let's rewind to Friday say, 530.
I'm supposed to be cooking dinner, but I'm not, because I'm in the car with Hannah and Kristen and we're headed to Stop and Shop to get meat for dinner. By the time we get back, we've blown so much time we can't cook in the kitchen because they're setting up for our house's winter weekend. Whatever. Kristen and I head over to the campus center to grab dinner before we go back to the house to get ready for the party. What are my expectations for this weekend at that moment? To get dressed up with my friends in horribly tacky outfits, have a little too much fun, pull a quick costume change, head over to the quad, dance my heart out (maybe with some boys?), grab pizza from downtown, fall asleep, wake up the next morning, go to brunch with the ladies, spend the day shopping downtown, come back to eat dinner and get ready for the next party, and pretty much repeat the night before.
What actually happened?
Kristen and I get back from dinner and we're thrust into quickly getting ready for this party, and we're starting off hard. And I just don't slow it down. When we manage to make it downstairs, its just in time for a co-ed acapella group to sing, one of whom looks just like the person I'm trying so damn hard not to think about. Great. But I forget about that as I make my way back up stairs where I continue to party hard, and wind up going too far. The next morning I wake up feeling like total crap, spend a couple hours feeling shitty but doing laundry, curling up on my bed to watch Life Unexpected (which also made me feel like the universe was killing me). Eventually though, Hannah comes up to pull me out of bed so we can go get the rest of the stuff to make latkes and dinner that i was supposed to make the night before. We end the night by eating dinner as a "Family" (Kristen, Hannah and me <3) and then latke making. A bunch of people come over to devour our deliciousness, and i head up to bed after learning some dance moves with Kristen. Today, I wake up, head off to church alone, go to breakfast, come back to my room to hunker down on studying, went to a Hebrew study session, dinner, more work, Vespers and now more work.
I've never felt better in my life. . . because it's been a weekend of revelations.
Friday was my wake-up call.
Sunday was my re-grounding.
I was starting to become the person I always hated in high school- partying every weekend, feeling like shit the next day, not getting work done until the last minute, spending too much time with my friends, not reading, not doing what I loved. And it's no one's fault but my own. I came to school thinking that I wanted to reinvent myself because no one here knew who I was in high school. Naturally, I'm an introvert, I like to hang out alone, I like to read alone, I love to study and understand new things, but I got to school and tried to cover some of that stuff up with this extrovert person (who I am to an extent) and turned it into never wanting to be alone, never being able to step back and say you know what I really don't want to party this weekend. I began to do things because I thought that's what normal college kids did.
But guess what
I'm not a regular college kid. I go to one of the most prestigious schools in the country and I'm letting myself fall into a trap of masking who I really am and not honoring that. I want people to see me as the mature, stable, level-headed person I know I am instead of the girl who parties every night of every weekend. Don't get me wrong, I'm not completly swearing off having a good time, I'm just realizing that I can decrease it to a more managable scale.
I don't want this to turn in to what it used to be for me, that when I looked in the mirror I couldn't recognize who I was any more. I want to be able to look in the mirror and say, yeah that's right you're a bad ass because you stayed true to who you are.
I don't know why I constantly try to bring myself down to everyone else in my age group's level. I'm not sure why I think that I need to be "that person" instead of being me.
But I can't let that happen to me anymore.
I'm not your average 18 year old.
I'm never going to be like the people my age, my soul is too old.
I'm coming to terms with that. . . can you?
Going to church this morning really helped me remember why I'm here. It honestly gave me time to reflect and worship and understand more and more. I can't keep pretending that I'm some one I'm not. No matter what stress is thrown at me, no matter what drama I have to endure, I can't try to be someone I'm not. I literally hit rock bottom this weekend, and I'm climbing up again.
I get to sit in my room, wearing my wet hair in a bun, flannel pj bottoms and a long sleeve t-shirt. I get to feel the RSVP pen in my hand and I get to study things that I love. This is who I am. I like to read and knit and drink tea (especially tazo passion tea). I like coffee shops and libraries, I love Advent and Christmas. I'm never going to be the typical college kid and I'm proud of that now.
I love life.
I'm learning what it truly means to be happy, and not the working definition I had earlier this year.
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