Hi, My Name is C, and I'm a Freshman in Life!*

This past weekend, B came to visit and proceded to drink on an empty stomach (even though I had made her some reallllly delicious mac and cheese and hot dogs!), use a straw to drink gin, and vomit all over my bathroom (...ok not like alll over, and more just like in).  We decided this was perfectly fine because she's a freshman in life.

Welcome to freshman year of life.  You will find that you don't really know your alcohol tolerance (in college you only drank beer that had the physical qualities of piss and took obscene amounts to get you drunk), you don't know anything about who you are (funny how you thought you were a grown "adult" freshman year of college when you were 18 years old), you're a little scared to be out on your own, and you have no common sense (Mom, how long are these left overs good for? I cooked them last Monday).

Thankfully you can take some of the lessons you learned in college and apply them to your everyday life.  The lesson that I learned my senior year of college, which has largely been responsible for my current state of mind, is somewhat rooted in NO.  Things I hate: traffic (concerning both people and cars), books that everyone "just loveddddd" but actually suck, idiotic questions, annoying people, and the way I let NO treat me last year.  Sometimes you just need to make mistakes.  Sometimes, regardless of how many times your friends say noooooooo not again!, you just need to keep making a mistake over and over again. 

I was in a weird place in my life and I made some mistakes.  I let boys disrespect me because I didn't know how to respect myself.  In some ways I'm thankful that I did, because a. now I can spot a douchebag from a MILE away and b. it taught me that I don't deserve to be treated poorly, by myself or anyone else.  That's the thing about self empowerment, sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can start the climb. (I hope you're imagining some Miley Cyrus classics playing in the background as you read this)  So, now I take my douchebags with a grain of salt.  I love the bro, and probably will continue to do so until I start looking for someone to, like, marry or something.  They're good, stupid fun...and as long as you keep a handle on it...it's a good time.  It's just like any drug really.  If you over do it and lose yourself, you've lost the very fiber of being that makes you, you.  So don't do that.  My goal is to hold onto my self awareness, keep a watchful eye, and always always remember: I deserve to be treated well.  After all, your bro is my drug.


*Freshman in Life: term created and trademarked by KM

New Theory #1

Things I like to do: read, write, chat with friends, daydream, think too much, craft (please refrain from making fun of me), play with my cellphone, theorize.

Theory of the day:

Research:
According to my sources, men spend approximately 10% of their conversations talking about women and 40% talking about sports. [Editor's Note: I only asked one person, so this percentage probably varies]

My approximation is that I spend 50% to most of my conversations with my friends talking about guys or guy related things.

Hypothesis: The time men spend talking about sports, women spend on talking about men.

Conclusion: Women need something like sports to occupy their time so they don't act so freaking crazy about men.

I have decided, based on the issues brought up from this theory that I am going to spend more time talking with my friends about their interests.  I am enthralled with the possibilities of conversation that doesn't revolve around men.  Sports are incredibly boring things to talk about / watch, so I am absolutely not going to try to go there...but, I think that this is a very valid goal.  My hope is that I can know my friends better and become more interested in their lives if I know more about them than how they act around/ concerning men.  I was gchatting with my friend K and I literally had to ask her what her interests were! Shouldn't I know this already?? We've been friends for years!  I'm not saying I'm going to eliminate men from my conversations with friends (that's just ludicrous and silly), but I do want to attempt to limit it to the 10% that it should be.  I am a college educated, intelligent, well-rounded woman!  Riddle me this, why should I spend all my time pondering the ins and outs of the male mind and absolutely no time pondering those same intricacies of my own mind?



Also [unrelated] post-script, new colloquialisms that I'm a fan of:
On the reg
Riddle me this
Totes jeal (and/or abbrevs in general)

Why Moving to a New City is Like Wearing in a New Pair of Boots

"My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud."
-Henry Rollins
Recently I bought myself a new pair of black, leather riding boots.  I am a huge fan of these boots and am probably going to start wearing them nearly every day.  They are really great looking and make a really comforting click click noise when you walk around on hard floors...exactly the kind of noise I like, because it makes me feel grown up and important.  Today is my very first day of wearing said boots.  To say the least, my feet are in pain and feeling a bit pinched.  I have enormous calves that are totally disproportionate to the rest of my body (sigh), so the tops of the boots are pretty snug (read uncomfortable).  They are leather, so they'll probably stretch a bit to the perfect fit EVER...then I will procede to wear them all the time, always.

I decided today, as I was limping to work, that wearing in new boots is kind of like moving to a new city.  I moved to New York, with full knowledge that, though I knew some people who I went to school with, it would be utterly new.  I ordered the boots on the same premise.  I knew that I liked the style and that they would probably fit in well with the rest of the clothes I own (as well as those which I hope to own).  We create these dreams and perfect lives around what we already know about ourselves.  I was worrisome about the boots, because I always have a hard time with boots fitting my obscenely large calves....but I took the plunge anyway.  Similarly, I have an abrasive, loud, and sometimes intimidating personality (I blame my Scottish heritage for both my calves and my outlandish personality).  This upfront personality has won me many a close friend and not a few enemies.  It is sometimes hard for me to meet new people.  However, I took the chance and moved to a new city where I knew almost no one. 

You see, I really wanted those boots and I've been pining over them for years...similarly I'd been pining over my future in the big city.  My new found quest in life is to do what makes me happy, to search out those opportunities that challenge me, and make me a person I can be proud of.  I spent too much of my college career trying to please everyone but myself.  I ignored the fact that I couldn't be happy with just me and searched for that happiness in the actions of others.  No more, I say!  I think this laise-faire attitude about happiness comes from our own laziness and denial...it's too hard to actually look introspectively for happiness and it's easier to blame everyone/thing else.

So even though I'm in a big city without many close friends, I know I will have new friends (to compliment the old) soon.  Undoubtably, this city will fit like my (soon to be) favorite pair of black leather, riding boots.  I am willing to deal with my feet pinching a little if it means growing up and out.  Happiness (and comfortable boots) await.

Going Home, It's Not that Easy

Homecoming (def.): the return of a group of people usually on a special occasion to a place formerly frequented or regarded as home; especially : an annual celebration for alumni at a college or university. (a la Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

This past weekend B and I ventured back to our small, liberal arts, East Coast college.  I had been looking forward to this weekend practically since the day of graduation.  A return to my former stomping ground.  But as the weekend approached some very traumatic and dramatic events led to a falling out with one of my very best friends who is a senior at our alma mater.  This drastic change of ties led me to be somewhat apprehensive about the weekend; and, to be truthful, I almost did not even venture back to school for the occasion.  I decided to brave it out and just go anyway...I needed to and I had so been looking forward to it.

Things that need be known about the falling out that preceded the weekend.  I was creepily close with this friend, people joked that we were dating...which in retrospect was probably the first red flag that the relationship was unhealthy.  I had asked my friend not to do something, because it would bother me.  She did it anyway and then proceded to lie and deceive me for two weeks before it became apparent that if she didn't tell me what she'd done, someone else would.  Everything about the incident was selfish and stupid.  The very act of lying to me every day showed (to me) that she was not a good friend, and truly did not care about me.

So, I went to Homecoming with the strict stance in mind that I would not (could not!) speak to my friend.  I would be as polite as ever, but she would be a stranger to me...a new acquintance.  I am an adult now, or so I'm told, and I can't just run around campus pouring beers on people and causing a ruckus.  Apparently this was not her stance, as a beer was poured directly on my head in the name of her honor.  I guess I deserved this for being a terrible friend.  Hmmm...  I was greatly hurt by this and really upset about it: how could she be so selfish and mean?!  But, honestly, I am being somewhat hypocritical.

I remember Spring Term of my senior year.  I remember waking up on Sunday morning and thinking to myself: why do I keep acting like this?  I didn't like myself and I didn't like who I was becoming.  Those last few months, I did what felt good...I was a solely epicurian person.  As our school was once so properly described by a school newspaper columnist: "This den of sin that I inhabit."  A den of sin, so perfectly described...for that is exactly what it was.  I did what I wanted regardless of the consequences, because so many others did the same.  It was literally like living inside of a speak easy during Prohibition.  Everything went, and no one asked questions....except for my morality, buried deep, deep within...it was asking some very tough questions, that I couldn't answer.  So graduation came and went, and I started acting like a person I wasn't ashamed of.

I missed my college life, and it is (and has been) an interesting transition to something so radically different.  Homecoming weekend showed me just what I needed to see.  My friend did something stupid, selfish, and shameful....but the things that I did my senior year...were they really that different?  I can't let her back into my life, but not because I don't forgive her.  I really do forgive her.  I can't let her back in, because letting her back into my life opens the door to so many things I left behind at graduation.  I shut the door on that behavior and I can only open the door to her friendship when she too has relinquished her ties to our favorite little den of sin.

Homecoming weekend gave me back everything that I had let go of, let me experience it once more, and allowed me to finally release it from my life...for good.  I can't be that person I was in college anymore because I have lost her, and she can't be found.  I don't want to find her.  I loved the weekend, seeing old friends, visiting old haunts; but come Sunday I was itching to leave.  Itching to get back the real world.  The world where I belong.

Drum Roll Please....C

Whereeee to begin? B and I have been friends since the early days of college.  We met because B was more than terrified at the prospect of leaving Minnesota and starting a new life in the crazy, exciting (sarcasm) east coast city where our small liberal arts college was located.  I, of course, talked her down and told her that she could do this! and the world was her oyster! and she's stronger than she knows!...along with some other probably equally cliched pep talk phrases.  I find this beginning to our friendship somewhat odd in retrospect, because it was B who ventured into the dangerous waters of adulthood first, and she who took a giant leap in moving to a brand new (big) city.

I was utterly devastated at graduation.  Our college was my oyster, my universe; I was a somebody there, somebody people knew.  I remember thinking (naively) that I would simply get a job before/ at/ directly after graduation and simply move to New York City!  Little did I know, this is not such a simple plan.  Moving to new cities (without the protection of a college structure) takes time, money, planning, support, etc.  I barely had any money at graduation, and really no concrete plan.  Things had always just fallen into place for me, as things do for many people before the shock of post-grad life hits.  Graduating was literally like being born again.  I felt so disoriented.  I had no purpose.  I have never in my life felt so lost.  I literally lied in my bed in Colorado moping for almost an entire month.

Anyways, long story short, after a few months of working myself to the bone at a restaurant for measly pay, a fruitless visit to NYC, a case of mono AND strep throat AND (almost) skin cancer, selling all of my belongings, and packing up TWO suitcases....BAM I was taking a huge leap of faith and living with a friend in Connecticut.  After a very tumultuous two weeks, where I was sure nothing was going to work out and I was going to return to Colorado having spend almost none of my money, I got a job and an apartment...almost in the same day.  So here I am, living the big city life.  I honestly feel like a make a wish child....I DID have skin cancer.  Maybe God listens to prayers after all.  All I know is that being an adult is scary, scarier and more stressful than anything I dealt with in college (or before that for that matter).  Oh, and it's also ridiculously expensive.  So, for now, I'm going to go sit wide-eyed and hungry amongst my eleven hundred dollar bedroom furniture.