because it gives me time and quiet to think about things. After a while it would drive me crazy, but for the month, after my first year of grad school, it dulls the jaded edge of things, adds some clarity.
And some things I've been thinking about:
1. I think I'm girlier than I like to admit. I like pink and baking cookies and feeling pretty. Don't hold your breath--I think it's going to take me a minute to figure out how to disinter the princess I buried alive 20 years ago, how to make her a part of me in a way that I'm comfortable with--but maybe things will change some?
This is hard to admit. Because I care a lot about what people think. And on the one hand I've cultivated this intellectual dismissal of tradition and patriarchy and emotion to some extent, and on the other a careful pragmatism that doesn't allow for frivolity or openness of emotion. And that's the other wall I've put up: a measured stoicism, to distance and protect me from any roving betrayal or offense. But. But. I keep falling short of all of these expectations I have for myself and that I imagine everyone has for me. I feel like a fraud all the time and feel like it's better to be hated thank loved for what I'm not (I certainly did)?
And my realization today: I think I tend, naturally, toward the flighty and silly. But I have a life that's done much to stamp that out of me, or, and this I guess is the idea I want to explore, to mold that into something that I can feel really good about and respect. Again, I'm not sure how this is all going to go down, or if I'll change my actions, really, or just my motives, but. It's something.
2. I'm a hopeless, hopeless romantic. I feel like everyone knows this about me but me. But how hard is it to look at my life right now and let myself hope? That those dreams and expectations I've held so near could possibly possibly resemble, in any way, my actual life? And it might turn out that all of those hopes are dashed and crushed or drastically altered or whatever, but it might be dishonest to pretend I don't hold them, that they don't motivate all the things I do.
3. I want to do things. To help people. To travel. In big and important ways (or at least influential ways....or something). This is one of those deeply held desires that I'm not sure how to get done. Another that I've sort of buried.
So. There is my soul for you. Toodles.
Monday, May 10, 2010
I work outside
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 10:53 PM
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2 comments:
Wow, way to open your soul. I enjoyed reading more about you :) HOPE STILL! And as you are a hopeless romantic, have you read Jane Eyre???? (totally off the wall, but it's on my mind). I just finished it, and I love it.
Dress in pink! I can't wait, tee hee.
"Better to be hated, than loved, loved, loved for what you're not." Marina is embedded in your brain, my friend. :)
Hear, hear (or is it here, here?) on the hopeless romantic thing. Also on the wanting to travel and do big and important things. I don't know what to tell you except what I tell myself, which is this: Amanda, you have always gotten what you wanted, in some way, haven't you? Remember how even though you've ended up going to the grad school that was at the bottom of your list, it has already shaped you in ways that you love and are excited about? Or remember that other time when you didn't get what you wanted but then a few years later you realized that if you had gotten what you wanted, you probably would have gone through a much harder kind of pain? And remember when you realized that doing something you were afraid to do and pushing yourself and accomplishing even that dumb thing that was important to you made you feel like you could do anything, not on your own most of the time but with the help of people who love you and The One Who Loves You Most? And how that felt better than any Big Important Thing you've done so far? I know those feelings never lasted long, and that you forgot most of those realizations, but I'll keep trying to remind you of them.
It's not much, and it's even pretty cliche, but it's a start, I figure.
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