sunday best

Recently, the college-student ability of sleeping straight through the morning has left me. So every morning I wake up at 8:30 and not a second later, and then I get to wonder why i'm awake three hours before my classes start on weekdays or ten thousand hours before campus is awake on weekends. But mostly, I'm okay with it. It takes twenty three seconds to apply makeup to the circles under my eyes, but that's a small price to pay for feeling like I own something, this silently still time in the morning, for a little while.

it's the time after that small part of the morning that i've realized is both out of my control and totally in it. The thing i've realized about college is that it's so easy to forget that while i've been here, enjoying the freedoms that come with this suspended- reality, the world outside of my forty acre campus hasn't frozen. Not in the large ways- natural disasters and political movements, but in the smaller ways. It's hard to imagine that the people that made up my Plano life haven't frozen in place, anxiously awaiting my return in May. The whole idea that college is supposed to broaden your horizons, at least in this one way, is harder than you'd imagine.

But in other ways, college really does broaden your horizons. The things that terrified me in high school- not fitting in, fitting in too much, being disliked, being liked for the wrong reasons, to name a few, are so much smaller here. There will always be people that don't get you. No one is going to be liked by everyone they meet all the time, and it's a safe bet that the things you're insecure about are, in fact, defining you a little. But at the same time, there are so many people that WILL like you. and they WILL "get" you, at least to whatever point you allow them to. and i've been so homesick lately that my stomach actually hurts but i'm learning to see austin as home, at least a bit. right before I leave.

So I guess what i'm trying to say is that as scared as I was this time a year ago, life has gotten a lot less scary. For every one person I meet that probably finds me a little (or a lot) annoying, there's someone else that's willing to listen to me whine about my music class or laugh at me when i've had so much caffeine that i can't form rational thoughts, let alone sentences, and like me for it. I didn't realize it as it was happening, but i've managed to find people here that make the ten page literature papers and hours of biology outline making seem like only a fraction of my freshmen year. And while this chip on my shoulder might never fully go away, at least i'm filling it in. And that's pretty lucky.

This was incoherent as ever, so I guess i've just really missed writing.

kelly


also: ADH, you're the nicest, most genuine, most intelligent human being i've ever met and as small as i'm terrified that you're feeling right now, you're still HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE to me. and I love you. And I'll be home so soon and we can watch the history channel and complain about everything and i'll let you be sassy on whatever day you want with absolutely (probably?) no consequences. <3