10 Things I am Excited about for 1st Semester Senior Year

1.) Tackling my friends in giant hugs who I have not seen in a year. Friends, wear football pads.

2.) Living, talking, laughing, stressing with those friends. We’re seniors! How the heck did that happen?

3.) Being part of the BSC theatre department again! WHOOO!!! I am forgoing moving in my Bruno suite and just moving into the theatre. We all know that is where we theatre majors live anyway, occasionally venturing into the outside world to, you know, purchase props and paint.

4.) Having that first conversation with someone who I have never met, one of my absolute favorite things in this world.

5.) Walking across campus at 3am and then running into someone and talking with them for an hour when we both have an essay due the next day, which neither of us have half written. Procrastination, I am determined to break-up with you this year.

6.) BSC chapel visits. I know no building more calming.

7.) Being with my family for Thanksgiving this year!

8.) Writing some more “Tea Time” for the Hilltop News, BSC’s newspaper.

9.) My favorite library study carrel. Wait, I shouldn’t be excited about that.

10.) Late-night runs that finish by the pond-in-identity-crisis. Shhhh… It thinks it’s a lake.

Lake/pond, make like Lady Gaga and be who you are, baby!

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I’m back! And you are?

I return to BSC this Sunday after being away a year. Until a few weeks ago, I held a comfortable, almost blasé attitude about returning, picturing myself effortlessly slipping back into the community, school, campus of BSC. Then, at the beginning of August, I started to get nervous, really nervous. I’ve been gone a year. When I return, will anyone notice me? Will anyone care that I’m back or that I ever left? Will people even remember me? As a different person in an old place, will I fit back in? While I’ve been away, will everyone have bonded so tightly, closing the little space I once occupied, leaving no room for me? Are we not meant to return to the places we’ve left? But I was always meant to return. I left, every day knowing I would return.

Then, in blazing mid-August, I meet up with a friend from BSC, and it was so easy to talk, so easy to fall back into the give and take and natural pause of conversation, like that year had folded into itself, creating a nice storybook to share instead of an immense gap to yell across, and I wasn’t nervous anymore. Once again, I knew what had known before I left-- it was the same resolve that had given me the confidence to leave— that some things even the Atlantic cannot erode, that the people who I would care about leaving for a year will care about me returning from that year, that neither of us would stop caring about the other. Those are the people who I am returning to.

As far as being a different person after a year away, if I had stayed at BSC, I would still be a different person than who I was August 2010, because to go a year without changing is to go a year without living. In turn, I am expecting everyone else to have changed as well. As I wrote nearly a year ago on this same blog, “They will change. I will change. Life for both of us will continue. And that is okay. It diminishes nothing.”

But even after this year, after this grand adventure, after this trip to England around the sun and back to the States, I am still very much the same girl who left only now, hopefully, a little wiser with clearer eyes and a few good stories gathered along the way.

P.S. The woah-weird thing about studying abroad for my junior year and returning for my senior year is that the two classes above me that had always been a part of my BSC experience will both be gone, replaced by two classes of freshmen and sophomores that I do not even know the existence of. I’m now going to walk around campus knowing about five people.

P.S.S. Photo Booth is narcissistic.

USA: The Great Memory Foam Mattress

Before I left for England, I had never been outside the US. I had never owned a passport and was content to live the rest of my days and its travels cradled in the cozy boarders of Manifest Destiny.

But studying abroad for a year and traveling to various countries stretched my comfort zone to the point that being the US is uncomfortable; even England would now be uncomfortable. It is like lying wide-awake for hours on a memory foam mattress. Yes, the mattress is the single most comfortable object my body has ever drooled upon, but after an hour, I have never been more uncomfortable in my life. And if I do not get out of bed, then the mattress will soon catch fire from the friction of my restlessness, burning me in the combustion.

The US is too easy. There’s no challenge. I’m stuck, static, not growing. Of course, there are the trials of every day life. Those exist no matter where you go— the stress of the day-to-day, family, school, work, that haunting, incessant feeling of, Am I truly living? Even so, it’s too easy. Don't get me wrong; I do not want my life to suddenly crash into doomsday and havoc to come raining down. I want the challenge of a new country, a new culture, a new mindset, a new landscape. There is so much world out there, and I want to go there.

I am tired of seeing, hearing, reading of this world through travel blogs, magazines, newspapers, radio, films, and the worst, damn calendar pictures. I don’t want to be told or shown. I want to go there myself, take the pictures myself, write the articles myself, create my own damn calendar.

I stare at maps like a mother stares at her newborn baby, seeing nothing but hopes and dreams and possibilities through the eyes of purest wonder. I want to go there.

And there.

And there.

And there!

I want to know this world for all that it contains.

I want these maps to be my autobiography.

I want to grab a backpack and a plane ticket and GO!

If I was a superhero, I'd wear a map as my cap.

Studying Abroad = Missing Out?

I fiercely, lovingly, passionately encourage everyone to study abroad, but studying abroad is not for everyone. It is a decision that requires you to honestly ask yourself, “What do I want from my college experience?” For some people, what they want is four years at the same school with the same people. That is the choice most people make, and they have an incredible four years. Other people chose to take a year or a semester and study abroad. Whichever option you chose, trade-offs exist; you have to decide which trade-offs are worth it.

The trade-off people say they are most afraid to risk by studying abroad is “missing out” on their family, friends, and campus. Yes, you will miss out. There is no nice way to say it and no reason to sugarcoat it. You will not be here; life will go on without you and things will happen which you will not be a part of. You have to decide if you are willing to miss out on those events and those people in order to live other events with other people. And if you are truly living, then are you really missing out?

Please understand that studying abroad does not mean that you love your family, friends, or school less. You will return to those people and to those places, and do not think for a moment that you will be disconnected from them. Through skype, facebook, email, blogging, twitter, cell phones, and snail mail, you can virtually never leave. But you did not travel to stay in the same place. Stay in contact and foster those relationships from home, but remember to live where you are and to build relationships with the people surrounding you.

In the end, you might return a better person with more to contribute to your family, friends, and school, and through going away, you are now better able to love, appreciate, and help those people and those places you were so afraid to leave. For me, that was and continues to be the case.

Some trade-offs to consider:

Foster the friendships you already have. Make new friends.

Stay physically close to family. Skype with family.

Take that class you really want to take while you are at BSC. Take a class not offered at BSC.

Rise through the ranks of that club or organization at BSC. Remain in a lower position in that club or organization at BSC and join a new one abroad.

Remain in one country and one culture. Live in a different country and experience a different culture.

Stay at the same school. Experience a different school and a different educational system.

Stay on and near campus. Travel.

Back in the USA. Very messy hair and all.

Sunflowers

To Sarah, who told me, walking through sunflowers, “Always keep poetry in your life.”

Heaven, to me, is a field of endless Sunflowers.

Summer 2010 on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama under blazing sun, burnishing blue sky white, humidity sat fat on the earth, and I harvested sunflowers.

Walking between rows of green and gold, stalks heavy in my arms, biceps and shoulders burning, bees fat and pollen-plump droned past my face, in my ear, through reaching fingers, nail beds black, while sweat—soup of salt, dirt, and sunscreen— rolled thick down neck and chest, small of back and back of knee, unable to evaporate.

And all around me Sunflowers. Tall, bold, golden, beautiful, beautiful sunflowers.

I looked up into faces braver, bolder, more daring, than my own, into faces of a faith I have yet to see in a human being, faces following the sun, arching and leaning towards the light, always. I have searched for conviction, soul beating in hunger for years, and if I ever found what they see looking towards the sky, then I would hold to it tighter than to my final breath.

I reach up and cup a sunflower’s face in my hands, a face larger than my own, pulling it towards me, breathing deeply. And smack in the middle, where brown swirls to dew, I kiss it. Have you ever done that? Have you ever kissed the face of a sunflower?

Further down the row, in the center of a flower, sits a bee— still—, and I know without touching it that its body is dry, legs stiff, wings crisp, for bees, vibrant creatures, are never still. As I gently pluck the brittle body from the flower, I decide that if I could choose my final resting place, then I too would choose the face of a sunflower, and there encounter the world as I encounter death.

Then having encountered that grand adventure, the ones I leave behind, after harvesting my organs like I harvested these flowers, will take my body as I take this bee’s, and bury it where sunflowers will grow. Grow from my shoulders, my eye sockets, my womb, from between my ribs, curling roots between fingers, holding my hand until it too is root and stem and leaf and pollen and petal. Using my body to grow Bright. Bold. Beautiful. The way I will remember you.

But before I lay my body to yours, before I follow that bee, teach me to stand tall in this world. Teach me to stand bold and bright and golden beautiful. Teach me to live daringly, standing my ground and turning towards the light, always.

Then, knowing how to rise, teach me how to set.

To give myself completely.

And to walk between rows of green and gold in a field of endless Sunflowers.

How to Survive Commuting in 5 Steps

Commuting asphyxiates the soul with every second lost, trapped inside a plastic and metal machine on wheels that can never get there fast enough. Never do it. NEVER! But if you are fated for Satan's iron maiden...

5-Step Survival Guide to Commuting:

1. If you too commute, then God looked down upon you, and said, “I hate you,” so pray for your soul and that the hell does not extend into infinity after you get so red-blind from sitting in stand-still traffic that you gnaw off your own arm and bleed to death.

2. Misery loves company, so find another person God hates and endure the misery together. Make sure the person is entertaining or at least somewhat amusing. You are already in hell; don’t kindle your own inferno with someone boring, or worse, annoying. Ew.

3. NPR. No explanation necessary.

4. Audio books. I recommend Jim Dale's brilliant reading of the Harry Potter series for months’ worth of magical adventure. Always choose something plot-driven. Forget symbolism and theme. You want a story to carry you away from your suffering, not leave you brooding in it.

5. Airborne Toxic Event. Buy all songs. Listen to all songs. Experience your life changing. Wear helmet. Because they are about to break the %&*# out.

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Graduation and then...Whiteness

On May 19, 2012, I will graduate college, and the same image keeps playing before my eyes.

I am walking through a forest. Below me is a path of laid brick, direction straight, unwavering. Around me are trees as tall and daring as the sky, bark brown, leaves cool green. There are no footprints ahead. This path is mine. I have walked it my entire life, and never has it forked, always leading me forward, unequivocally on: preschool to elementary school to middle school to high school to college to…

…and here is where the laid brick ends, fragmenting into a million directions of a million colors.

A prism, and from it, my life. Streaming onwards, blindingly, merging into Whiteness.

Whiteness so white it glows like the rim of a cloud in June.

Whiteness without definition, without shape or shadow or past.

Whiteness without depth, without stillness.

Whiteness without sky or forest.

Whiteness without path.

It ends here, in every direction it ends, a great sheet unfurled from the sky, a sail without wind.

Shel Silverstein, I have found where the sidewalk ends and it is May 19, 2012—the day where the path laid for me by my parents runs out of brick and mortar, solid no more. 

Only Whiteness.

The Whiteness is terrifying. I want to run from it. Turn around and run back to the beginning. Run back to me curled inside my mother’s womb. Return to the place before thought, before decision, before past and future and consequence. Return to the place of being and warmth and closeness. Return to the place where I was carried and I was happy wherever that path lead.

But I can’t run back. I can’t turn around. Because I can’t stop staring at the Whiteness. The colors mesmerize me, playing on my face, ohhing my mouth, searching my eyes; my eyes searching it. I reach a hand into the Whiteness. It disappears. Lost. Atoms bursting into a million possibilities.

The Whiteness is my canvas to Jackson Pollock. It is my book’s first blank page. It is my sail to fill, to tear, to whether, to hoist, to wrap myself in. It is a shot of adrenaline, fluid, pure, addicting. It is the light pouring from the doors of my life thrown wide, radiating from every dream, every wish, every hope, every opportunity carefully placed on the other side.

After May 19, 2012, I have no idea what is going to happen. I have no idea where I am going to go. I only know that I am the only thing standing in my way and that despite this fear stopping my lungs and this freedom quickening my blood on its path from heart to lung to limb, urging me to go! go! go! GO!, I know that wherever I go, it is going to be one hell of an adventure.

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Homesickness

(While in England)

Homesickness hits without warning and without apology, walking across campus, waking up, chopping vegetables, turning a page, then BAM! It hits you in the place it knows will hurt the most, and in those moments, I am glad my heart was built inside a ribbed cage, packed in muscle, bound in tendon and ligament, stretched with skin. Otherwise, it would have burst out long ago. A small but fierce heart, all muscle and moxie, flopping across England and then cannonballing into the Atlantic to flail its way home to Tennessee. It wouldn’t have gotten halfway there before being splattered by a train or chomped by shark. Meanwhile, all that would be left of me would be a corpse, chest gaping, ribs jutting, veins and arteries sprouting— you know, your everyday Aztec sacrifice reproduction.

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