 feet. 2. We made out. 3. We didn't have sex, but James was naked when I woke up.

Brett had repeatedly told me not to do anything with James. Sadly, whenever someone tells me that I can't do something, I do just the opposite. It's made me quite accomplished in my field of study and some other things as well. I took Brett's suggestion as a dare but felt guilty telling him. Brett knew the instant he got back to campus and we were all hanging out together. He questioned me, and I denied it. I denied it for a year, but eventually admitted to it when we were living together.

The Story - Part 1

Not so long ago I was inflamed by a dream gone awry. I was consumed with a passion, no: an illusion; fervent and vivid. In the darkest hours of night the boundary between reality and mirage blended into an obscure shadow. The first light rays of dawn was my saving grace. Hot tea in hand watching a new day arrive, I would stare into the very heavens, hunted by my own construct.

I had never known dreams to be bad things. I had been encouraged since infancy to dream big and go after my goals. What exactly was wrong with this dream of mine? I couldn't have told you back then. It's taken me years to piece everything together, and it's still foggy. The one thing I can tell you, I met my illusion in August with the beginning of my sophomore year in full swing.

My illusion seemed to be carved out of David's very same marble. He was a full six foot five inch splice of man caught somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. Sandy blond hair and piercing glacier blue eyes drew all attention from his button nose and oval jawline. However the most striking feature by far was his smile. His toothy grin was earnest and friendly. It made me appreciated and uneasy all at once. His name was Alex.

I remember walking back to my dormitory thinking back through our rather limited conversation and reliving the highlights. After arriving, I called my friend Brett to find out if everyone was meeting up for dinner. Wednesday night went the same it usually did. A bunch of us met up for dinner, talked and ate too much and then spent the evening working on homework while watching crappy television shows in the background. The earth hadn't moved, the sky hadn't opened up nor had stars exploded across the night sky. I had no warning for what was to come.

The Cost! The Cost!

I had no idea weddings cost so dang much! Suzanne and Jeff are thinking of having 300+ people at theirs, and drama has ensued. I didn't realize weddings are such a huge expense... well I take that back. I didn't realize Jeff would want such a huge wedding. It's insanity. I feel bad for Suzanne. This is going to set her back anywhere between 25 and 35 THOUSAND dollars. That's 2 years of college. Mom is going crazy about it and wants to help her, but it's a lot to shell out. Good luck to her.

Deactivating Facebook

Well. It has been done. I have finally done something I've been threatening for months, maybe even years. I've taken down facebook in an effort to propel myself closer towards my masters. All that time I would usually waste, I can now do that here, or on my own research. Woot woot! I don't know if that'll actually help. But it's a possible option.

Other highlights of the day:

Had lunch with Kevin. I saw a new side of him today. After lunch we had to jump his car and then went to get a new battery. The battery he went to replace wasn't working well b/c it was basically backwards. So without losing his cool (at all) we went back to AutoZone to get a different version, which worked perfectly. Kevin claims there would have been some swearing if I hadn't been there, but he's quite respectful around me. Hmm, gives me something to think about.

I also went running with Borsy. His 4 miles of yesterday weren't completed due to some serious drinking. (Dumb, dumb Borsy) Anyways, he called me while I was debating eating a crap ton of food that I don't HONESTLY want to eat. But I was bored. Give a girl a break. Anyways, the 4 miles went off without a hitch. And then we went searching for food. Wendy's ended up winning out. Their apple pecan salad was delicious, as well as the chocolate frosty. Mmm. Thank got for cows, refigeration and the coco bean. :)

And now to get about an hour of work done prior to bed.

Nighty night.

Engagement!

So Suzanne got engaged today. I guess Jeff asked dad's permission or whatever and things are in the works. Woot woot!

That sentence looks so weird.

I wonder what it'll be like... that whole wedding thing. Who will be invited? Where will it take place? All good questions.

That's it. I'm tired and have a cold. I just thought this was mentionable.

New Year! Same Me?

Let's first look back at this past year. My resolutions were:

:) 1. Train diligently for my first half marathon.
:) (Barely) 2. Finish my first Half-Marathon in May.
:/ (Did until I quit) 3. Do ceramics at least 4 hours every week to improve skill and technique.
:/ (Did until I quit) 4. Furnish my apartment with my own ceramic dishes.
:) (That was vague) 5. Lose some fat and get into better shape.
:( (Forgot about this) 6. Work on mental exercises, visualization, positive thinking and reinforcement.
:) (Bad idea though) 7. Work harder and play harder.
:/ (Still working on it) 8. Have a healthy relationship with food.
9. Learn and practice self-control.
:( (Does passive aggressive count?) 10. Be more assertive when planning and talking with Bruce.
:( (Not my fault)11. Get my thesis plan hammered out and start collecting samples by June 1st.

So what did we learn here? The things I failed in were because 1. I didn't deem it worthy of my time, 2. I forgot, 3. It involved someone else.

So this year... I won't be vague. I will decide ahead of time if it's worthy of my time and I won't forget. Also.. I'm not going to make 11 of them.

1. Have a healthy relationship with food.
2. Lose 1 pound a week until I graduate. I'm starting out at 168. Therefore by Feb 5st: 163, March 5th: 159, April 9th: 155, April 30th: 152. It's feasible, a healthy amount and won't drive me completely insane. 16 pounds is a good goal for me.
3. Diligently train for the Himalayas and help Borsy with his half-marathon.
4. Work on positive thinking, visualization and alternative health. (Self-confidence, health, success, happiness, fulfillment, etc.)
5. When I get back from the Himalayas, maintain my body weight at 150 pounds (+/- 3)
6. Rock it out in Houston!

Hugs and Kisses!
Sam