What comes around, you know, goes around

                                                                                Chapter 1:
                                            Introductions and meaningless, unconnected philosophical musings
    Sometimes I would swear there was a demon in me.  If I gave any sort of credence to Hoodoo, I would likely try and seek out an old woman living in the swamps of Louisiana and try to get her to exorcise it.  I mean, I think on the whole, I’m a pretty good person, but sometimes, sometimes I just feel this bitterness pouring out from somewhere inside me, threatening to poison every single good thing in my life. I don’t have a bit of control over it—or so I would like myself to think. It seeps through my pleasant, nicely composed exterior and lashes out at my innocent and bewildered loved ones.  Yes, my demon seems to pray only on the ones I care about deeply.  It reins itself in quite nicely for mere acquaintances and most especially for strangers. 
      The sad fact of the matter is, though, that I don’t believe in demons.  I have a mostly scientific view of life and its origins, uncolored by superstitions or religion, for the most part.  Therefore, in accordance with my own mode of seeing the world, my moodiness must indeed be caused by a part of me over which I have full control.  I really wish this were not the case.  It would be so much easier if I could go ahead and “accept the things I cannot change…”  yadda yadda yadda.  Because, unfortunately, once you realize and accept that you have a problem that is able to be solved, you are supposed to try and fix it, in accordance with a projected goal of constant self-improvement. 
         Thus, I have set myself on a course that will kill off the evil that pervades me at times and turn myself into a perfectly likeable person. Starting NOW.  Right now, even as a weave through the constant hell of morning traffic as I make my way toward class.  You see, I’m a Junior.  In college.  Already.  Somehow, I have managed to make my way through the thirteen years of lower education successfully and even alarmingly well, academically at least.  Now, I am somewhere, stuck in the middle of having all the opportunity in the world before me and having almost no opportunity in the world before me.  Sometimes I sink so low as to see my only possible future involve my manning the graveyard shift at the local 7/11. Lovely prospect INDEED.  There is nothing like the 3:00am influx of drunk and stoned college kids wanting some greasy chicken to really give your life some meaning.  But, back from my (hopefully wrong caricature) of the future. 
         I go to a university in rural north Mississippi. In other words, I go to a university smack in the very epicenter of absolutely nowhere.  I was going to go to Columbia, university that is.  You know, the Ivy League up in the bustling metropolis of New York City that boasts some of the best educators and bright young minds in the world? Yes, that one.  I was even accepted!  How very exhilarating that was for me.  New York has always instilled such fascination, such thrills of excitement in me.  But alas, the darndest things can get in the way of dream achieving.  In my case, it was money.  I was naïve indeed to think that my parents, solid middle-classes though they are, could afford a cool $50 grand a year for college tuition.  HA!  That’ll shatter any sort of rose-colored view you have of the world in an instant.  Which it did for me, almost immediately.  I had to come to the disenchanting realization that, no matter how hard we work in life, we still sometimes don’t get what we want. 
         God, it’s far too early to ponder philosophical revelations like that one.  Sometimes my internal monologues trail off to unknown quarters of my mind.  I should work on that.  Okay… must get back to reality…pulling into parking lot so far from class that I may have to hail one of the two taxis servicing Oxford to get there in time.  Damn!  Should have left earlier. 
“Lucy! Lucy, Get your ass over here, thank God I’m not the only one late!”
Sometimes I feel like when I’m in my head, it’s like being really deep underwater, and I must resurface from a great distance in order to bring myself back to the real world.  So, I squint at the sun, take a deep breath, and come back to reality. 
“Hey Steve, how goes it?” I return his lovely salutation with some trepidation.  Steve kind a gives me the heebie jeebies, all social anxiety aside.  Furthermore, he is mildly attractive and heterosexual, which makes me all the more unable to form coherent sentences around him. 
“Oh you know, I’m just livin’ the dream,” he replies in a most characteristic manner as he flips his hair a little and gives a sort of half-smile.
Um, no, actually I don’t know what your dreams are, Steve.  Why don’t we go have a chat over some good wine, and you can tell me all about them?  It could lead to beautiful places for both of us…
“Oh, yeah, the dream… nice. Gotta love the dream. I know I do. The dream… yeah. Mmm..” I reply, lamely.  God, I need coffee.  How am I supposed to be culpable for social interactions when I can barely form coherent sentences in my own head?
Steve gives me a sort of sideways eyebrow raise, as if to silently question my sanity, then we walk to class silently.  Damn.  And another one bites the dust…

I am not the world’s best conversationalist.  I have a bit of performance anxiety about it, actually.  When I am talking to someone with whom I have no desire to get to know better, I am perfectly great at it! It is when I have to talk to anyone that I actually do like or admire that this becomes a problem.  It is a most inconvenient problem. 

I sneak into class as quietly as possible, but promptly and loudly hit my chair against the table behind me as I sit down.  Shit.  The professor clears his throat, gives me that squinty eye severe look that professors give, then continues with his lecture.  I sit in class and play Freecell on my computer to keep from falling asleep as I try to pick up the most important tidbits of the lecture.  Oh the joy of learning!  At Ole Miss, it’s reduced to a widely accepted mindset in which the primary goal is to do as little work as humanly possible to get the desired grade.  Over-achievers go for the A: in this way, I am an over-achiever.  Although, as an over-achiever in a place in which underachievement is the guiding norm, overachievement is really just very efficient underachievement.  In other words, my academic record is really not all that impressive.  I’ve been able to eke by with A’s by doing such little substantive work!  This would perhaps be extremely nifty, if in fact I did not like learning or studying.  Unfortunately, I in fact thrive on studies and learning.  But I have found myself conforming to the system, and therefore learn far less than I would really like to, which of course leaves me constantly yearning for more.  I am a very complicated being. 
                                                                       
                                                                        Chapter 2:
         It is night, and I am a party animal! Okay, so not really.  I’m more of a party kitten:  cute and cuddly, and not fully grown in the ways of partying.  I am with Kate, a waifish sort who is one of the rare girls that pulls off a pixie haircut and makes everyone jealous of it.  Kate doesn’t drink, but my throat is burning for one, or maybe it’s my social inhibitions that are burning to be broken.  We are at a club on the square; actually, the only club on the square.  Oxford has a square with a courthouse and nice quaint shops and bars all around it.  It’s very old fashioned in that sense, and in many other senses for that matter. 
         Kate has no inhibitions about dancing.  She just gets out there and goes for it.  I kind of shake around a bit and pretend to be completely confident in my out of sync wobbling, then give up and sneak off to the bar for some liquid confidence.  After a gin and tonic, I feel that little buzz of cheer wash over me, and I return to the dance floor, which is full of gyrating drunks feeling each other up through their clothes, and find Kate rocking out to a beat that could only exist in her own head.  God, she needs at least a 5 foot radius around her to guarantee that the surrounding drunks don’t get flogged by one of her signature moves.