Nostalgia

It comes in waves. All of the sudden, I miss everyone. One day you’re 17 and graduating high school. The nerves and excitement are unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. You get sentimental and swear to your high school friends that you’ll keep in touch and be friends forever. Then you blink. You’re 21 and about to graduate college, and you swear that your nerves and emotions have never been so raw. You’re excited and scared, deeply emotional and impossibly nostalgic. You’ve got the whole world at your fingertips. Then you blink. You’re 23 and you don’t know where the time went. You swear you were just 17, 21. You remember being so vulnerable and raw and you actually find yourself missing it. Because now you feel numb and old and constantly nostalgic for the days when you felt like you could set the world on fire. I know your 20’s are supposed to be free and exciting. It’s a time to feel and see and do as much as you can. As a 20 something you’re in the prime of your life. Life is full of possibilities and people are curious as to what you have to offer the world. It won’t always be this way. In fact, right now is the youngest you’ll ever be again. So what happens when you’re 23 and all you can feel is longing and nostalgia? Why can’t I live in the moment and enjoy the right now instead of constantly looking back? One day I will look at this time in my life with longing and wish I could be 23 again. So why do I enjoy moments more once they’ve passed? Why can’t I enjoy the moment as it is happening? I need to learn to enjoy the here and now, because it won’t be here for long.

"We spend time building something up and then we don't enjoy it. We sit there terrified someone's gonna take it away from us."

So Long Sweet Summer

Well here it is. One week left before I go back to school. The finale. The last summer. I‘ve loved the song “So Long Sweet Summer” for a while, and I probably listen to it in increasing amounts each August, but this year feels different. This is not the end of summer break as much as it‘s the end of a season of my life. It really just hit me that this is the last summer break. Next year, the summer season will still come, yet everything will be different. I’ll be in school/clinicals all summer. Emily will be planning a wedding and getting married. Christine will be in NYC. This is it. This is the last summer of us. I know that from here on out, things won’t be the same. Things will change and there will be a new normal. I know it’s not a big deal, and summer is really only just a season. But I can’t help but feel like this is another chapter of my childhood closing. Every year since kindergarten, I can remember looking forward to summer break- a time to hang out with friends and do absolutely nothing and everything all at the same time. Now those friends are getting married or becoming doctors or moving to New York City. And I’m so excited to see where life takes all of us. And I have no doubt that we will stay friends forever. It just seems so strange to think of this next week as the finale of all summers. George Martin said “Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well”. So here’s to the summers full of sleepovers, swimming, going out, staying in, endless movies watched, laughter, tears, coffee, ice cream, vacations, adventures, photos, memories, and so much more. So long sweet summer. I can’t wait to see what the next season of life has to offer.

Summers past and present.

Olympics 2012...So much more than a game.

Why can’t every day be like the Olympics? I don’t mean that I want to watch sports all day every day, but really how awesome is it that for a few days the whole world comes together. It’s amazing to see everyone who has worked so hard get the chance to live out their dreams. And for a few days, we all feel a part of those dreams. We cheer at the successes and feel the loss of a failure. For a few days, the majority of the world is cheering for the same thing- a dream. I can’t describe the feeling I get from watching and thinking about such a big event; something that has the ability to cross languages, cultures, ethnicities, ages, genders, and religions and bring everyone together. Fox Sports said it best:

"It’s a time when the world can put politics aside and get together for sport and fair play; it’s a time for countries to trumpet their nationalism; it’s an idealistic break from that constant ticker of bad news scrolling past; it’s a meaningless dance party that serves only as a prelude to the medal count. The Olympics bring together people of the world in harmony and friendship, and aims to celebrate what is best about mankind. It is, we’ve all heard, a time of global strife. Iran and Israel are at loggerheads. Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t the stalwarts of stable Middle Eastern democracy we’d hoped. Both the American and world economies are still in a tailspin. Climate change threatens us all. So does terrorism. But the Olympics? They’re an escape from all that. The Olympics reflect the best of humanity. The games reflect our need as people to go higher, faster, stronger. The games reflect our desire to compete, our best impulses toward fair play, and humanity at our most courageous. The games show that humans can live together in peace and sport, if only for a couple of weeks.”

 I honestly couldn’t have said it better myself. When I’m watching the Olympics, I like to imagine people and families and friends all around the world in all different countries huddled around their TV’s, watching and cheering. And in these coming weeks, as we all sit and cheer for our favorites, we are all also cheering for achieved dreams, peace, and most of all, hope.

"Together" by Demi Lovato.
"If we could throw away the hate, and make love last another day. Don't give up just for today, life would be so simple. They may talk about us, but they will never stop us. We'll keep singin'. Do you remember at all? People walkin' hand in hand. Can we feel that love again? Can you imagine it all? If we could get along then we all could sing this song together."

Plans Shmans.

When you are younger, your perception of time and age is skewed. You think your babysitter, your student teacher, and basically anyone over the age of 15 is old. So you make plans and predictions based off of your skewed idea of time and aging, and sadly, it never quite works out how you planned. When I was younger, I never really pictured myself graduating high school. It’s not that I pictured myself flunking out or anything like that, I just never really mentally got past high school. Then as high school fast approached, I could never picture my life after college. I assumed, much like my mental block of graduating high school, that eventually with time I would be able to picture my life after college. However college came and went. I’m now a year and a half post-grad and I still can’t picture my life after college. High school has a definite end. 4 years and then you move on. College has the same definite end. But the real world? No definite next step, no definite end. And that scares the crap out of me. I think we base our predictions of our lives and our futures by what we grew up with. My parents got married when they were 20 years old, so I kind of assumed that I would finish school and move in with my husband. When you’re young and making plans you never account for the fact that you might be eternally single, or have to move back in with your parents, or move to a random city where you don’t know anybody to chase a dream that you’re not really sure about. It all becomes quite unclear and really nothing like you imagined. My big plan was to graduate, get a job that I loved, move out on my own, fall madly in love, get married, and start having children by the time I was 30. I’m currently 23 and have none of these things. Realistically, at the pace I’m going, I’m not really on track for my plan. Which I’m learning to accept. Plans change. Heck, if I stuck with my childhood plans, I would be living with my best friend Sarah and professional figure skating. Things have a way of working themselves out in due time. I get that, I really do. It’s just hard once you graduate and everyone goes on their own separate paths at their own separate pace. One of my friends is moving to New York to attend grad school at NYU. She’s getting an apartment and living in a big city and studying to get her masters. I can’t help but think how grown up that all sounds. And my other best friend just got engaged and is moving to Kentucky with her fiance. So it’s no wonder I can’t help but feel stuck or left behind. I’ve always moved at a slower pace than everyone else, so I shouldn’t be surprised. So who knows what the future might bring. Honestly, I’m excited to see where life takes me. But I can’t help but feel a little sad for the loss of my childhood plans.

To wrap it up, there’s a song I heard on a CD a friend made for me and the words really hit me while I was driving the other day. There’s a part that says: “Ever since you were a child, you had a picture in your dreams, of how you wanted things to turn out, of what you’d like your life to be. Now you’re living with an image, that you hardly recognize. You don’t have to gloss it over, like everything’s fine.” This is so freeing to me. I know that I can’t dwell on the past, but this just reminds me that it’s okay to feel sad and afraid and confused and stuck when things don’t turn out like you planned. You know what they say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”. Haha, God. Haha.


　

Alone

Oscar Wilde said “I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person”.
Ya know what I have done a lot of this summer? Be alone. Ya know what I’m not very good at? Being alone. It’s tricky because I think I’m mainly an introvert, so I really don’t like having people around all the time, but I like having the option of having people around. Does that make sense? I don’t feel as alone when I know that I can call up a friend and catch up or have someone come over. But it’s in the quiet of the middle of the night, or in the middle of the day when everyone is at work, that I start to feel the anxiety of being alone. I can distract myself by reading or watching tv, or even napping, but eventually the distractions fall away, and I find myself alone. And loud. No, I don’t start screaming or belting out Celine Dion when I’m alone (very often), but when I say loud, I mean in my head. The anxiety produces thoughts and they come faster than a speeding bullet and pile up in my head like dirty laundry. When I’m alone I begin to over think absolutely everything (more than I already do) which just increases anxiety. And as anyone with an anxiety disorder knows, anxiety has a tendency to build upon itself and soon you become anxious about being anxious. So this summer I’m working on being alone with myself and with my thoughts. When I‘m alone and the thoughts are coming, I turn on some music and I journal. So I might be working on the whole “how to be alone” part, but I still definitely haven’t mastered the “not being defined by another person” part. But that’s a subject for another day!

Scary stories for the growing girl...

I could not really have summed this up better myself, so please enjoy this post from HelloGiggles:

Scary Stories for 20-Somethings  
by Caitlin Abber

As a kid, I was a huge fan Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of The Dark? They totally scared the crap out of me, but at the same time, I just couldn’t get enough. I was convinced mummies lived in our attic, and there was definitely something hiding under my bed. When I was a teenager, I really appreciated a good campfire tale, specifically one about urban legends, like an old witch who lives in a haunted house or a cheerleader being stalked by a menacing prank caller. I liked the sense of anticipation I felt while listening to these stories, and knowing that a really terrifying or shocking thing was about to happen, but at least it wasn’t happening to me. I was always safe and secure, pretty much without a care in the world.
But then I graduated from college and become “an adult”, and that was when the scary stuff really began.
Here are 5 Scary Stories That Happen In Your Twenties:
1. You have 48 hours to come up with first, last, and security deposit before you can move into your new apartment. This is a thrilling mission of will and desire, featuring a shameful call to your parents, an assessment of what belongings you can sell on Craigslist and your first foray into handing a stranger a check for thousands of dollars. You may feel a sense of relief when it is over, but as someone who has moved ten thousand times, I can tell you – it doesn’t get any less terrifying.
2. Your boyfriend is in the shower when he receives a text from a girl you only sort of know about. The message confirms your suspicions that he is cheating on you. You read all the texts. Every last one of them. Now you must decide how to tell him that you know what he’s been up to, while admitting you snooped. What are the consequences of both of your actions? Who is really to blame? This is a scenario that will haunt you for years to come! Future relationships will be affected! You will have trust issues forever!
3. At the job interview of a lifetime, you start to notice that your nerves have gotten the best of you, and your armpits feel a little moist. The interview is going on for longer than you expected, as they want you to meet with several members of the company. You find a few minutes to run into the bathroom, and, upon inspection, notice that you have drenched pit stains down to your waist. Do you give up right there? Carry on as if everything is a-okay? Throw yourself on the ground and cry? Wait it out under the hand dryer? This sort of thing always happens to you! When will it end??
4. So you got all that money together and now it’s time to furnish your apartment! Welcome to the Swedish level of hell, IKEA. Enjoy assembling all that stuff you bought, as well as paying off the interest that will accrue on your credit card. Isn’t adulthood fun?
5. Obviously you didn’t get that job you sweated over. So now what? Hey, why not apply for unemployment, literally everyone is doing it! You receive a letter (yes, a real letter) that it takes 4-8 weeks for all the paper work to go through. You have $107.45 in your bank account. Good thing you already have that apartment thing taken care of! Oh wait, your boyfriend is cheating on you and you have to move out. Nightmares for days!
The silver lining is that none of these scary stories are permanent, like, no one is going to pull off the ribbon that keeps your head attached to your body. So, hey, at least there is that!