Happy Weekend Lovelies!!

This week has been totally insane, Monday off really has thrown me for a loop. Finishing school work. Work. Friends and Family. Oh and Rumors. Someone is spreading rumors about my best friend and I being linked romantically. Why is that guys and girls can't hang out platonically? It's so ridiculous. I have to be honest, I've definitely gossiped in my day, so I guess it's my turn to be the blunt of the joke, if you give you gotta take it I suppose... Regardless, this weekend I am on my way to one of my favorite places on earth, Charlottesville, VA for good friends, gorgeous views, good food, and an excellent concert. Cannot wait! Oh and BY THE WAY, today marks 15 days till graduation!!! Anywho, hope you have a good weekend, I will see you all back around here on Monday!!

Inspired

I host quizzo every Wednesday night and last night I was looking at yahoo's home page to find current events for the last round of the night and I cam across the following, which was written by Marina Keegan who died last Saturday in a car accident on her way to Cape Cod with a friend. Marina was 22 and part of Yale's class of 2012. This writing is hauntingly inspiring and stopped me exactly where I sat for a good 5 minutes after reading it. All of the things this girl talks about I have experienced and luckily I am still alive and ready and well, I am still "so young" and as I graduate my Masters this June I feel like I completely understand Marina's thoughts and feelings towards graduation and her future. This girl lost her life at such a cornerstone in her life, where she could have been or done anything and it really made me think about just how lucky I am. I need to stop being so afraid to grow up and instead just go out and conquer it. I'm lucky I have this chance, some are certainly not as fortunate. Than you Marina for you beautiful words and inspiring me to take advantage of all the blessings I have been given. "We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place. It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats. Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts. This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now. But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves...” “if I’d...” “wish I’d...” Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us. But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay. We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement. When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck. For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that… What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have. In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe. We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that. We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world." a

Finding My Childhood

As a kid my parents gave me everything you could ever imagine. I always had beautiful clothes, amazing vacations, and was always given everything I ever wanted. That being said I was one of the most anxious children ever created and I tended to parent my parents and didn't really have the capacity to enjoy being a kid. This has been something I have struggled with as I've gotten older and had to face the fact that I missed out on being a care free kid. That being said, it was once suggested that I do something fun and silly to help me reclaim my childhood and this past weekend I decided to do just that. I headed over the Camden Aquarium, where I have never been, despite it being just an hour and a half from where I grew up. I had such a great time watching the fish, sharks, hippos, turtles, penguins, and sea lions. It was just a great day, and you know what? I felt like I claimed just the tinniest chunk of my childhood back.

Happy Memorial Day!!

Hope you are all able to enjoy the day with friends and family. Thank you to all of the men and women out there who served our country!!!

Entitled.

Each morning we roll over and make the conscious decision to remove ourselves from our safe private world and subject ourselves to the public. This outside world often seems is there to challenge our beliefs, ideals, and sense of self. Many days I think, "why on earth did I decide to get out of bed?". Dealing with the strangers, acquaintance, friends, and family alike can range in experience. Neutral, to positive, to taxing, and at times even devastating. As we wander through our day we interact with one another, often unaware of what our neighbors are going through. We assume that our experience is universal and therefore we are capable of conversing with our fellows. Today, as I walked home withal frozen yogurt, a man, in what I assume to be his late 60s, said to me, "you're gonna get fat". Little did this asshole know that I had been having negative self talk regarding this frozen yogurt since I purchased it and it took everything I had to eat it. Little did this man know that the fear of "getting fat" plagues me every single morning when I wake up. Little did this man know that I have to consciously fight the urge to restrict my caloric intake every day and have battled this for the past 10 years of my life. Little did this man know that $64,000 was hashed out in my behalf, to help me not die from an eating disorder, that told me every second of every waking day that I would "get fat" and that "getting fat" was the most demonic and self deprecating act that I could possibly imagine. Little did this man know that I am graduating in two weeks and my body image is in shambles and that I tend to struggle with relapse at this time of year. Little did this man know that his words were so powerful. A classmate of mine had a similar experience today where two other assholes thought it was ok to put her down in order to make themselves feel better, to give them something to laugh about, to hide their own insecurities, and their own pathetic desire to feel a sense of power. Why do we feel so entitled that we feel it appropriate to bombard others with our own thoughts, beliefs, and insults in order to prolong our own truths, or perhaps our own lack of truths? As I walked past this old man in his pink polo, smoking a cigarette, I wish I was able to snap back "you're gonna die of lung cancer" or "you old prick, mind your own business", but instead I gave him the death stare of outrage. Since this incident I have been thinking of come backs for this old man, but you know what, none of them would have effected him, none of them would have shattered his sense of entitlement and that is a sad fact. We must remember as we meander through our days that the person next to us deserves just as much kindness as we would hope they could provide us, because after all, they had that same vulnerable moment this morning where they left their safe haven and foolishly chose to trust the outside world.