Monday, February 20, 2012

Stretched

Sometimes I feel so caught between me, myself, and I, especially the past and future versions of myself.

There are times when I feel like a baby, a wee toddler, wanting to climb back into the warm arms of home and my parents, content with my childhood friends and just knowing that we'll be together always. I've been feeling this more this past week than I have this semester so far.

And I don't know what causes it. Maybe because we all are going in so many directions and I can't do anything to stop it. Christine's going to England, Sandra's in California, Penn wants to go to Thailand, Hudson to China, who knows where Ivan and Jesse will end up, Monique is in New Zealand, and we're growing up. Even my friends at Rice now have such a limited time in my life that it seems so fleeting sometimes. Belicia, Julia, and Olivia will all probably go back to California, Mimi back to Taiwan, Cindy to New York, and already the seniors leaving this year have their own places to go. Everyone has their own place to go. And I'm still that child willing to leave home, but not to move home.

Then I see my future self, traveling around the world, maybe even living in Spain, working in Taiwan, even living in Houston. There are too little lifetimes to do what I want to do. And too little time to do even one lifetime as well as I want to. Trusting in God is right, and I beat myself for my anxious heart, but sometimes I do feel anxious. It's actually the opposite of Alex's word time, I'm no impatient, but rather the other extreme, wanting to draw out a few years into long stretched out eons. I get lonely in the midst of friends, because I'm too busy thinking about how they're eventually going to leave me. That is one thing, I tend to cling to people. When I have someone who I really love within my grasp, I selfishly do not want to let them go, and thus am the last one standing, because I'd stand for eternity if they wanted to as well, whether it was good or bad for either of us.

I am not worried or anxious about love, but rather can't imagine myself at all in it for a long time. I'm yet a kid pretending to be a girl who is trying to be a woman. And then what? What if it takes me forty years to break down the very walls of memories and guarding that I've realized I've begun to construct?

The fact that I am thinking and actually blogging (yeah..i know) is also probably a result of my first phone interview about an hour ago. It was good, and hopefully I have a good chance, but boy, my heart was racing and my words flying at a nervous rate they haven't traveled at in ages. Feels like I ran a race and then just stopped to a standstill, my body sedentary and my pulse zooming ahead towards the finish line. And thinking of internships made me think of the future, and then thinking of being back at home in Georgia, and then feeling torn between the past and present all over again.

I've always felt this way growing up, and am just realizing that now. In the house, the older sister was my primary role, but there were ample times when I felt younger than Ting. In school, I was always younger, but sometimes felt years older in what I pondered while at the same time operating a much younger level of social awkwardness. Doing college apps, you'd think that you'd ruminate the most on what they would receive from you, what you will contribute: future tense. And yet, it was a period when I dwelled in my soaked album of memories over and over again.

Past and present. Future and past. Present and Future. Always a mix of them, and never just the present.
Gah..being torn in so many time vectors (think right hand rule) makes my being feel so stretched.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I miss you. All of you. Even those of you who are here with me currently. Because I don't want to let you go.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Cycles

Every time I think I'm good with it. I'm done. It's completely gone. I get slapped upside the head all over again.