illumination of the moment

For the longest time, I always sort of prided myself on being the perfect balance of introversion and extroversion. Because I hadn't ever experienced vast unhappiness due to too much or too little human interaction, I never quite knew what I was talking about when I said that "oh, yeah I mean I'm fine hanging out with a lot of people, but I also enjoy being alone" and hip hip hooray, I must be one of those lucky perfect people who are neither shy nor overly outgoing?

But in reality, being introverted or extroverted doesn't have much to do with how shy or how outgoing you are - the best way I've heard it described is that it's where you get your energy: either from others (extroverted) or from within yourself (introverted).

And I guess it's also appropriate to mention here that you also never truly know what you have until it's gone. Even though my family has moved more times than I can probably count with my two hands, I've been lucky enough to have a few good friends who have (because I suck at this, I give them all credit) kept in touch with me through phone calls and texts and facebook and whatnot. But there was a stretch of a few months when all seniors across America were crazy busy getting through college applications and 1st semester of senior year and I fell into my funk and everyone was just too busy, too busy to keep up with long-distance, let alone next door relationships. And it hit me. I am so extroverted.


Making this discovery, at least initially and in a small, tentative way, was sort of an independent activity but I only truly discovered it by talking with my sister. Talking "with" as opposed to "to" or even "at" because I'm usually more of a listener in many conversations. I like to let other people talk about what they want first (and more) - it's just more comfortable (and enjoyable, too) for me. But there are a few special people who sort of unleash the talker in me - my sister and eliz and vadaboy to name a few. With them, though I also do a fair share of listening too (at least for eliz and peter..sorry sissy), I find myself talking talking talking myself into clarifications of confusion things in life. And I've noticed that these crazy talk circles actually end up with a ding! illumination-of-the-moment moments where the world is un-confusing and stuff just makes sense. Like the discovery of my extrovertedness.

failure-validation

Starting the new school year with sunny optimism, I'm looking for some failure validation this semester.
First off, let's start off by saying W.T.F. When did college happen to me?! Every time someone asks me, "Are you excited?" without any other explanatory phrases that could make the question go in a hundred different ways, I immediately answer, "Um..!" expressing my completely true, totally eloquent feelings about the fact that I'm GOING TO COLLEGE in less than a week, now. Because it still feels so surreal, and I'm just hoping it doesn't feel like summer camp or something.
And speaking of school, the next predictable question(s): "What do you want to study?" "What's your major?" "What do you want to do after college?" Sometimes all three at once, to which I answer, "Dunno, Undecided, AHH@#!" Well not really. The undecided part is correct, but I do have wee small ideas about what I think I perhaps maybe want to study/do/become-when-I-grow-up. I'm sort of at a crossroads of life. You know, with the whole dramatic drum roll and everything? At the moment, I want to either pursue medicine and eventually work for Doctors Without Borders (more info here!), or...teach English abroad. I know, they're two such different things - that's why the crossroads imagery is appropriate, I think. And because I'm antsy by nature about big decision-making, I want to decide soon. My solution? Take a chem class. Mmhmm, so I am enrolled for Intro to Chemistry+Lab and already dreading it. After explaining this crossroads of life metaphor to every person who has asked what I want to study, I've come to face the reality that I'm...sort of leaning toward the teaching English option, and strongly and secretly hoping that I hate chemistry with every cell in my body. If I do, it'll be easier for me to sort of shut the door on this medicine career idea I've been thinking about - curb the guilt, or something, for not taking the road that will help me help so many people on a more immediate level because it's daunting and I am scared of ..the reality. (Hmmm?)
I don't know, though. What if chemistry is the best thing in the world since sliced bread and I think it's rainbows and sparkly hearts of magical mystical science? That would be a real problem, falling in love with chemistry.

closure, not so properly

Proper closure is one of my favorite non-concrete things in the world - right up there with etymology and traditions. I guess when someone says "closure," it sort of has the tendency to invoke the thought of relationships ending and having a good cry or takin a Louisville slugger to both his tires or something, but that's not really the type of closure I'm HEARTing in this post. It's more like the satisfaction of a good, non-cliffhanger ending to a movie, or saying goodbye to all the rooms in your house before you go on a roadtrip. It's just a good feeling; makes the end of something sweet not so bitter I guess. So imagine my dismay at the turn of events a couple days ago when a good(ish)-natured prank went from good(ish)-natured to a little overboard to dying out with a sputter;without any closure.

Any successful prank must include varying degrees of all the following elements:
spontaneity

confidence

quick pace

ingenuity

explosive end with lots of wholesome laughter & back-slapping


Our prank involved perfect amounts of all elements except the last... We (the prank-ers) decided for some reason that it would be funny to pretend that nothing had happened when our friends (the prank-ees) found out the deed. Bad idea. Said prank-ees were extremely angry and with the absence of explosive end with laughter and back-slapping, our whole hilarious plan went up in flames. No, it doesn't even deserve to have said that it figuratively went up in flames, because that would be more closure than the whole prank got. Instead, it just rolled over and died of old age and fatigue. Sighz

"Its important to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse."
-Life of Pi by Yann Martel

See?

all this unsatisfactory closure in this post calls for Carriegirl's moment of triumph

an un-beginning

I wish I were the type of person who could start out a blog - start out any fearsome, big-ish venture - with a beginning-like beginning. Have some kind of order to things, with a beginning, middle, and when the time comes, a graceful end.

But here I am just jumping into the thick of it, without using that beautiful quote that a beautiful friend of mine said to me last night. Without any introduction, without a hello, because I'm afraid to lose this moment, and I just feel like writing about this funk. Well, because I feel like I have to write about the funk.

More specifically, this funk phase of mine that I've been trying to escape for a while. Well, kind of. It's a really weird thing, and before I begin describing it, you should know that I'm a generally optimistic, happy, sometimes annoyingly-loud and bubbly person. But this funk phase is killing me, and the best way I can describe it is that I am stuck in the middlest place ever. And also I would like to say now that I don't do drugs. I just say weird things and use nonexistent words to make up for my lack of eloquence. But anyways, so yeah, I'm stuck in the middlest. place. I feel pointless doing anything, and especially in the shower I can't make myself scream, even if I'm screaming on the inside. But it's not as horrific as it seems - I'm not inwardly screaming because I'm tormented or anything like that, but because the experience of my insides not matching my outside layer of actions and words is so weird and...probably sounding really crazy and overdramatic. So yeah, don't be worried - it's not horrific. It's not horrific, or horrifically good, or anything extreme like that. I'm just stuck exactly in the middle. Numb, I think sums up this entire paragraph of blabber in four easy letters.

Anyways, so it's been a mystery, this funk of mine, that my sister first shed light upon for me (does this idiom even exist?): I told her about the showerscreamy thing and all the rest of it, feeling numb and pointless, and she slaps her knees figuratively and goes, "Yeah, that makes total and complete sense. I mean, you're having your senior summer crisis; it's like the movie The Graduate. You're done with this whole big chapter of your life that was high school/studying and being ready and applying to get into college, and you have this void until you actually get to college, and now you're feeling the pointlessness because your life seems empty right now." My sister is 16 years old and definitely hasn't been a senior yet. Her shining wisdom seemed too perfectly sensible to be the actual solution, so I've been skeptical, but then again it also makes so much sense. So I'm in this quandary here.

But yesterday, talking to my beautiful quote friend, I realized something ...seriously beautiful. That the middle of the spectrum, the humdrum, numb middle of anything is still a crucial part of that spectrum. Feeling extreme emotions might be fun, or at least exciting and dramatic if you're on the bad end of the cave or whatever (tunnel? stick? I don't know), but knowing an extreme middle, however unapologetically paradoxical that is, is a part of the experience, too. It's like having a scale of 1-5 from strongly agree to strongly disagree, where you never really pick the 1 or the 5 because you don't want to be held accountable for those crazy extremes but you feel sheepish picking the 3 because it's sort of the easy way out of taking an actual stance. So all you really have left are the 2 and 4. Basically yes and no. How easily black and white the world becomes when you blabber enough!..?

Anyways I keep getting lost like this, but I'm slowly feeling myself resurface, one tiny bob at a time. And this is just the documentation journey I'm finally beginning (un-beginning?) so if I ever seriously fall into the funk again, I won't take so long in talking myself out of it. I'll just read this blog and remember.