A Girl Obsessed

Here, I will aim to map out the constellation pattern of my lifelong obsessions, from two week phases to five year devotion. 

In case you aren't related to me or have been friends with me for any year, one fact of my personality is that I (very easily) get obsessed with stuff. And not, like, good for me stuff, like doing math equations or running or cooking kale into my every meal. I get obsessed with stuff that sucks my soul and mind into a different world and pushes me inside my inner world - television, books, music and movies. Throughout the entire scope of my adolescence and pushing into my adulthood, I cannot help but allow my life to be shaped by the different kinds of media I encounter.

I can't say why this all began or how, just that by my nature I am an obsessive person, prone to addiction. In addition to books and movies, I get a little bit obsessed with people: friends, my family. (Concurrently, I get un-obsessed with people and push them away from me. It's a push-and-pull life and something I always try to overcome.)

I used to re-read books a lot. Judy Blume's Just As Long As We're Together was one of my frequent re-reads, and Blubber as well. You could call me a Babysitter's Club fiend, if you wanted. And though I loved Harry Potter, it wasn't until seventh grade that my love for it merged into a lifestyle - no, my first obsession is quite possibly the strangest: the 2005 movie musical Rent.

Much of this obsession was fueled by a new friend, with whom I bonded over and loved Rent with. I spent all my free time and much of my homework time on my family's desktop, on Photobucket, Xanga, and YouTube, anything and everything connecting me to this musical that had captured my heart. Luckily for me and my parents, much of the content went right over my dumb little head. I was far too emotionally immature to understand the nuances of the plot, its socioeconomic commentary and especially its keen awareness of gender fluidity.

Ultimately, what grabbed me and propelled me into grandiose obsession (I had a literal binder, like, a hardcopy thing where I stored my Rent stuff, that I printed off the computer, because it was 2006) was its soundtrack, first of all, which is amazing, and second of all, its portrayal of all the different kinds of relationships. Rent presented me with an idea of the world that was so far different from my white Catholic sphere that it allowed me to become far more accepting later in life, of transgendered individuals, of addictions, of the spectrum of sexuality. It was all I talked about my entire eleventh year, all I listened to, all I ever wanted to watch.

After Rent and a little during, I entered my "emo phase" where I pretended I was a certain thing because of the music I liked: Panic! At the Disco, Jack's Mannequin and Fall Out Boy, and later Boys Like Girls and All Time Low. This weird little phase took me further into adolescence, from my round middle school days into my high school life, and the music I listened to would continue to affect how I saw myself, others, and the world until I would graduate high school.

Here is where I have to become grudgingly honest and expose myself to the entire Internet: I love Twilight and I feel no shame. It all started during eighth grade. My grade school best friend and I had fought horribly the year before and spent much of the year cold shouldered and then just when we made up, she moved two hours south. Eighth grade presented me with a different group of friends than I'd had the last few years and I felt at times very uncomfortable in my quiet, scholarly skin, knowing that in just a few months we would all be parting ways as I would be attending a private high school and they would carry into public.

I think I felt alone and uncomfortable with my tendency towards introversion. I was happy, and having fun, but at times very insecure. And all this uncertainty and insecurity and instability and coming change led me straight into the very white arms of the Twilight Saga.

It all began in the fall of 2007. I was preparing to take my entrance exam at Mags and knew I'd finish the sections long before time was up (I always did and always do) and brought a random book from my stack from the library with me to keep me entertained while I waited. That book was Twilight, the first one, and I was so engrossed that I refused to stop reading until I finished, far past my arbitrary bed time, heart pounding in my little twin bed in my adolescent bedroom.

Honestly, it stole my life for awhile. It was all I thought about, talked about; I powered through the sequels. Distinctly, I recall sitting on our old couch in our living room, crying as Edward left Bella in New Moon, trying to hide the tears from my mom, my brother, my dog. After I finished the books, I held them hostage from the library until my parents gave in and bought me the box set for Christmas. I cried. I read fanfiction, wrote fanfiction, made Edward and Bella Sims and thought all the time of these characters and their world.

I don't know what it was about the Twilight saga that enraptured me so - though I continue to look on it fondly, I recognize its inherent problems narratively, politically, economically. I think it was the blandness of it. Bella is a normal, pedestrian girl. She wears normal clothes, has normal hair, has a painfully boring divorced parents backstory. There is nothing extraordinary about her and I think it was that that appealed to me, then, that she, like me, was a normal girl. As an adult, I realize the flaws in that, in my constant desire to be unique and ethereal when at my heart I am a basically a carbon copy of a million other middle class white girls.

That there would also be a movie franchise fueled my devotion. I joined IMDb and participated in many a forum. This was 2008, the early days of fandom, before devoted fans found purchase on Tumblr. That fall, my brother, Jack, closest in age to me and my companion, left for college and I started high school, without any of the friends I'd forged that last year of middle school, at an all girls Catholic institution.

In the liminal space of that summer, when I was "scene" and on MySpace and obsessed with Disney and alternative music and still Twilight, always Twilight, I used Facebook to meet girl from my high school. Because of Facebook, Twilight and awkward adolescent determination to know at least one person not from St. Joe's, I met one of my to this day best friends, Grace. It would not be the first time in my life that one of my obsessions would lead me to lifelong friendship.

Twilight kept me warm until my junior year of high school, when I'd tired of the characters and all of the nonsense of the then-franchise. Instead, I joined Tumblr and spent much of October and November obsessed with Taylor Swift and her Speak Now album, which had just been released. Eclipsing Taylor, though, that November, was Glee.

I've written about Glee before. The eighth episode of the show's sophomore season, "Furt," made me fall head over heels in love with the show. When I learned that other people were crazy about Glee like I was - that they loved Finn and Rachel like I did - I felt like I had finally found a niche. No one in my real life liked Glee the way I did, no one thought about it like me; it wasn't important to anyone else. I couldn't talk about it with them, about this show that opened up my hard emotional self and cracked it, alerting me to things I saw in the characters that I saw in myself.

Glee was the first time I watched a television show and found characters like me, whose desperation to have love and respect made them selfish and mean. But besides what the show mirrored to me, I just loved it. I loved the stupid music, the over-the-top storylines, the conveyor belt of romance. The show became like a Punnett Square of relationships, so unlike my own droll life that I was ensconced. And, like Twilight, Glee came into my life when I was on the precipice of change.

Junior year, my body was changing. The weight I'd put on the year came off a little, I got into yoga, my figure shone through layers of baby fat. My mom was back from her year-long assignment but things at home were perhaps more unstable than the year before. I was making new friends from different groups, learned how to drive, dyed my hair. I started wearing my glasses every day. Everything shifted as I came into who I would be as an adult, but Glee gave me the stability I needed, an outlet for all this change to be funneled into so I wouldn't have to deal with it myself.

Every Tuesday at 9 in the evening, I had something to watch. When my dad had his heart attack, it was Glee that I turned to, unable to put into words besides a late night phone call to my best friend about how it felt, how scary, and absolutely avoided the topic with my mom and my brothers. When his life was saved, when I had to return home, I watched Glee on the little television in my room in relief. Things had shifted, absolutely, but I still had this thing - this show, this fandom - that remained.

In 2012, I graduated and began college and had a horrible time of it. The previous fall, Glee had brought Rachel into my life. The summer before college, we Skyped every single night, basically, and in those early winter days, where I found myself alone and friendless at BGSU, we continued this tradition, talking about Cory and Lea Michele and Finn and Rachel and writing and all the things we loved, then. An interview with Cory on Ellen DeGeneres brought Shanna into our circle. I didn't know then how important that night was, but it became clear as we exchanged Facebook information, cell phone numbers, emails, even addresses for Christmas cards that these were not Just Internet Friends, these were Real Life Friends.

Without them, I honestly wouldn't have made it through late 2012 and early 2013. I was lonely and sad and letting myself slip into dangerous introversion. But we chatted on Skype every single day all day. I would log on at three in the afternoon and we would chat through dinner, through homework, through writing and through bed time, sometimes past two in the morning if I had a late class. We laughed and I felt better, there, laughing in my little bedroom in small town Ohio than I had going out with the girls on my floor who had abandoned me.

Through my Glee phase, which spanned from 2010-2013, I spent two weeks obsessed with The Hunger Games, another few months dedicated to Doctor Who, in January of 2013 I discovered BBC's The Hour, which remains in my top five favorite shows. It was during this time that I found Joni, whose music has inspired a lifelong obsession. Hers is music I will never truly tire of, will never abandon like I have other things I have loved and am now forgetting.

All good things come to an end. I became a feminist and could no longer love Twilight limitlessly. I had to add provisions to my enjoyment of the franchise: I like Twilight, but Edward is abusive; I like Twilight, but Bella is not a character, but a shade. Glee ended when Cory died in the middle of July 2013. It came screeching to a halt, no preparation, no questions asked. Cory died and that same morning I deleted every single Glee song from my iTunes library. Earlier that summer, I had deleted all the episodes I'd downloaded. I went to the gym and ran out my sadness, deleted the Twitter app and took a break from the Internet and went on vacation with Grace to New Jersey and New York.

In NYC the day before my 19th birthday, I met Shanna for the first time in person. I had been scared our friendship would change after Cory passed away, that not having the common thread of Glee, we would shatter and unravel. I feared our triad would break off and I desperately avoided addressing it when we did Skype.

Now I find myself mapping this lovely friendship that Glee gave me since it's the most important thing beside all the self-confidence, the writing ability, the outlet for all my grief and pent up emotions. After Glee, there was nothing. A little Fringe, a little Dawson's Creek; every television show I watch, I obsess over for a bit and move on, same with books. My reactions to the things I loved became somewhat mainstream. I liked a band, I recommended it and moved on. Or, I liked a television show and I reblogged a picture of it onto my blog.

And then I moved to England and lost the time to watch new shows, spending the time I had to watch Netflix rewatching old shows, Parks and Recreation, The Mindy Project, Gilmore Girls. What can I say - I love a good female-led ensemble comedy. But then the first semester passed and half the second and before I knew it I was facing three long weeks of spring break and only one set in stone travel plan, stuck on campus while all my friends traveled with each other and their families.

Then, The X-Files revival was announced. I'd watched the first two seasons of the show sometime in the midst of my Glee and post-Glee life but hadn't been too committed to finishing it for some reason. It was an old, long show and I had all the time in the world since it wouldn't be returning - and then suddenly, it was, and my desire to finish it spiked. For two weeks straight, I marathon watched, obsessed with every detail, every storyline, every interaction between Mulder and Scully.

Of course, as with all things, it comes when I am facing yet another change in my life - the end of my year abroad and my final year of university. I can't talk about it or I'll cry. But it's coming and I'm not surprised at all that I find myself obsessed with this crazy 90's show about aliens. It makes me happy. When I watched, it made me laugh and cry and talk aloud to myself. It gave me something to do when I was bored and verging on lonely, gave me a new thing to love and think about on the elliptical at the gym. Though my relationship with Shanna and Rachel has only gotten stronger since Cory's death (we've managed to meet three times since and are planning our fourth for this summer) and even better since I've been gone, somehow, The X-Files is another thing we all have in common that reminds us of the childlike way we loved Glee in the winter of 2013.

All these are things that are a part of me. The things I love make me me, I am what I watch, what I read, what I listen to. I am but a product of what and who I love. Without Glee, I would never have been so informed and would be years behind where I am now when it comes to feminism. Without Rent, I would have spent my adolescence confused as sexuality entered our lives. Without Twilight, I wouldn't have met my first high school friend, wouldn't have had that familiarity that I so desperately needed and held onto for four years, as rocky as they were. My reaction to change and trauma and sadness might be strange, but it lightens things for me, helps the weight of all my worry and anxiety off my shoulders. I would far rather be anxious about the alien conspiracy in the world of The X-Files than how I'm going to cope saying goodbye to Keele.

I would rather be what I love than who loves me.

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WHAT I'VE LEARNED: 2014 in review

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 8 AM in a single bed in a condo in Florida. As I write this, I am in a single bed, but in my dormitory in England. In between these two spaces, a new year has risen, or so says the calendar. At however many feet over the Atlantic, when it was midnight in America and past midnight in England, everything was transient and surreal.

That's sort of how I feel about 2014 in general: transient and surreal. In the span of 2014, I have lived in three places: Bowling Green, Avon Lake, and Keele, England. Each of these places I have called home, each place I have left and will leave and my life will continue this way until I graduate in 2016 (minus England), bouncing back and forth between two places that have contributed to me growing up. This year, I have learned to appreciate the surreal and transient nature of travel. One morning, I was in England. By the evening, I was in Tampa, Florida. Throughout all the travel of the past year - from NYC to Florida to Indianapolis to England - it has struck me nearly every single time that I am one fortunate individual to see so much of the world.

Spent the day with family; Tiffin, OH | Aug 2014

Me, Shanna and Rachel in Times Square | Jan 2014

Poolside view, Orlando, FL | Mar 2014

Parade the Circle; Cleveland, OH | Jun 2014

Me, Shanna & Rachel at the Children's Museum; Indianapolis, IN | Aug 2014

I think travel is a great privilege. Even within Ohio - and Cleveland itself - there is so much to see. From the rural plains to the Cleveland metropolis, there is much to do, much to see. This year, I learned to appreciate where I came from, and more importantly, who I came from. I became closer with my family, spending many Monday nights with my parents, brother, sister-in-law and niece eating dinner, drinking tea and sharing many, many stories (and laughs). I understood homesickness in a completely different way. When I'm at BGSU, my mom is literally a phone call away - when I miss her or my dad or my brothers or my dog, I can call her and ask if I can come home, or if she can come see me. But here, in England, I am so far from my family that many days pass when I don't even get to call my mom, due to the time difference or clashing schedules. Though I miss my family every day (every minute of every day), I know they are with me and that it is only with their love and support that I am even able to be abroad at all.

My little home; Keele, England | Oct 2014

Travel has taught me a lot (as it teaches any person who encounters a lot of travel). This blog isn't one that is going to tell its three readers that leaving home is the only way you can learn things about yourself. You can learn about yourself from anywhere. I have been studying abroad for months, now, and don't feel like I've learned anything about myself that I didn't already know. Like, I hate when people hang out without me, but I also love my time alone. I'm tricky and complex like that. Also, that I can only really rely on myself in most situations and always have a plan. It's hard for me to make friends, nearly impossible to garner the courage to talk to someone first, and I love to make people laugh. I put a lot of pressure on myself academically and will procrastinate as long as possible.

I think that studying abroad has forced me to be aware of these things inside myself, but I think that I knew these things in Ohio and have been forced and will continue to be forced to recognize both my flaws and my strengths.

Galway, Ireland | Oct 2014

But a lot of this year taught me about people, and how they live and act and how these people see me. A lot of my friendships changed over the course of the year. Some grew stronger, some were brand new, some ended, some grew distant. I don't think I've ever had a friend I regretted knowing, and I wish I were more patient with my friends and less sensitive about little things. I've grown up so much this year, I think, especially in terms of my patience and impatience, but I still have a ways to go. I wish I weren't jealous and needy and distant and sensitive and sarcastic sometimes but I understand now that friends can and will love you through your moods. Or they should. (And more often than not, they do.)

Candid Mags girls reunited; London, England | Nov 2014

Just a few of my friends abroad; Keele, England | Nov 2014

This was a year of family, friends, travel, learning, and books. This year, I read 70 books, which to me seems like not a lot but it is quite a lot of books and I am looking forward to all the new things I will read in this year. My goal is 100 in 2015 and it feels feasible. I hope that this year bodes well for me, for reading and writing and all the rest.

Sunset; Longboat Key, FL | Dec 2014

All my best and all my love in 2015.

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Abroad Chronicles, I: IN A DAY OR SO

(Other possible titles for this post included, "The Visa Story," "The British Consulate: Exposed," "Why I'm Losing Hair at Twenty," and "?!")

I don't know when I decided I was going to be studying abroad in England for an entire school year, but along the way, through growth spurts and weddings and friendships and schools, somehow, in my little pea brain, the idea (copied, of course, from my older brother, Pat) solidified. I chose to come to Bowling Green and stay there, despite my desires for a different type of college experience, because financially, Bowling Green is the only school that I would be able to study abroad for a year without going a million dollars in debt on top of my student loans.

I started this whole process my freshman year, attended this study abroad fair that BG's education abroad team held in the student union and received ten thick books from different study abroad agencies that my mom and I read through during Christmas break, though we never came to a decision then, and my thoughts were not focused so much on the coming future and possibilities in another country, rather, they were centered on getting myself through my freshman year.

As sophomore year arrived, the possibility of my study abroad became very real to me. I like to get things done and early, so I met with the education abroad office within the first two months of being back at BGSU and began my research, ultimately landing on some consortium's program in some town in England, and I began meeting with advisors in and out of the study abroad office to ensure that I could do this program for the whole year and still graduate in May 2016.

To make this already long story short, during the application process, I realized the program I had been working towards all semester wasn't the one for me and was back to square one.

After many tears, a lot of emails, and two recommendation letters, my application was in, accepted, and I was officially set to study abroad by this past May. My welcome letter notified me of the need for a Tier 4 Student Visa and I assumed I'd have my needed CAS number by July.

Lo and behold, the much awaited email arrived MID AUGUST, which only gave me a month and a half to apply. You may not know this about me, but I like to get applications like these out of the way in advance, but after an initial read-through of the application, I was totally lost, and for two weeks sent emails and attempted to fill out the application as best I could and finally, finally, in the very first few days of September, my application was finished and sent in the mail to the UK consulate in New York.

A week and a day later, I got an email from the consulate themselves that I hadn't included a shipping label, immediately I sent the label back and realized I would not be getting my much awaited visa for two full weeks. My hair began to fall out, I became addicted to The Sims 2, I drank 20 cans of Diet Coke a day, I packed my suitcase, cried, doubted my intentions of going abroad, cancelled my flight and finally, three days after I was due to depart, I received my visa and was on my way to England in a day.

The process was extremely dramatic and to any students wishing to study abroad for a year in any country that requires a visa, my advice is get your visa EARLY!!!!!! You will still have hair and will not harass every single power you can, from the US passport agency to the consulate in NYC to the local congress woman's office and you will save yourself some money and emotional turmoil.

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negotiating thankfulness

The Great Gatsby used to be my favorite book and I wanted to grow into a lawyer, a pharmacist, a writer. We never told each other we'd be friends forever, but it was there, threaded into plans for the future: when I get married, you guys are going to be my bridesmaids, or, when huddled together on a double bed after college's first semester, we promised when we live in New York, come visit, we'll have an apartment and there will always be room for you on our couch. When I publish my first book, you can share my wealth, sleep in my basement, a space for you always in my life, no matter where we are or what you do.

Last Thanksgiving I counted what I was thankful for on one hand: thumb, my family, index finger, my friends who'd reminded me that there was something in me to love and miss, middle finger, my dog, ring finger, the blessings that my parents have given me, a home to live in, an education to acquire, and on my pinky finger, I counted the blessing of living in a country where I can more or less live freely. This year, I feel like even if I had ten hands, I still wouldn't be able to commodify my thankfulness.

I have friends like family from high school and a family that loves like friends. A year ago, I was a shelled out version of myself, hollow bones, now I feel my roots spreading much more certainly everywhere I go. There is no way for me to explain how I got myself out of my sadness. I spent all of my time alone on my computer, curled on my bed, facilitating between my television, Netflix and music every weekend. Homework somehow got done in the spaces between.

I had my anchors, though. My mom, always, my friends when they could, new friends on the Internet who, after daily Skype chats, became best friends and I could talk about this forever and ever, every single day, but that would be redundant. I am thankful for these people who supported me when I was impossible to support, feeling bodiless and loose, who helped purport me to where I am now, stronger, confident again, positive.

Everything changes and everyone changes but most things inexplicably stay the same. I still love The Great Gatsby but I've moved on and I want to go to graduate school and work in publishing and work with people every day, to make something worthwhile to send back to the universe to thank it for these countless blessings it has bestowed on me every day. Though last year was one of the most challenging experiences of my life so far, I am forever grateful for the obstacles laid in my path, for they have taught me how to orient myself, to see the other side of a problem, the positive side, the moss that grows on the edge of the boulders that demonstrates that life can grow from obstacles.

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me a year ago

A year ago, I was two weeks away from leaving home for the first time and in the midst of my packing and sorting clothes and whatnot, I took this photograph:

July 2013 was kinda really hectic, my busiest month of the summer. It was sad and stressful and exciting and hazy and very very warm and rainy. And now it is behind me as is most of this summer and nothing really went how I wanted it to in May when I unpacked all my stuff from school and reveled in being home for four whole(ish) months.

Last summer, I spent almost all of my time alone. I watched a lot of TV and a lot of Netflix and didn't read as much as I wanted and spent every single weekend at a graduation party, where I saw all of my friends. Importantly, I spent a lot of last summer in a Really Bad Mood. 

Senior year was really bad and left me hard and raw and unwilling to really hang out with the people I'd spent the last four years laughing and having fun with. It wasn't really their fault. I shut myself off from them so that I could heal on my own, and even though I never let them in, I cursed them for not realizing or caring to notice that I wasn't alright and that I hadn't been in a very long time. (At the time, I didn't REALIZE or CARE TO NOTICE that they were going through their own stuff, too, see how great retrospect is????)

I didn't have a job but I wrote a lot a lot a lot and became even better friends with Rachel (we talked pretty much every day!) and learned a lot about myself by turning inward and thinking. I was excited for college, I guess, but more excited to leave all the hurt of high school behind me and to truly step into my role as an adult (even though in college everyone acts like they're still in high school for, like, two-ish years and I already felt beyond that).

I could write a billion things about college and how even though I literally lost every person I was friends with at university within a week I still really benefitted from the experience, but it would get trite eventually or whatever so I am here to notify that I have changed from the floral printed collared shirted long haired black and white filtered girl at the top of this page, just a lil bit.

I'm happier now than I was then and I feel better about myself and I like the way I look even though I feel small and big at the same time and I feel like I'm actually alive and not just a zombie. My time on my own helped me forge really good friendships via this scary vehicle known as the Internet and I am so glad that I got my year alone to have these friendships that I can't imagine the rest of my life without.

A year ago, I was looking forward to school and to "adulthood" for the wrong reasons. I was excited to get away from my family and my friends and my town and those aren't wrong reasons in the scope of other people but wrong on a personal level and this year, I am looking forward to so much, to my new classes, the possibilities afforded to me by attending university, even to things that are happening before I leave. Last year, it felt like all I ever had to look forward to was escaping, but now I've got so, so much more to be excited about.

And just for the fun of it all here is a pic of me a year later to round out this here article:

(Unfortunately, as it would seem, I look eXACTLY THE SAME!!! Kids entering college this fall DON'T EXPECT YOUR TIME AWAY TO CHANGE YOU you will still look like a little baby when you get home at the end of your first year!!)

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on my style renaissance

People ask me more often than you'd think about what inspires my sense of style, which I have been told is great and unique BTW, and I always sit and stare and struggle for an embarrassing amount of time for a response. You'd think that by now I'd know what to say, that I'd have an arsenal of responses for the questions that perplex me, but I never ever know how to answer this question.

I don't have a style icon or someone to emulate even though I WISH that I did so that I could tell everyone that I'm a no good copy cat, but when I think of someone who inspires me I start having hot flashes and my throat gets all tight and I start sweating. 

I'll start at the beginning of my life on this earth and what has lead me to here, today, a true fashion icon for the masses. Okay, or not, whatever.

As a little girl, I went through three thousand phases where I either refused to wear dresses or would only wear dresses. I hated leggings with stirrups and loved jelly shoes. I had short curly hair that, in growing out, was straight, then I rocked a bowl cut until the first grade. I always had bangs, to the point that I legitimately believed I was born with them. 

Because I went to Catholic school from kindergarten until twelfth grade, I had to wear a uniform every single day and they weren't cute and customize-able like they are in the movies or that episode of That's So Raven. In kindergarten, the plaid was maroon and green or something awful and I wore Mary Jane's like it was my job. The Catholic day school my parents wanted me to attend didn't have kindergarten, so in the first grade that is where I transferred where I rocked a beautiful royal blue/cerulean blue and white plaid jumper until the fifth grade, when the uniform transformed into a skirt and polo.

At least the polo had a stretchy band around the bottom so we didn't have to tuck it in.

By the eighth grade, I was used to the routine, the uniforms, the cool relief of "dress down days" when everyone got out their best jeans and Aeropostale tees and sweatshirts and showed off for twenty-five cents to a dollar, depending on the cause for donation. Sometimes DDDs were free, which was a whole new type of freedom that I don't think I was ready for.

I developed sort of early, especially compared to the girls in my grade so that when I wore a SORT OF low cut Hollister tank top on a dress down day that fall, my teacher told me to wear a sweatshirt over it because it was "inappropriate." Totes fine and didn't even bother me at the time because I usually wore multiple layers of undershirts under all my clothes in the eighth grade. This was a trend that followed me into my senior year of high school.

When it came time to pick a high school, I didn't even think twice before deciding that Magnificat was the place for me. It was where my mom and her sisters had gone to high school and I had a cousin there and shadowing it just felt right. It was where I belonged.

Mags is an all-girls school that participates in what is probably a really odd cult-ish phenomenon that is not mandated by any administration: nearly every single girl in the school wears their hair up, in a bun, ponytail or braid, every day. And of course, we accessorized. On a typical Blue Streak (our totally lame "what the heck" mascot), you would find headbands, stud earrings, crew socks (never, ever knee socks, not if you wanted to be COOL), TOMs or Sperry topsiders or, during my freshman year, Birkenstock clogs. 

I never tried to break out of this trend. Yes, I wore my hair down a few times and didn't really care that everyone was glaring at me in the hallways. I wore the clogs and stud earrings, but the thick cloth headbands everyone wore sort of harshed my mellow and, okay, slid off my weird-shaped head and gave me a headache by the end of the day, so that by senior year the only headbands I was really wearing were thin, braided headbands that got me a billion compliments. And when everyone decided our high school was a yacht my sophomore year and wore the Sperrys, I received a pair of white and silver toms from my brother and sister-in-law that changed my life. I always wore tights as soon as it was cold enough to and preferred my long sleeve banded polo to the short sleeve.

What I wore outside of school (DDDs did not count in high school because everyone wore sweatpants and sweatshirts and looked like homeless men until the leggings trend of 2011) is where my true style shone. Freshman year, I continued with the Aeropostale tee shirts and Hollister tank tops and sweatshirts and jeans. To friends houses, I wore sweatpants and generally did not care very much about what my clothes said about me. It just didn't matter to me, at the time, when I finally had friends who got me and didn't accuse me of being a lesbian (like that'd be SO BAD anyway, what homophobic lil jerkfaces) just because I went to an all girls school - my new friends understood this, because they went to my school. 

I wore a lot of skinny jeans and tee shirts and eyeliner on my bottom lid. My hair was either straight or curly and I never wore it up on the weekends because that's what the schooldays were for. A friend in the eighth grade (one of the lesbian accusers) told me that my hair looked better straight and that sort of changed how I perceived my curls. I still don't like the way they look and I doubt this girl even intended for it to hurt as much as it did. Except who knows, really. 

Sometimes I miss the carefree style of my freshman year. My hair was long and it looked good enough curly that I wore it naturally quite a few times, but then in the tenth grade everything changed and went topsy turvy.

I don't know what happened but sophomore year was when EVERYTHING CHANGED. I made new friends and got into one of the biggest, most passive aggressive fights with my best friend for probably no reason other than that it was a hard time for everyone, terrible things kept happening outside of school to everyone in my friend group and we were never there for each other. It was a dark time, and my fashion style reflected that.

My hair and makeup stayed the same, but I started wearing these dark jeggings everywhere and I paired them with a white, black or gray v-neck tee from Target and a cardigan. There have been worse styles, worse things I've worn, but looking back at pictures of how I looked in these clothes always makes me wince. Sometimes if I didn't wear the v-neck, I wore a tank top from Hollister from the past two years, but it was a very plain time in my life.

I really don't know when or why I decided to start dressing better but in my junior year, I bought dresses and skirts and a bathing suit that didn't make me feel like a big ol' whale but instead made me feel like a beach babe from the 1950's. Minus the repressing patriarchy. I got bangs that I miss dearly, straight across and thick like my then-and-now idol Zooey Deschanel. (Maybe I'll just suck it up and say that she's my style icon so the question stops giving me anxiety,)

I stopped wearing jeans, which Stacy and Clinton from What Not to Wear would yell at me for, but luckily they haven't caught me yet and I will continue to avoid wearing real pants for the rest of my life. 

College came and now I wear sheer, collared shirts regularly. I haven't worn jeans in days. To class, I wear leggings and a collared shirt or a sweater or, what may or may not be the best purchase of my young life, my embroidered denim pony shirt. 

I'd like to think my style renaissance is a direct result of the horrors of tenth grade. I know what looks good on me now, and more importantly, to dress in what I feel good in. If I feel gross in denim pants, then I won't wear them. Style for me isn't what the models are wearing on the runway because fashion is an art and the way I dress myself is more of a manic question mark. Style should be about what makes me feel amazing. So what if you feel beautiful in a pair of overalls with a baby tee underneath with cowboy boots on your feet? Typing this, I am wearing a floral dress and let me tell you, I feel beautiful.

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on running away

So I kind of sort of hate seeing people for the first time post my first year of college. Not out of any sort of weirdo antisocial impulses I may have (though I am rather extraordinarily introverted), but because I hate HATE HATE HATE HATE (HATE!!!!!!!!) the "so how was college" question.

In January, I wrote about the difficulties I had transitioning into my independent, big girl college life. I completely intended to transfer out of the big scary state institution I attend and into where I was (and am) certain would be a better fit: a small, liberal arts school with an amazing English program. I spent a lot of the second half of my first semester and the first half of my second with my scowly girl face on.

Really, I was acting like a victim. It was passive. I was letting things happen to me - I let the girls who were my friends ignore me and I didn't bother asking them what was wrong, because I'd come to my own deductions. It was me. I was wrong. And they'd just been waiting until the best time to cut the ties of our friendship and leave me in the dust. I let the only friend I had left at school make other, better, cooler friends, and couldn't muster up the courage to ask HEY! INVITE ME TO HANG ON WEEKEND NIGHTS! and instead I sat in my dorm room and sulked.

When second semester rolled around, I didn't really plan on making any friends because of the whole transferring thing. I needed to do better than first semester, to not only maintain my position in my school's honors program and also for my humungous ego which had taken quite the stabbing when I received my first semester's GPA.

I don't know what really changed my mind. I was succeeding in classes, eating on a regular basis and I was doing what I liked. Who cares that I wasn't out partying like ALL OF MY FRIENDS? I was doing what was fun for me and that was absolutely okay because no one was around to invite me to things and therefore staying in for a night wasn't QUITE as weird. But I think what solidified this whole "staying at school" thing was writing a midterm for one of my honors classes.

The assignment had no guidelines, really. On the first day of the class, we were told to answer the big ol' meaning of life question, and for the midterm, we were told to reflect on the person who responded and identify any changes. I wrote a letter to myself because that's what the assignment sheet suggested, and I didn't really expect it but I got an A PLUS which is a BIG STINKING DEAL for me.

There is a lot of power in retrospection and introspection. And through that introspection and reflection I realized the mistakes I would be making in transferring.

When I was a little kid, I always threatened to run away. My brother would be mean to me or my mom wouldn't let me watch TV or my family teased me and I would clamber upstairs, grab some of my most important things (beanie babies, books, my unnamed bear) and I would tiptoe outside. I wouldn't leave the confines of the yard or even the front driveway.

I'd seen the opportunities outside of living with my family. The hard stretch of the road, the spirals of the pavement, the lack of shelter in the suburb that we live in. And then I chickened out, went inside, apologized, and everything was all right again.

I have an amazing group of friends from high school who I'll probably never be able to get rid of, even if I want to. (And I don't want to!!! Ever!!!) I have a supportive family. I want to travel. I want to publish a book and I want to go to the best grad school I can and I want to do all of that without the weight of student loans on my shoulders.

Running away isn't going to change anything. It won't change that I'm an introvert and that I prefer to spend time alone with a book or a movie or a television show than go to a party or a club. I'm always going to be shy and afraid of rejection and spending a ton of money at a new school won't change anything.

So I'm going to stay where I am. And I'm going to be positive about it and I'm going to radiate that positivity outwards, always.

But you can't say that when someone asks you how college was. They want to know about the parties, the boys, the classes, the roommate, not so much whatever personal epiphany you came to midway through your second semester. Regardless, I always say it was good (because it was, overall, after it all), that next year I'll get more involved, that I did well in school. And I'll leave my victories to myself, tuck them into the pockets of my mind, spin them around until it's time to claim some new ones.

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a love letter to my childhood

So much of my childhood is laced in ambiguities that I cannot really dig through the mess to pull out the first. I can remember dreams and colors, can create a memory from a photograph, can tell myself this must be the beginning, but I didn't develop organizational skills early enough to put my memories in order as the happened and instead, I am left with a hazy, diluted mess.

Yet I can remember with astounding clarity the ride to my grandfather's lake house, from waking up at eight in the morning and helping load towels and sunscreen and groceries into the car, to the endless highway. The best part was always the ramp off the highway, the bends in the road that stirred up excitement, until the path to the causeway he lived on appeared. Framed with weeping willows and the Sandusky Bay on either side, it remains the best part of that drive. It is anticipation, the bridge before the chorus, the long stretch of adolescence into adulthood, when being young feels like it is infinite and recurring, that every day will be special.

And then the road curves. The weeping willows are replaced with huge, gray rocks and houses. This is where anticipation was made manifest, in the high rocks, little hands pressed against seats to propel upwards, to see over the rocks, to see the lake. Would it be calm or wavy? Warm or cold? The only way to find out was to strain our necks, to tug at the seat belt restrictions, to unroll dirty windows to see clearly. Just as we caught a good glimpse, though, we would arrive, and the car would turn into the driveway, and we would be able to experience it ourselves.

There was a time that my cousins were my best friends. That every weekend of every summer month was spent in the sunshine. This experience is mine, finite. My supposed children will never know the race into the lake, the burn of sun-soaked sand on anxious soles, the cool relief of diving into the lake water with the ever-present danger of parents looming on the shore, calling us in, bringing us closer. We were children of that house, the lake and bay curved together like parentheses. We were the space between.

We grew up. The parentheses closed. We no longer ate dinner with towels around our waists, eager to jump back in the pool, no, instead, we were busy packing our bags and drying our hair, eager to get home, to the television, to the promise of friends that we had found separately, apart from one another. And we diminished. Older cousins began to go to college, to get married, to start families that would never know those days at the lake, would never feel the anxiety, the excitement, the exhaustion from too much time in the sun. But not just any sun - but this sun. This beach, this house, this pool. Their lives, their experiences with water and sun would be distinct and separate from my own, and as I prepared for college, I felt that iridescent childhood begin to slip away from me, bit by bit.

A day at the lake would be spent in the kitchen, last summer, with my grandpa, or by the pool. In the pool, with my nephews or brothers, occasionally with my cousins and their own children, I came to the startling realization that never again would I regain that all day, everyday experience that only Sandusky could give me. Never again will I reclaim that notion of forever-youth, as though everything was and could be mine, that nothing was out of reach.

Now, perhaps, my childhood is sold away to strangers, a family I will never meet, who will create their own memories in the house whose walls are marked with the stains of my own youth. This tree, that I was pushed into, my knee torn open, this ledge of the pool that we rested blue and pink rafts against and slid into like the pool was eight feet deep rather than five.

Saying goodbye to Sandusky is like saying goodbye to my childhood. It is bitter and it is sweet and it will sorely be missed, not for current usage, as my interests have far outgrown those of the little girl who was always the last to get out of the lake, but missed the way your mouth misses the first teeth it loses. Eventually, something new will grow in.

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on transitioning

Growing up sneaks up on you. They tell you it does your entire life and you don't really believe until it's the middle of August and all of your things are packed up in the back of your mom's white Mazda and your dog is hanging around your ankles and your brother is lying on the couch refusing to really say anything at all.

Out of all my friends, I was the one the least fazed by college. The most confident of my friends, I would roll my eyes as they griped about roommates, classes, friends, campus, what do you mean I can't wear my uniform, and even food. They'd turn to me, eyes wide and avowed, questioning, well, aren't you nervous, too?

Scoffing, I would respond with my best cool-girl voice, of course not. And I was honest, really. I could conquer all of it, the clothes, the food, the temptation, classes, friends, my stranger roommate, and so on. My mom likes to tell me I've got a good handle on myself, that I'm one of the few people my age who really know themselves through and through and most of the time, I agree.

It wasn't until the morning of August 16 dawned, pale, clear and lovely, that I realized maybe those adult shoes I'd been cramming my feet into all summer still were a little too big.

They don't really tell you about the homesickness before you leave. Allude to it, maybe. But perhaps because the feeling is indescribable and dependent on individual cases, they decide to just let you figure it out all on your own, and that really sucks. 

Everyone has their moment, I think, and mine was after my mother walked me up to my room after my multiple breakdowns after our goodbye dinner at some horrible pizza buffet that was nothing like CiCi's. We left my dad in the car to grunt and pretend he wasn't sad and we hugged goodbye and I cried and she said she'd see me soon and that was that. My roommate was notoriously absent (a trait I'd soon find becoming a habit) and I was left, completely and utterly alone. 

That was the worst feeling I think I've ever had. I've been sad, devastated, but I've always had people around me to lean on. But at school there was no one. And everyone tells you that you meet the very best friends of your entire life at college, but I had amazing high school friends. I had this great high school career behind me and as I progressed through those first two months of school I found myself desperately wanting to return.

And then I stopped being so sad. School picked up, I found people to hang out with, I told myself I was okay, and I felt okay. Sort of. I found myself returning to my room each night with a sour taste in my mouth, found the hangouts in one girl's room hard to stomach, found myself second-guessing myself. Second-guessing myself. I never, ever do that.

Well, okay, not never ever. I've done that, as it's human, I am human, etc. etc. Overall, I'm a confident person, but college-me has become a girl in desperate need of validation. And who doesn't love being validated, honestly? It feels really good. But needing it like I feel like I do now, it's unhealthy. And this isn't part of growing up, or well, it is, but it's the ugly part of growing up The Babysitter's Club doesn't prepare you for.

It sucks. It honestly, truly sucks, and I think that the only way to get out of that dark feeling is to take a hold of your own life and do things that will make you happy. For me, it's leaving the university I'm at and going where I think will be a better fit. And maybe I'm running away. Maybe in ten years, I'll knock myself on the head and wish I didn't make this choice. But how am I going to know that unless I try? Life is scary. But it's waiting, and it's about time I take back control.

I think a big part of being an adult is making yourself happy. You have to stop depending on other people, on different circumstances, to make you happy. I remember being annoyed in high school thinking things would be better in college, but I think that was just me being too lazy to fix how things were in my own environment. And I think I do that a lot. I go too far forward without realizing what I'm doing in the here and now.

I've realized that if you tell yourself you can be happy, invariably, you become happy. And maybe that's just how I function. Maybe I'm the only person like that. Or maybe I'm learning to make myself happy, and that feels pretty good. I think I'm on the way to turning things around, and the first step to that was admitting that I was unhappy. 

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