Tag Archives: musings

Do I even want to go back to school?

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I’m not sure.

I love Southern. I loved being a part of it. The campus is beautiful, and the Student Lounge (complete with Starbucks coffee) is my favorite place. I loved sitting at a table or on a couch in there, reading, doing homework, writing, or just relaxing for a few minutes before moving on. I loved walking around the campus and enjoyed its beauty during each season: warm and open in the summer, colorful and vibrant in the fall. (I haven’t seen it during the winter or spring yet, though I did see it at the end of winter.)

I loved having a major, and used that major as my sole purpose. “I’m an Elementary Education and English major,” I would proudly tell people. I had never even been sure exactly what that meant. Really, it was more of a challenge for me. Yes, I love kids, and I loved working with them during my field placement, but I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to be a teacher. The doubt just kept creeping in.

Not only that, but I also couldn’t seem to fit in. I have always had a hard time making and keeping friends. I like to think that I’m a great friend, that I am a fun person to be around. Still, I can’t seem to fit in. The closest I have ever gotten to fitting in was my Creative Writing class in my last semester of community college. Those people understood me, and we meshed perfectly together. I also fit in perfectly with Mike, and usually fit in with both of our families (though there are some times when I doubt even that). It’s a hard thing for me to admit, but there it is.

Girls who I thought liked me at Southern turned out to just be using me as a stepping stone. I fell so far in love with the idea of having a friend there that I tried to overlook the bullshit, but in the end it came down to the brutal realization that I was two months in and still hadn’t formed any kind of real friendships. I admitted to myself that I did not fit in with any of the other people in my program. Some of them were nice, but quite a few of them were smug and treated me like I was stupid. (I suspect this is because I don’t have a background in child education; I got my A.S. in Multimedia/Web Authoring, while they got their Associate’s in Early Childhood Education.) I tried not to let it bother me, but it did. I tried to just ignore it and do what I had to do, but it got awfully exhausting floating from one class to the next, passing by everyone else like a ghost.

In my English class, however, I fit in much better. There were a few English majors and a few other people pretty similar to my personality type. I had fun.

So last night, while talking to a friend I hadn’t seen since high school, I said that I thought I might start over again in the spring. I said that I thought I might just go for Creative Writing, like I had originally planned. As I lay in bed last night, I thought about it a little more. I would have to take ENG-112 once again. I would have to go through the whole registration process all over again. And will I still be dealing with the same health problems in spring? Will I have them under control through diagnosis and medication, or will they be worse, still undiagnosed?

If I were to not go back this spring, I would have to call my student loans bank and arrange to start paying off my loans. If I did go back, I wouldn’t have to pay them off until after I graduate.

What it all comes down to is, I’m not sure. Usually if I’m not sure about something, I just don’t do it (or buy it, or eat it). I don’t like to agonize over making the decision, and yet I do.

In the meantime, I’m really enjoying writing this book right now and I can see myself getting that B.A. in English for Creative Writing. I would enjoy it. It would be hard, but it wouldn’t be agonizing like Elementary Education was. (I didn’t want it bad enough to put up with the stress.)

Mike urges me to find out what’s wrong with me first, but of course my spontaneous ass wants to jump right back into it. I guess right now I just need to RELAX and focus on what is in front of me: appointments with the rheumatologist, writing a book, building websites, and figuring out how to afford presents for everyone this season.

Sometimes it's a good hurt

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One night when I was at Tyla’s, we got into the Nice Guy discussion.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d dated that perfect, cookie-cut guy.” You know, the one who always holds the door for you and is concerned about your feelings? The one who works three full-time jobs and wants to get his Master’s degree? He’s got goals, he’s got heart and I bet he’d spend all of his money on your flower of choice if he so much as breathed wrong. That guy.

I’ve been courted by many a Nice Guy. One was fourteen and already on his way to becoming a police officer or EMT. He was my best friend and was the first guy to call me beautiful. He asked me out several times and my dumb thirteen-year-old self turned him down. I still can’t explain why. He was funny, smart, driven and called me beautiful when my then-boyfriend managed to forget to tell me that he had a girlfriend in another state who was pregnant with his twins.

This Nice Guy stopped talking to me shortly after we started high school. To this day, he still refuses to speak to me, even though we’re buddies on several social networking sites.

I met another Nice Guy when I first started college. I had just started dating Mike, who was indecisive and made me want to put my head through a wall. (Yes, he still has trouble making up his mind, especially when we’re at a restaurant and the waitress asks us if we’d like to order. Heh.) He listened to my every word, let me cry and blubber on his shoulder when I talked about my miscarriage and the Brand-X Daddy who’d ditched me shortly after. He held doors for me, made me laugh and bought me lunch. Even when Mike unceremoniously dumped me — no babe, you’re never going to live that down :D — this Nice Guy continued to try to make me swoon.

And yet, all I talked about was Mike. MikeMikeMike. I’m sure Nice Guy was getting ready to hunt down Mike and put a bullet in his head so that he could have my full attention. When Mike and I got back together, Nice Guy still tried to court me, but I think he started to realize that I was in love with the bad guy guy I was inexplicably attracted to. Nice Guy continued to be my friend but as soon as he left the state to attend a highly-esteemed university, he cut off all contact with me.

A wise woman once said:

First, I am not a tease. Or a trollop. Befriending someone is not being a tease. Being open with someone is not being a tease. Letting someone get close to you is not being a tease. Telling someone that you care about them as your friend is not being a fucking tease.

Why do I have to be held accountable for someone else not being able to distinguish between friendship and romance?

Each time I encountered the Nice Guys of the world, I made it clear that I just wanted to be friends. (Well, minus one time. But that was during my I-just-got-ditched-after-losing-Brand-X’s-baby stage, so I think it’s excusable. Maybe. I’m sorry, Nice Guy. Really, I am. Especially since I tossed him aside like a used condom once Mike came into the picture. Yikes.) The Nice Guy is not only cookie-cut but also persistent. They don’t understand the word “no.” They can’t grasp the concept of friendship.

They also totally lack reckless abandon, dangerously good looks and the ability to crush your heart with the right choice of words. They don’t know how to break or refuse to make plans. They don’t oversleep or hesitate to pay the bill. They pick you up on time. Nice Guys deserve the world, but I’ve always had trouble giving it to them. Not when I’m in senseless love.

How do you explain a love that makes no sense? I can list a million reasons why I love Mike and still can’t explain why I am in love with this tattooed and sometimes pain-in-the-ass man and not some cookie-cut guy.

Still, Nice Guys need not give up. The first Nice Guy I mentioned is now an EMT and engaged to a beautiful woman who deserves him. Even though he won’t respond to my congratulations, I’m happy for him. I believe there is someone for everyone.

This post is secretly disguising another issue at heart. For the last year I’ve been asking myself how to tell when someone is The One. I finally came up with an answer the other night, and I hold onto it even when I have my doubts — AKA cold feet.

I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life feeling like a black sheep. Just when I think I belong somewhere, I discover I don’t. With Mike, I feel like I fit right in. It’s so easy to be with his family, as if I’d always been a part of them. He gets my jokes and can instantly tell when I’m upset. He also drives me utterly crazy sometimes but when he works third-shift for weeks and I have to look at photographs to remember what he looks like, I miss him. I miss every annoying moment, and if that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is. Each of the bad moments strengthens the good, and vice versa.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Incubus. They know how love rolls.

Why beat ourselves up?

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As I sit here at work in Day Five of my back feeling like it’s been run over by a large pancake pressing object, I wonder: why is it that we push ourselves to the very limit? Why do we force ourselves to go to work or class when we are hurt or sick, pushing our bodies until we can barely go anymore? (As I type this my left arm feels like it’s on fire, with pins and needles too!) I think we can all relate to this; I think we’ve all known some kind of severe physical pain, even as we continue to struggle through our days.

Our bodies need rest when we are hurt. Realistically, I should be laying in bed or propped up in my grandfather’s recliner so that my back can heal. Still, our society seems to have this mindset now that we have to keep going. Mike has said to me, when I told him my back hurt, that at least I could still function. I wonder if I should be functioning. I wonder if we all should stop being so harsh on ourselves. There have been days when I was terribly sick with whatever and still dragged my sorry ass into work. Would I have gotten better sooner if I had just stayed home and rested in the first place?

I know I’m not the only one. Sandy has, on several occasions, done the same. My father, whenever his back goes out, will usually force himself to keep on working. Last winter, my grandmother’s back went out and she still did her craft fairs, pushing herself to finish the various things she made to sell. Making money has become a beat so strong in our brains that we have become masochists to ourselves, starving our bodies of the rest we need and beating ourselves up to make that dollar. We are a working force, but we are far from being machines. What will it take for us to realize that sometimes we need that extra day of rest, no matter how much we lose off our paychecks?