Teeth, Love, and Growing Up

I started writing this blog post when I was back home in Michigan, staring out at the choppy lake and finding a sense of relief that my emotions seemed to perfectly match my view. Tempestuous, unpredictable, blue. I was floating in an odd time of transition while visiting home, straggling between moving out of my sublet and moving into my new apartment, and finalizing my internship before starting my new position at the company as a full-time employee. Amidst the unknowns, I was grateful for the knowns, too. I had a place to stay and a job secured; it was everything I had hoped for as a postgraduate. And yet I also felt the heaviness of being home — the heaviness that it’s not quite home anymore — and I felt scared to flip the page to my next chapter in Boston.   Now, a few days later, I sit on a bench in Amory Park, feeling as though my inner and outer ecosystems are once again aligned. The sun shines down on my face as I slurp the remains of a too-expensive green smoothie. The br...

This time of year, my high school classmates engage in the long-standing tradition of posting five to ten beautiful photos of the outdoors on Instagram with the caption, "can't beat oregon summers." Sometimes it varies; maybe there's only one photograph, if it's beautiful enough, or maybe they write simply "oregon summer" and let you draw your own conclusions, but the siren song remains the same. That's what it is, really. It looks more like a hazing ritual, or perhaps a PR strategy, but they're calling out to college friends, luring them in, photo by tantalizing photo. "Come to this place," they sing. "Come to my enchanted fairy village of a hometown. Couldn't you love it? Couldn't you love me?" I have used these tactics myself, albeit in person, but it doesn't matter how quickly I recognize and point out Multnomah Falls while watching Twilight. My Boston friends will never know me in Oregon. They know I love tree...

11:00 am:  Wake up 11:01 am:  Realize that it’s 11:01 am 11:01 am:  Leap out of bed 11:02 am – 11:38 am: Do household chores: Feed dogs (Dusky and Ella) Let chickens out (Little Dotty, Red on the Head, Drumstick, Blackie, Grey Boy, Eugenia, Ghost, Velvet, Nyx, and two that don’t have names yet. These names were from consulting my sister, and I quote: “Idk if I missed any or said any that are dead. But that’s most of them”) Feed & water chickens Find the cats and put them inside for the day (Chloe and Belle) 11:43 am: Call your manager for the new job that starts in September and tell him your scheduling availability. He asks if you’ve downloaded the scheduling app, “When I Work”. You have. Spend some time after the call going through the names of your future coworkers on When I Work. Wonder if looking their names up on social media is a violation of privacy. 12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lay back in bed. Retake the MBTI test (result: ISFP). Scroll on social media and realize that ...

The past two weeks have been interesting, to say the least. I was supposed to take the LSAT remotely on August 11th. I had afforded myself the luxury of a full year of studying since the last time I took it, and I finally felt as ready as I thought I could be. I had broken through several studying plateaus over the past months, and my practice test scores had been consistently climbing. Unfortunately, the Law School Admissions Council had switched remote proctoring services since I took the exam last year, and this new one was, to put it mildly, a SHITSHOW . I sat in front of my laptop, camera on, for two hours waiting for my proctor. I called three different helplines a total of fourteen times and waited on hold for more than an hour. Finally, I filed a complaint with LSAC and gave up on the prospect of taking my test that day. Apparently, this happened to almost everyone who tried to take the exam remotely on that Friday. A few days later, we received notice that we'd be offered ...

     With the arrival of August came the rain that I wished for all through July; thunder rolled through the valley every afternoon, and we spent the first week of August under relentless rain. I saw spectacular lightning storms in my last few days in the Tetons – lightning flashed every few seconds in the dark, illuminating the trees outside my window as bright as if it were day.      The same relentless rain carried through my drive home, five days ago. As I packed up my car, said goodbye to my friends, and drove away from the park, I felt nothing but buoyant relief. Currently, I can only describe my summer in the Tetons as the Biggest Life Lesson of my twenty-one years. I don’t regret it; I learned a lot about myself and the world around me. However, removed from the places and hobbies that bring me joy, struggling to connect with the people around me, I felt unfulfilled and stagnant.      I am happy sometimes but mostly I am just living o...

 Dear EN502, 53 days ago, I was trying my best, and failing, to fall asleep in an airplane. In my unfathomable boredom, I lazily chanel surfed on the seat-TV and played games on my phone and silently cursed whoever was responsible for the narrow, soul-crushing design of the 737 cabin interior. I did all of this until I checked the flight-map and saw that our cramped cabin were flying over Santiago. My Dad saw it too and joked "All you've got to do is walk back!" I spent the rest of the flight looking out the window and turning that thought over and over in my mind: all you've got to do is walk back.  About a week into our time on on the Camino de Santiago, my fellow pilgrims and I were sitting outside of a closed cafe and this crazy guy with no teeth and a long, greasy pony-tail was trying to convince Decky to buy him a bus ticket to a brothel. Meanwhile, just on the other sider of the table, I was talking to a French pilgrim named Gill who, I have since come to under...

Despite (or maybe because of) having more freedom now (in theory) than at any other time in my life, I have been feeling suffocated. San Diego has a population of 1 million, yet I still panic whenever I see a car with my high school's logo as a bumper sticker. I don't want to see anyone I know, except for the limited few I'm still close friends with. (And even with them, there's a mutual understanding that we'd all prefer to live on parallel tracks, rarely intersecting, even though we text almost daily.) Seeing people from high school would make this time feel like what it is---being an aimless 20-something hiding out at home---instead of the chimera I've created in my head, where baby squirrels overtake the park for my entertainment alone, the Pacific Ocean sways and folds in on itself just to calm my nerves, and clouds stretch themselves into bizarre shapes because they've seen me beg for a distraction from the other side of the window at my desk. Of cours...