A change of scenery will do us good.

I started this blog just over two years ago – about the time I began looking for something I would never find here.  In this blog or in this place.  Of course, it wasn’t until now that I realized I would never find it here.  In this blog or in this place.

That’s not to say that the looking was in vain.  In this blog or in this place.  It’s not that I haven’t found a lot in the years I’ve looked, in the words I’ve typed, and in the things I’ve seen.  I’ve stumbled on many nuggets of truth, some pretty prose, and the grand finale all-important epic realization of what I am not.

I am not Albion.  And since sophomore year, I haven’t been.

and that is what I owe Albion for – I couldn’t have done it without you, dear Albion.  I gave a tour the other day and told a family I came here because I fit – because I looked around and felt like the people were like me.   When I came here, bright-eyed, mild, and fresh from a relationship I was sure was going to define the rest of my life, I did fit.  And had I gone anywhere else – anywhere else that burns with the kind of fire (and frankly, insanity) I now find in myself, I would have stayed that girl I was.  Or thought I was.  The girl I was when I could swallow down the parts of myself that make me burn with drive and intensity.  The parts that make me aggressive, feisty, and brutally honest.  The parts that make me as many enemies and friends.  The parts of me that are just as much a part of me as the pearls and the brownies.

In honor of this transition – this new phase of life and this change of scenery – I have created a new blog that fits better the woman I have become.  Or rather, as they say about Kappa Delta, the woman I have always been.

You’ll find it – and me – here now.  And assuming you like the woman I’ve always been, you should stop by sometime.   If you don’t, that’s alright too – thanks for what you gave me while we traveled this road together, and I wish you all the best.

Well, I guess that’s it; let’s get on with it.  We are alive, so let us go about our business.

http://littlegirllearningtofly.wordpress.com/

Love.Rachel

Body of Lies, Moments of Truth

It’s called Body of Lies, he said.  I’ve never heard of it, but our choice was that or High School Musical, so it wasn’t difficult to make.  We met like we always do, walking together inside, saying hello to the faces behind the counter we know longer recognize.  When did they get so old? He asked.  When did we? The catch up was minimal, the special effects budget was high; we were underimpressed to say the least.  But now that we’re getting older, we figured we should probably do the thing that people our age do – move to the bar.  One mocked me for ordering a glass of white wine at a pub, while the other debated ordering a pina colada just to get the funny looks.  (they’re nothing if not comics, both of them). I ignored the looks directed at me, and they did the same.  We were all used to it.  This is a game we’ve played many times before.

We meet between semesters, the same way we used to when were were drum majors and homecoming kings and smokers.  We catch up on the important details – the love, the sex, the secrets, the self-discovery.  And the dirty jokes.

Would you call this a double date or a threesome? one asked.  That question has remained unanswered for 5 years, and it seems almost criminal to answer it now. Call it whatever you want honey, but the words can’t even begin to describe.

We drank and laughed and returned to our favorite conversation – secrets.  We make a good confessional, and as they took turns pulling the skeletons from their closets, I listened and let them make their peace with one and other.  It made me wonder if this is what men look like when they’re together on their own.  Fumbling for words and making jokes but poking away at free flowing emotions, or if I am yet again a catalyst for feelings unspoken.  Then it was my turn.  Forgive me father for I have sinned.  Resentment.  Idolitry. Boredom.  Not quite what it used to be, they agreed, but we are all growing up.

This is totally off topic, he interjected, but why the hell was it called Body of Lies? We had no idea.

He gave up cigarettes – very impressive – but I still came home smelling like smoke.  And secrets.  They told me the names they’ll remember when they’re old, and I told them the ones I won’t.  We could say anything, which is a feeling wonderful and forgotten to me as of late, and we knew it would stay between the three of us.  Sure, they had their “moment” that changed it all that they refuse to share (mostly because it makes great teasing material), and I won’t give them a number of knotches on my lipstick case, but everything else is open season.  In a room full of people there are private moments of truth, somehow floating between a football charmer, an irreverent commedian, a sweet little girl with bright eyes.  A settling soul, a Seattle-bound body, and a feisty little girl looking to answer to no one but herself.  A double date, or a threesome.  Call it whatever you want honey, but the words can even begin to describe.

“The only thing worse than growing up is never quite learning how.”

Yours.Rachel

Every new Beginning comes from some other Beginning’s End

Last January, after a bittersweet Christmas season, I did what every self-respecting “NFJ” (the I/E conflict rages on, but is unimportant in this instance) would do – I tried to create an umbrella of emotion and proper nouns under which to include all the experiences I’d had in the last year.  I struggled, grabbing and missing and stretching and squeezing until finally I found something – Love.  I decided 2007 was the year of love.  I acknowledged its many forms – some quietly beautiful, others quietly malignant, and still others aflame with passion.

Tis the season again.  The season to jump through introspective hoops, looking for something that unifies the experiences of the last 12 months.  This year, I settled on the theme of Endings.

Sounds kind of like a cop out, doesn’t it.  Hardly a proper noun until I capitalized it, and seemingly obvious as the calendar year draws to a close.

48 hours.  “What changed in 48 hours?”  he asked me in the dark wee hours of the morning.  2 days. 2 years. It wasn’t until last night that I could answer.

In 2007, we were in the thick of it.  Relationships began, strengthened, and started to fall apart.  I embarked on a period of travel – 8 months abroad and some awkward minutes inbetween.   The sophomore slump came on strong but fooled all of us when it continued into the first semester of senior year.    2007 was saturated, so full of life changing experiences that they spilled over to the first few months of 2008.   But by February, things began to unwind.

Daughter of a funeral-home family, I can’t help but notice empirically the numbers of deaths I’ve seen firsthand this year.  Grandma Buse.  Dylan.  Doris. Greg.  Two of a close friend’s grandparents.  Evie.  Young and old, merciful and unexpected, the end of their years drew a close not only to their own stories but pieces of ours.  I watched them begin in February and continue on throughout the year up to the bitter end.

Relationships ended.  Some were intentionally destroyed with the lucky ones being rebuilt, brick by brick.  Others have simply faded into the miles of inevitable truth that separates those involved.  We’ve all realized what we need, and what we don’t.  We adjusted accordingly.

The days of wine and roses ended.  America is in a recession (to put it mildly) and the days when Detroit automakers took bonuses and good benefits home to their middle class families are fading fast.

And as much as I hate to say it, College is ending.  This place that we know, that we know how to live in, that we know how to thrive in, this place that we call our home will not be ours for much longer.

But our depression is ending.  The economy may be reeling, but we are not. anymore.  Each of us letting go of our demons. Slowly. Carefully. Sometimes Painfully, sometimes Gracefully.  Each of us is an entirely different person than we were, and we are burring the lost souls we were in the soil of the past, fertilizing the parts of ourselves that now grow stronger by the day.

Tonight’s the night the world begins again.  A Christmas song of sorts that sounds a lot like all the other songs by that artist which sound a lot like a lot of other artists.  It played (blared) in the airport at 4:30 in the morning almost two years ago, and it came on the the radio last night.  I laughed out loud, and realized it was true.  This year has brought the end for many things.  Beginnings that ended here, with champagne, tears, and the soft glow of candles.  And new beginnings are springing up from where the others left off.

This New Year’s Eve, let’s toast to endings.  And Beginnings.

“So take these words, and sing out loud.  Cuz everyone is forgiven now.  Cuz tonight’s the night the world begins again.”

yours.Rachel

this one’s for me, not you (any of you). And a rather embarassing confession…

… but you can come in anyway.  Close the door (you know I have a thing about that) and stay a while.  Pull up a pillow or a piece of soft white blanket stained with a Cabernet of some persuasion, close your eyes for a minute and breathe it in.

1:27am. December 22.  Candles flickering softly and Sufjan whispering in the background.  This, my new nighttime ritual, smacks of aspiring introspection – my favorite poetic synonym for insomnia.  There’s not much left for me here in the suburbs, and with the blissful complacency and prosperity of the region gone by the hands of free-market capitalism, the only safe place left is this one.  With the walls painted seven shades of sherbet, and countless artifacts from the rose-colored days of old.

Every night, I give myself a task.  To revisit all the scrapbooks from my time at Albion.  To re-read the entries in my blog.  To re-read the words I wrote about what I saw and read and reflect on it further.  To read other peoples’ words to glean further perspective about the truth of what it is that’s happened these last few years.

That last one was tonight’s task.  But I got stuck on the first blog in my list of bookmarked wordpresses.  And it wasn’t the blog itself that got me, but the owner of some of its comments.  A name/presence/another compartmentalized life I’ve know about for some time, but today it occurred to me to follow the path to her thoughts.  I spent quite some time reading through the life of someone I’ve never met.  At times, I felt like a stalker or an intruder, barging in on a world where I didn’t belong, but then I remembered the first rule of internet journaling.  They are public. If you don’t want it seen, write it in the book you keep under your mattress.

I remembered the time I was found surprisingly, and in a similar circumstance.  An old flame of a one time lover commented on a post I made, referencing what I found to be a rather amusing nickname she had coined for me in a moment of weakness.   In the end, she and I exchanged warm sentiments and found common ground I had never expected.  Fear not my stone-faced one, I have no intention of making the same connection, in any public capacity.  I am, after all, in my selfish phase of life, so I will merely reap what I can from this in the privacy of my own oasis.

But I digress…

You wanted to read about me stalking.  I read and read and read, and as I re-read, things became clearer.  I cross referenced your words, and my notes about timelines, and we all began to fit together like sections of the same newspaper.  Why hello Section D, I’m Section B.  Nice to meet you.  I wondered what all the fuss was about back there.  Once I figured out how we all fit together, I began to listen.  You, little lady, say you’re pretty good at that, and I would believe it.  I read the way you’d changed in a year, and I read in between the lines.  squeezed myself between your lines, and squeezed you between mine.

I came to two conclusions.  First, that I have been given a great gift.  Not only did God bless me with the internet (so I can learn all about your life all the way from little old Detroit) but with an angel Clarence of sorts.  I got to see what I expect my life would have looked like if I were in your place.  Physically, and otherwise.  Your frustrations and your bliss, your unrivaled communication skills, and your inconsistent perfection.  Your words sound eerily like mine, and I suspect we have at least one pronoun in common. Most of us don’t get a chance to see the “what if”, and I consider myself lucky (to have seen it, and frankly, to have the “what if” that I got).  I’d always suspected that even if we did yoga, made breakfast and listened to Teeth in the Grass, and lay beneath shooting stars every night, it wouldn’t look quite the way I paint it in my dreams.  I’m glad I’m not alone, I guess, and I’m happy I get to leave those shortcomings at the entrance to the security line with my half-drunk bottle of water and other assorted liquids over 100ml.

Conclusion #2?  I’ve done all I can to make a story out of the fragments I’ve been collecting in my life over the last 2 years, but what interests me now is the lives of others.  I know where you fit in my life.  (most/all of you.)  But where do I fit in yours?  Here I am, reading your friends accounts of you, putting them together with what I know and have believe, trying to figure out what your life means.  Who are you my friend, and what have these past 2 years meant to you?  I know what you meant to me now, but I wonder what I meant to you.

You see, I’m getting better about putting the pieces in my own life together.  I’m beginning to assemble prose in my head, and I’m starting to craft metaphors that mean something, not just ones that grasp the air desperately looking.  I’m beginning to figure out where everything and everyone in my life these last two years fits, and how to move forward given the pieces I have, had, and hope to hold in the future.

But that’s as far as I can get on my own.  My mother has taken to trying to convince me that I may be an extrovert, and I’m beginning to believe she’s right.  At the very least, I’m incredibly curious.

I know of no more encouraging fact that the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.  -Henry David Thoreau

yours.Rachel

Like It Means Something

That song. Do you have that song “You can’t go home again?” She asked me with the crystal wine glass in her hand. She was drawing eyes and fire and a flower like the one on a broken wrist, and across it she had scribbled the word “POWER”. We were chewing on the words I spit out with the sounds of Our Endless Numbered Days soundtracking the moment (except without your song because it wasn’t my time), and we switched to a little DJ Shadow. “Do you want Blood on the Motorway with it?” I asked. Of course you do.

The four of us sat there, letting it wash over us like those lights bathed me in the tunnel over a year ago. “You were in the back seat with the two boys in the front… I listen when you speak” she said with a smile. What conversation there was had stopped until she with the locks that hang far down her chest mentioned the sampling of Simon and Garfunkle in the midst of this song. We smiled, breathed a little deeper. When it ended, we said somehing I don’t remember now, and I changed back to the song I’d been avoiding before.

I was trying to explain this to someone else over road-trip fettuccine the other night. I’ve gotten too old for a lot of things in these endless numbered days, and one of them seems to be this insatiabile ability to talk about mundane things with romantic excitement, and at my ripe old age of (almost) 21, I’ve all but given up on roses.  Still, I said as I took my glance briefly from the odometer, Its like a tiny blue flame – nothing you would ever rally the campus around on homecoming weekend, but something you find with a little digging, something glowing white-hot (that’s what my mother used to say about me when I was little – I was full of white-hot intensity. I’m sure at the age of 4 I had a less than complete appreciation of this concept.) It makes me cry, I laughed, like that nonchalant answer meant something meant more than flowers and babies and God’s love I (and all of that). I had this urge to flip the hour glass, my mother’s unknowingly epic gift to 501 Michigan Avenue, as I found it and pressed play.

One reached for her bag – notebooks it seemed – and the other two lay on the floor cuddling with their heads on a pink fleece pillow; I polished my silver. Like it meant something. I’d intended to take it from it from its robin’s egg blue pouch for quite some time, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until this moment where I felt the insatiable need. It was neurotic and I was well aware – I’ve know enough photographers to know when I am being noticed, but with the same sentiment I’ve begun to ignore it. The smelly pink liquid went on smoothly and took off more dirt than I could have imagined. I marveled to one with curls how black with tarnish the polishing cloth had become and she just laughed. So did I. “Oh the metaphor” she remarked, and I refused to touch it with a ten foot pole. Ask me to get back to that in ten years, I said, and I’ll have something brilliant for you.

It faded to a song of another, and each of us was in our own Sodom, South Georgia. Sleeping like buckets of snow or awake like a tree full of bees, or maybe both at once while white tongues sing God is Good. I noticed a heavier beat, rhythmic knocking, and I had the worldly thought to answer the door. Her eyes were tired but bright and young, and in waltzed visitors fresh for our entertaining. So I played the hand I know best – I smiled. We chatted about a lot of things while she held her wineglass and newly chewed monologues as a shield for them, while sheer stature served as adequate for the other. I think we’re going to make it to the weekend I said, probably laughing louder than was necessary to make my point.

And here I am. She’s asleep, they all are.  And I am alone.  There’s something about Black Sheep, and I’m looking at the clock counting the hours until tour guide training later in the morning. Like it means something.

Ask me about it in ten years.

“The only thing worse than growing up is never quite learning how.” (From a sticky-note I found unexpectedly while unpacking)

yours.Rachel

Forkful by Forkful

My newly-named GPS Juliette directed me to the park where I met her – beautiful and wearing orange.  A lot has changed in the six months since I’ve last seen her – I’ve played blue when I should have played red and she’s played her share of unexpected cards too – but after speaking to her about commutes wet with more than the rain I knew we’d meet with me in a dress and her in orange.

The waitress had to come back three times before we were ready to order.  I apologized – “we’re catching up: it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.”  When lunch came we ignored ettiquite and dug in – we were both famished.   We remarked about the weather, wondering together if it’s ever rained this much around here.  Neither of us – well, none of us actually – are quite sure what to make of it, but I suppose in situations like these there’s nothing to be done but laugh, grab an umbrella, and wait it out.

My mother told me the other day that leaving a good tip is a sign of a viable marriage prospect, and she left a great one – our soulmate theory once again confirmed.  We headed to the car as large drops began to fall, sitting and listening to a song that meant the world, waiting together for the short but violent storm to end.  We met then with another, newly pedicured and tattooed.  She kept making remarks and laughing at herself – “I’ve changed a lot” she said as we nodded silent and introspective dittos.

The lady in orange left, and she the newly painted and I were left.  The “P” in her took us to Albion, and we socwered the place for sisters or something we knew.

We found three – They were bright as the setting sun and we were weathered as the pavement that had seen an unseasonable amount of rain.  She and I could watch them in the rear-view mirror of her suburban SUV, but as we drove the back-roads of the Albion “suburbs” we declined commenting on the irony.

We ate dinner at La Casa, a surprisingly delicious Mexican restaurant and one of the few multi-cultural treasures that Albion can boast.  (The loss of New China was unexpected and devastating.)  The music was peppy and as vibrant as shades on the walls.  Her recommendation of the famed vegetarian quesidillas was an excellent one, but one a little too large to take in one sitting.  We asked for boxes.

She looked over at me, moving my fork between my plate and a white styrofoam container, rearranging small piles of rice from one to the other – She laughed as I spilled a few spicy grains each time.  “I’m glad I’m not the only one doing this bit by bit with my fork.”  I looked her; for a moment I was completely unable to comprehend that any other way to sort through these leftovers might exist.

She held a fork in her hand as well, but one across from us had thought to pick up the plate, dumping everything leftover with one quick and efficient swipe of the fork.  I furrowed my brow and thought for a moment – and we laughed together through it.

I’m with you one hundred percent. I said as I returned to my slow and somewhat messy process.  Bit by bit – forkful by forkful.

I think someone made a joke while a few others laughed, but we didn’t seem to notice – we just kept on going until we were done.

“You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

yours.Rachel

Ta ta for now!

Just so you don’t think I fell off the Earth… Tomorrow morning my laptop (which will soon be packed inside the suitcase I’m shipping home) will be gone, and in 4 days I will be in Madrid.

Alex, Keshia, and I will be meeting in Madrid (that’s be a pretty phrase for so long I can hardly believe it will be reality, and soon), and then traveling to Granada (where we’ll meet up with Sascha who I met here in Rome) and Sevilla, and then finally to Marrakesh.

I will return to the US on the evening of the 22nd, at which point I will get my hair done (I have an appointment scheduled for the afternoon of the 23rd – shocking I know) and ROCK my face off at the DEMF. Then hopefully I will run away to the woods for a couple days – get some closure or something like that – and then begin my grown-up life on June 2nd.

ch-ch-ch-changes…

love love love

yours.Rachel

“Dali would be proud”

…she said as she sat making flashcards for her Baroque art class final. Not at her diligence, but at the scene surrounding us. We’d escaped the school and hoped to study in this cafe, just around the cobble-stone corner from the school that will be ours for only 7 more days. Immediately upon entering we were hit with a wave of sound, decibels at the level of a live show but in the belly of an empty bar. She sat facing the door to the patio for fear the television screen would distract her, and I settled into a chair with a panoramic view of the empty room. Dark wood chairs sat unused and the walls, flaking white plaster, were interrupted only by shelves filled with wine bottles. The only light in the whole place was what streamed into our table through the patio door and the colored glow emanating from the television – a VH1 countdown with the sound on mute. It caught my attention, and I found myself laughing out loud at the picture I saw. We were being serenaded by a 1970s rock-star, jacket glittering with red sequins and a bold gold cross hanging just a few inches below his luscious afro. Beside him a bunny-like blonde in a shiny white one-piece swimsuit leotard (complete with pseudo-oxford collar and wrist-cuffs) smiled and danced. But instead of the Hard Rock Cafe jam one might have expected in such a situation, the table was vibrating with the bass from an uber-dark and eerie indie album (think Frou Frou in emotional quota, plus an extra dollop of depressing).

The coffee we ordered finally came, my caffelatte in a Seagram’s logo-cup and her cold coffee in a martini glass. Our glittering lip-syncher faded to a video flashing phrases beginning with the words “Right Now.” (Van Halen, for you VH1 buffs) “Right now people are having unprotected sex.” I engaged her in conversation, trying not to fixate. “Right now God is killing moms and dogs because he has to.” Outside Trastevere buzzed by on motos and on foot. “Right now is just space between Ice Ages.” Students meandered past, throwing their arms up in frustration about finals, and tourists peered in the cafe curiously, wondering whether the waiters inside speak enough English to help them find their way out of the sud-Vatican labyrinth. “Right now maybe we should pay attention to the lyrics… <that we couldn’t hear> miss a beat, you loose the rhythm, and nothing falls into place.” The music went silent for a moment, and after eternity in an instant it switched to a South American groove. “Right now your parents miss you.” “Write this down” she said. There’s a blog entry coming, I responded, I can feel it. “Right now is harder than it seems.” Well, no shit Sherlock. “Right now, oysters are being robbed of their sole possession.” She was hard at work. “Right now a tired man with a wounded heart is seated on an East-bound trans-Atlantic flight looking out the window wondering how to say ‘dog’, ‘howl’ and ‘moon’ in French just in case it comes up.” The waitress was taking orders outside, and an inked Egyptian-eye stared directly at me from her midriff. “Right now she is going on with her life” Well yes, I thought, but burning that lovely picture seems a little excessive. “Right now time is having its way with you.” The waitress with the gauged clay swirl in her left ear complimented my companion’s ring by pointing at it – she didn’t know the word in English. I realized I didn’t know what its story was, but I forgot to ask. “WRITE NOW” appeared in bold letters – OK OK I’m doing it! I’m writing! “Right now keeps happening”. Yes, it does seem that way doesn’t it? The door to the men’s room closed on the television screen as a door in the cafe slammed, and I turned my eyes to her – she was still making flashcards.

Two women walked behind her, carrying drinks and wearing tee-shirts with cartoonish sea-creatures. A fish and a colorful turtle stared at me with googly-eyes, leaving me feeling like my caffelatte must have been laced with something slightly psychedelic. Outside I can hear an accordion. I couldn’t see its player, but after this long in Italy I didn’t need to see him to picture him perfectly. A man in his 50s, curly hair hanging to his shoulders, his face wrinkled and tan but merry (and hoping for a euro). The cafe’s speakers were still blasting a South-American guitarist who had now begun to wail, and the TV had been taken over by Snoop Dog, dressed in this mock-70s finest. Is it strange that Snoop Dog makes me think of home? Maybe, but there are stranger issues at hand. Like how we, two sweet American girls in cotton tops and broken-in jeans, are sitting here in an Italian cafe drinking coffee from booze glasses that are shaking on the table to the bass of South-American yodeling. And She was plugging away at those flashcards.

“These sugar packets are stolen”, I mused, furrowing my brows. She looked up and I explained that one was from The Rosella Commune, and the other was from another cafe – Cafe C… the waitress came and took our dishes, as if to keep me from discovering their dirty secret. She laughed, and I looked back to VH1. It was Barry White, sporting sunglasses and a velvety bathrobe, sliced in with shots of a women in a white bikini who dived into the sea just as the video concluded. “I’ll be 5 more minutes” she said. But I was in no rush.

I thought about my to-do list for the next 7 days, feeling a twinge of guilt for having a list shorter than my companion. But I reminded myself I have plenty to get hysterical about, and that I should savor this sweet moment of calm. She closed her book, loudly as could be with a relatively thin paperback, and I gently shut my gold-leafed journal. We took one last moment to look around the place, but as the South-American singer raised his voice a full octave we exchanged knowing glances and bolted for the door.

“Surrealism is embedded in the everyday, in the daily experience.” – Katherine Conley

yours.Rachel

Out of Body Experience

This afternoon it came to me.

For quite some time I had been trying to remember her name. I knew her first name – remembered it fortunately as we met coincidentally at Starbucks some months ago – but I couldn’t call to mind her last name. Clearly, I’ve had other concerns since the time I saw her grabbing coffee in the epicenter of our small town last summer, and so recalling her title was continually pushed back to make way for more pressing life issues. But sitting in my room today (in a spot that seems to be suited well for revelations) it came to me.

I looked her up on Facebook. 24 mutual friends, that’s gotta be her, right? I remembered her mentioning CMU and I saw FHS class of 08, so I clicked the “request friend” button and awaited my confirmation. Upon returning home from dinner, I found an email in my inbox notifying me I had been accepted as a non-preditor, and from there I did what any self-respecting non-preditorial individual would do – I stalked her from a respectful distance.

I read through her activities, interests, and other vitals first. As she cited writing and scrapbooking, and embraced a healthy love for Sex and the City, I found myself smiling. I remembered, I thought, that she was the president of the Student Council, and her mega-watt smile staring back at me seemed to silently confirm. Undying devotion to her darling rebel – her sweetheart with a healthy dose of defiance – seeped out of the page from wall posts and her relationship status.

I recall her most vividly as a Freshman, and from the moment I met her, I adored her. She sparkled with a natural energy, and her mind was as quick and sharp as her smile was charming. She wore a lot of black then as she was tying up the loose ends of a pubescent punk stage, but unlike the other punks she embraced the Stu-Co (student council, yes we thought we were that cool) culture of clean-cut WASPy fun. Still, unlike some of our fair-skinned friends, you could see the depth of her still waters shining brighter than any Tiffany that may have adorned her neck.

I decided then to flip through the photos of her, and as I did I found myself experiencing the strangest feelings of surrealism. She was sandwiched in between groups of girls, or holding signs displaying undying High School pride, or making funny faces in all the local restaurants. The one that really got me was of her in Charlie’s basement. He was a friend of mine – through my own darling rebel – and I would recognize those maroon walls anywhere. His sister, whose elfin figure was a constant source of teasing in my day, was in the picture (playing host) and four other fresh-faced girls held pool cues and were captioned by the words “Its weird to think about what your life would be like if you never met the people who changed it.”

There she was, with her bumper-stickers about love and girls standing on their tiptoes, hair straigh and make-up thick, smile shining with such a beautiful innocence. I’d always liked her partially because I saw so much potential in her youthful self and partially because I saw so much of myself there too. It became even more poignant today as I felt as though I was looking at my former self in pictures of her. Remembering that girl who loved a boy with everything she had because she had everything to give. The girl whose smile sparkled with childish innocence and lit up a room with genuine energy. Whose eyes were bright and hair was blonde and figure was slim and clothes were smart but young.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the past – burying things that have been long gone, and realizing how much, in aging, I need the things that I knew when I was young. Learning the difference between irreconcilable and irrevocable, and how important both of those words are to my existence. Redefining the place of things and people in my life, and realizing how my past life and self fits into the person I am now. Learning to look back at that girl – with the fresh face and bright eyes – and to see how she is, even then, the woman she will someday become.

“Growing up is never easy.  You hold on to things that were.  You wonder what’s to come.  But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead to what would be.  Other Days. New Days.  Days to come.  The thing is, we didn’t have to hate eachother for getting older.  We just had to forgive ourselves…for growing up.”  – The Wonder Years

yours.Rachel

Consider this me holding myself accountable

Summer “I will do” list:

DEMF.

Play in the clay once more at the Warren Dunes

Go to the beach at least once a month

Straighten my hair, and wear eyeliner consistently

Take a trip to Cedar Point

Eat outside on the patio as much as possible

Actually cook meals

Bring Beth Lucey to a Tiger’s game

Enjoy and take advantage of my ability to eat Ethnic Food

Go camping with my father (yes you read that correctly)

Send letters and cards to my loves far from home

BAKE!

Spend time actually hanging out with my really awesome biological sister

Have a summery slutnic complete with party dresses and beautifully prepared food

Go on a diet. A healthy one, with good food, a good workout routine, and great results

Visit with my Grandparents

come to terms with the fact that people my age are actually getting married

also, work on coming to terms with that “death” thing

Save most of the money I earn while working this summer

Work my ass off, getting excited and not jaded

One last trip to Chautauqua with my family

New York in August?

As soon as my internship is over, highlight my hair pink.

And beyond?

a road trip out West. I am going, and nothing is going to stop me.

yours.Rachel