like i can steal it

*note: i have tried to make this shorter. sorry.*

climbing up the hill from bates midnight breakfast, i remember where i was one year ago: amazed that the semester had passed, although it hadn't been as quick. i'd survived. still very much tied to santa fe. i was one of the only ones who had left at that point.

still very tied to JB and Phil and the Brown house crew . . . still emotionally wounded over "the david thing", which i continued to saw and hack at in my writing, which wasn't really doing me any good - a real example of "great emotion doesn't always lead to great writing" . . .

one year ago i returned to my triple while everyone else was still at bates. (like most parties, i left early.) i called home - i am still as attached to my family as i was then. i am co-dependent. maybe it's just that good families, with really nice people in them, take longer to break away from than mean ones who you want to leave almost from day one. i had some packing to finish and planned to stay up the entire night. i had a plane to catch first thing tomorrow morning.

now i'm staying to the end of the week and i don't feel ready to leave. not because i'm not excited to go home - the prospect of the next month of lolling about fills me with joyous anticipation - but because i don't know if i've done enough here.

like maybe if i stay longer i'll get more done. like i'll be a different person. like if i stay long enough the magic and genius of this place will seep into me and i will walk away glowing. like all the smart people will rub off. like all the gorgeous people will look more plain if i stay long enough and start to look and think like them. like i can steal it.

but i go home. to safe. home to memory. home to lolling about. home to be always a wonderful writer with good ideas. home to an uncritiqued existence. home to easy.

and wonder if i will ever go anyplace hard. and scared of the feeling that i will spend 80% of my life planning the other 20%. terrified that school is the wayside. terrified that my life will be a series of pit stops with no open road between.

terrified that i will never find the courage to change the world. not caring if it's cheesy, but frightened i'll remain convinced it's too big. terrified i'll never articulate and coalesce that which bothers me, because right now it is so many disparate strands. scared that my ten dollar vocabulary will never amount to anything of value.

it is strange to realize one is typical, but here, i am: i am one of those students who wanders the campus, whom you see occasionally, who's studying their own program and doing their own thing. i am not special. not one of the slc elites. people attach no words to me - not snob, not hipster, not dyke, not dancer, not theater, not drunk, not cokehead, not funny, not queer, not anything. i am defined by whose company i am in, and often i am alone. this has not been my life in five years or so, and it is strange to re-enter. i don't like it. i'd rather be anything than nothing. yet i am not charismatic.

what i imagine of myself and what i actually am are so far apart. i cannot remember the last time this was true.

i feel like i'm just starting out again. i'm just starting to mold myself to become what i envision. but i am impatient.

i want simple things for myself - i want to be fun and popular. (i've never been that. this is all too strange.) i want to have my cell phone ring. i want people to ask if i'm coming when they go wherever they go. i want to not have to make plans. i want to feel as beautiful as some people say i am. i want to be honest. i want to be short-winded. i want to write with strength. i want to have something to write about. i want to be interesting. maybe that's where the hard work lies. only i am responsible for how interesting i am or not, not the timeline of my life.

i want to be as knowing as i act. i want to have stories to tell. i want to get out of here. this little world gets stuffy sometimes; i need to leave. i want to throw caution to the wind, perform rituals in the kitchen at night, tattoo my body. really what i want is to fall in love. that would encompass all my ritual-performing, caution-ignoring impulses. i want to damn my mother for being so practical, even though i'm old enough to decide to be impractical.

it's not practicality: it's fear. it's constantly weighing and measuring and living my life that way. it's having a plan. it's not ever abandoning anything to go out and live. it's convincing myself that life is a circle of friends to waste hours with. and it's not.

it's wanting to get out of my life so badly and being scared that if i leave no one will be around when i get back.

it's all fear. and letting it rule my life. and realizing that fear rules so many people around me. and those whom it doesn't rule are the people i admire most. they are also the people who i know have worked the hardest, but in my impatience i don't see work. and i have so much to learn. i have so far to travel. the greatest lesson of my life, the one i will learn over and over, is patience. these are choices i have made, i am living them out, and i can change them.

i don't even know what i want next.