Despertar

did

1. What did you do this year that you've never done before?
In 2007, a lot of things. Graduated from college, started law school, turned twenty-two, kissed people who weren't Marcus, loved people who weren't Marcus, got cussed out by a thirteen-year-old, truly appreciated the genius of South Park.

2. What countries did you visit this year?
Almost the Bahamas, but my brother didn't get his passport in time, so I think we're going next Christmas.

3. What would you like to have in the next year that you lacked this year?
I want to be in a stable relationship that enriches my life and makes me happy more often than it makes me sad. I also want more financial independence, which would stem from having a job. I think I'm going to apply to work retail somewhere this year. It's going to suck.

4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Matriculating from college to law school, I guess. Starting something new isn't really an achievement, but I don't consider graduation much of an achievement, either (just kind of the natural result that follows from starting something, and college basically equals high school with respect to how optional it is in my house, so). I don't feel very accomplished, recently.

5. What was your biggest failure of the year?
Even though I feel better about it now, I still don't think I handled the junior year fallout as well as I could have, and my grades sucked in my last semester of college.

6. Did you suffer illness or injury?
A series of really bad colds at the beginning of my first semester here. We were calling it allergies at first, but they kept coming after all the leaves were dead, so maybe I'm just chronically sick from now on. I also sliced my left middle finger open over the summer and again should have gotten stitches.

7. What was the best thing you bought this year?
A car, unless that was last year. I think that was last year. In that case, it's a tie: an education I'll still be paying for in twenty years/my new Arturo Chiang boots.

8. Where did most of your money go this year?
Food, which is weird, but I still haven't gotten the hang of grocery shopping.

9. What did you get really, really, really excited about this year?
While I was teaching over the summer, I was excited every single day upon waking. After that was over, I didn't get really, really, really excited about anything else except, maybe, the prospect of getting closer to Justin. I guess I'm not that exciteable in the way that most people are about other stuff. Seriously, graduation was the biggest chore of my life, to the point where my mother and I fought about how I wasn't making it special enough for her.

10. What song will always remind you of this year?
"Party Like a Rock Star," "Nica's Dream."

11. Compared to this time last year, are you...
         a. happier or sadder? Happier.
         b. richer or poorer? Definitely poorer, or equally poor AND in debt.
         c. thinner or fatter? Sameish. Thinner today, but fatter at this time last week when I was trying on cords.

12. What do you wish you'd done more of?
More studying, more sex.

13. What do you wish you'd done less of?
I still don't drink much, but every time I do I wish I would just revert back to when I was too timid and never wanted to. I wish I had done less driving people around, also; I would be so much richer in gas.

14. How did you spend the holidays?
Preparing for and freaking out about the Ball, enduring the Ball, regretting every minute I spent at the Ball. Thinking about Justin, being surprised at how consistently we kept in touch.

15. Did you fall in love this year?
I wouldn't call it that, yet. I'm holding on to this idea that you just know when it happens.

16. How many one-night stands did you have this year?
Seventeen, not including the gang bang.

17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't hate anyone anymore, I don't think, but there are still certain people I pity more than others, certain people I wish I'd never met, et cetera.

18. What was the best book you read this year?
Probably Atonement.

19. How would you describe your personal fashion concept this year?
Still kind of tight, schmoopy stuff. I'm not impressed with myself, still, but I also don't care that much, still. Or yet.

20. Whom did you miss this year?
My college friends, for about a month, and Marcus, on principle.

21. Who was the best new person you met this year?
Justin.

22. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned for this year.
If it feels like a bad idea, it probably is, and you should just stop, right now.

*

I don't really like how 2007 looks, in retrospect.

*

My Constitutional Law professor started cold-calling people on Marbury v. Madison before he even introduced himself. I know his name because of the syllabus, but other than that, my only true knowledge about him is that he is impersonal and mean.

Not mean, actually. He smiles while he lectures, and he obviously loves this discipline, so it's nice of him to share it with us, but I'll probably never forget how he just walked in and gave some kid a heart attack by immediately grilling him on the first reading.

I haven't read for Comparative Law yet, and it starts in thirty minutes. This semester is already harder than I thought.

*

Justin is sick, but it isn't my fault this time. Earlier this year, before I started writing in this journal, I slammed his finger in a drawer, and two days later, I poisoned him with cold germs that took him down way harder than they did me. The bigger they are, and whatnot.

*

One of the reasons I don't go home more often, which is ridiculous, really, considering my parents only live twenty-five minutes away from school and their washing machine is free, is that I don't like feeling obligated to go to church with them on Sunday. It's more complicated than being obligated, really. There have been times when I've just plain declined to go, or slept too late and made them leave without me, or whatever, but it always comes back around to haunt me the next time I come home: "You're coming this time, right? You skipped the last time we went," or whatever.

It's only not really obligation because I don't think they know they're forcing me. My mother, especially, doesn't realize that every time I join them, it's an act of appeasement, not one of choice. My dad is too clueless about my internal dialogue to even realize, probably, that it makes a difference to me whether or not I go. I'm generally weak about it, I realize this, and it's long past time I had some kind of overarching conversation with Mom, at least, about how principally I don't appreciate being coerced to engage in something I'm so unsure about, and refusal to go, flat-out refusal, would open that conversation immediately, but I'm just not ready to have it, or maybe I never will be. Right now, my mom just thinks I'm mildly cynical, or maybe that I have "questions" about things, and that makes her feel bad enough. It would cause her a lot of really unnecessary pain and guilt to know that I'm building from the ground up, faithwise, when she thinks she gave me this whole strong spiritual background (not sure why she thinks that, exactly, but she does). I don't think she ever needs to know she failed to do something that was supposedly important to her.

So, whatever, I go with them, but when I go, I spend the whole time distracting myself from how offensive I find it. I look at stuff; I think about how handsome the pastor is and wonder how the fire he displays at the pulpit would play out in the bedroom. I watch the people in the pews around me and I try to pick out people who are as bored as I am.

This past Sunday, I sat behind the youth choir director, who's about five or six months pregnant, and her husband, who is cute and nice in a simple, steadfast kind of way. Choir director is usually really outspoken, assertive and pulled-together, but I think hormones have kind of wrecked her, for now: she shed fresh tears at about seven different points throughout the service, and he put his arm around her every time, never got impatient or rolled his eyes or expressed that he's sick of all this arbitrary emotion, just kept holding her close. Every time we had to stand to sing or pray or whatever, he helped her to her feet, every time. Every time we did pray, he bowed his head and laid his hand across her belly in this gesture of inclusion, I think, or gratitude, one or the other or both, and it was beautiful.

I eventually realized I had been full-on staring at them through like twenty minutes of responsive reading and altar calls.

*

Yentl is coming in the mail tomorrow!!!

And, so are my other textbooks.