Writing is what was missing. This time, anyway.

I'm back! I'm back. And I am resisting deleting yet another blog and starting "fresh" (a notion that is highly overrated and if you ask me, completely non-genuine, as it is impossible to erase those things which have contributed to who we are, how we think, and what we do).

I just came across a lot of things I had written in the last several years--just general musings as I waited in O'Hare or sat awake on a school night with a jarring need to understand myself. The following is one example. I give it to you, and with it a promise that this blog will attempt to be nothing if not sincere, spontaneous, and an absolutely necessary outlet in preserving the sanity of yours truly.

A Moment of Clarity
13 October 2007

When I think about the person I was a mere three years ago as I timidly made the greatest transition of my life unto that point—that is, from high school to college—of course I am shocked and amazed by the ways I have grown. I have conquered things socially, physically, emotionally, and mentally which would have sent my high school self running in the opposite direction. But there is something about college that forces you to be your own rock—to know yourself wholly and unashamedly, and to triumph over even your deepest fears and insecurities. There is no hiding from yourself in these years; this has been perhaps a harder learning experience for me than for those friends who were more self-assured in their high school years.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that upon entering the final year of the supposed ‘best four years of my life’, my sarcastic and sometimes cynical point of view on my college experience is met with increasing disapproval. As general sentimentality heightens among those around me, my own personal frustrations become more logically and eloquently defined. I feel like my friends take it as a personal affront when I comment on the reality of what this experience, at least for me, has been. There is no arguing the fact that some of the single most precious memories of my twenty-one years have been spent in this city, on or around this campus, with these people. I wouldn’t try to deny that fact for a second, and if you think me ungrateful, I am not being clear.

That said, my time at Northwestern has served as a rude awakening in many ways. An awakening of the responsibility that comes with independence, of each and every single one of my complex but not unusual insecurities, of the difference between good friendship and bad, of the genuine possibility and feeling of loneliness. Upon applying to this school I deemed it a ‘perfect fit’ due to its theatre program, proximity to a big city, academic integrity, and so on. In hindsight I recognize the inherent irony in the fact that there will always be something about me that just doesn’t quick click with this place, and vice versa.

More than anything I’ve learned that there is nothing wrong with that. My youthful idealism has evolved into a much more genuine—yet not unromantic—understanding and appreciation of those things which are good. I realize nothing is perfect. Nothing. I realize that misery is real, and comes in sometimes intolerable droves, but eventually—inevitably—gives way to an ever clearer, heightened state of content.



Tonight, one of my best friends said in reference to the utter perfection that is college, ‘Everyone you love is within a one mile radius.’ It’s a beautiful sentiment, and I only wish that I could perceive my world here in the same way. There are people here I would die for. But there are also people, places, and things all over the world that are pulling me from here so fast that I feel like I’m already gone. 



The last thing I would ever want is for the people who have made this experience worthwhile to think that I take them for granted. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. But the romantic in me is far from convinced that this is the best life has in store for me. So maybe the idealist hasn’t gone away at all.