learn

apparently when I established this goal I forgot to include spanish. I not figuratively, but literally failed my spanish midterm today… I can’t remember the last time I saw an F on anything school related.

I cried… I felt like the hugest overachiever. I walked across campus (luckily in my slightly oversized sunglasses) to meet chantel and shuko for lunch at Ruta’s and the whole way there, I cried. I’m rediculous, but I can’t help it.

I love learning new things about myself. Especially my flaws, because it gives me a chance to reflect and see how best to fix them. I think that I am inherently lazy. I constantly struggle with myself to do the things that are, ironically, most important to me. To eat healthy, exercise, study, read my text books, put full effort into my job… all things I desire to do, and do well, yet somehow I always make up excuses, or consciously fall short when it comes to actually doing them. I say I want to become fluent in spanish… yet I’m in my second semester of college spanish and have yet to make a flashcard. I have a quiz tomorrow on a chapter I haven’t looked at and I plan on fudging the homework as soon as I’m done writing this. I haven’t read a single play in my Shakespeare class, and I really LIKE Shakespeare. My excuse for that one is that I read too slow to keep up with all my classes, however, though the reading slow part is true, I’m not retarded, I could keep up if I wanted to. Also, since this contest ended, I’ve totally forgone my diet, and keep saying things like “I’m just eating whatever I want for a day/week/till monday” after this realization tonight, I hope that tomorrow I’ll eat better, and exercise longer. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, maybe everyone has problems doing all of these things, but honestly, these are my hopes and dreams, I don’t want to waste my time until it’s too late to fulfill them…

Since reading Rumi’s poetry I’ve developed a new, budding affection for poetry, I see it and think it wherever I go… but so far I’ve been too afraid (for lack of a better word… though perhaps that’s just an excuse to try and say that afraid isn’t the right word to describe it… when in reality it’s exactly the right word…) to write it down. I’m ok with that for now. I have poetry that I wrote in jr. high and even a bit from high school, and I look at it and all I can think is “how shallow of me,” but of course, I’d like to think I’ve gained depth since then… Anyways, this wasn’t supposed to be about me and my bouts of poetic creativity, it was supposed to be about the beauty of poetry in general, and how I want to know more of it. The only book I have is a compelation of Robert Frost, whom I’ve always loved, and The Essential Rumi, which is yet to be in my posession as it is on it’s way from amazon.com along with my preordered copy of Peter Pan… I love Disney, I’m determined to make my future children love Disney just as much as I do.

Wow… what a jumble of thoughts.

Suddenly I find that my life is traveling at a pace that far surpasses any speed I’ve ever experienced before. So many changes are happening, since November my relationship status has changed dramatically from a stable long-term committment to someone else, to journey on the path to a stable long-term committment to God and myself. I feel like I’ve skipped four years of the dating process. The way it works in my mind is the way it worked when I was 17, where one date=full blown relationship and a kiss is just a kiss in the sense that it doesn’t lead to something more. For the first time I find myself thinking about sex without having a familiar face to dream it up with. Before Scott I had no interest in the male anatomy from the waist down, and with him, I was only concerned with his rather than with the entirety of the male population. I’m in uncharted waters on so many levels. I’ve forced myself to become detached for fear of hurt and loss. Above all though, I’ve disjointed myself emotionally for fear that I will settle. For almost four years I had an internal itch telling myself that I was settling and I don’t want to get caught up in the moment and make a committment I can’t keep. I don’t want to be with just a warm body, no matter how good it feels to brush the soft flesh of a man and feel his wet lips on my skin. I’ve never been one of emotional detachment, I’m finding I play the part well, but inside I feel empty. I’ve dated a few and tossed them aside like dirty laundry, and I’m currently dating a few more… my plan is to throw them out when they get too close to home, in my mind, it lasts no more than three dates.
For the first time, too, I’m of a desireable nature. In high school I was about 15 maybe 20 pounds overweight, I had abnormally large breasts that made me a disproportionate freak show, receiving all the wrong attention from all the wrong boys, but never attention that made me feel pretty or of worth. One breast reduction and two years of weight loss later, and I’m suddenly in a physical state where I look and feel confident. Whether I am or not… I feel beautiful. I’ve never felt beautiful, Scott never really made me feel beautiful either. I catch the eyes and attention of men who wouldn’t have looked at me four years ago, I feel myself caving under the pressure of their glances, urging me to lure them with a sway of my hips or a sensual (yet meaningless) glance.
The man I ultimately seek is a man of God who will love me internally first, and externally second. An attentive father and husband. A man who reciprocates inconvenient, all consuming, can’t get enough of you love. Yet the men I find will at best make mediocre family men and have no interest in seeking eternity with Him, yet I kiss them, and invest a thin layer of myself and my time, wondering if they can temporarily sustain me. But how, if I throw my time at them like it has no value, am I to find this man I picture as the man hand-crafted and uniquely designed just for me by the One whose love for me is beyond my capacity to understand?
I have date number 1 with guy number 4 tomorrow. I said earlier a max of 3 dates… so far no one has gotten me past the first.
Amusingly enough, this is only the beginning of the changes taking place in my life. I’ve started a new major (from poly sci to english) in school, I’ve started a new job (tripling my meager college income), and I’m leaving the nest come February 1st (living with sorority sisters of which I’m not one… wonder how that’s going to pan out). All of these changes are so positive, but at the same time are so ambiguous in their possibilities depending on whether or not I take myself down the path of self-destruction. I’ve previously considered myself too level-headed and stable for such possibilities, I hope that in my current state that I can hold true to my own observations and standards.