M.I.A, a progress report, and hope

oh mercy, prepare yourselves for an epic post today because i have a lot of making up to do.

as my dear friend EMSA pointed out to me, i dropped the ball and have failed to post for the last couple weeks. apologies. midterms + a trip home shook up my routine a little bit and i'm sorry to have abandoned the blog.

before bed last night i found myself thinking (while peeing...of course) or perhaps reflecting on my life at present. more specifically i was asking myself how satisfied i was with my life. was this where i wanted/imagined myself to be at 22? if not.... am i okay with how things are going? if this isn't where i wanted to be and still isn't... what would i rather be doing? much to my own disappointment, many of my answers were inconclusive. lately, i've been experiencing a coming-of-age phenomenon that's been coined as the "quarterlife crisis". for anyone not familiar with this period or label, i've managed to enlist the help of wikipedia to briefly describe it.

The quarterlife crisis is a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the early twenties to the early thirties. The term is named by analogy with mid-life crisis.

Characteristics of quarter-life crisis may include:

• Realizing the pursuits of ones peers are useless.
• Confronting their own mortality
• Watching time slowly take its toll on their parents, only to realize they are next
• insecurity regarding the fact that their actions are meaningless
• insecurity concerning ability to love themselves, let alone another person
• insecurity regarding present accomplishments
• re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
• lack of friendships or romantic relationships, sexual frustration, and involuntary celibacy
• disappointment with one's job
• nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
• tendency to hold stronger opinions
• boredom with social interactions
• loss of closeness to high school and college friends
• financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipatedly high cost of living, etc.)
• loneliness, depression and suicide
• desire to have children
• a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you
• frustration with social ills

to read further here's the link to the wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis

now i wouldn't say i'm experience all of the "symptoms", but i'm experiencing many of them. here are some of the thoughts/reflections/realizations that have been crossing my mind lately...

- i brought back a photo album with me from my room at home. it has mostly pictures from when i was a toddler and them some as young kid. i always thought my parents looked so young for their age and basically looked the same as i had always remembered them (except for dad getting a little salt and pepper in his hair and mom not getting hers permed anymore...) but after looking at my baby/childhood photos i see how much we've all grown and that they do look older. but still not old. in fact, what was most shocking about this was not how old they look now, but how young they looked then. they both looked SO young. it was an eerie feeling. i realized the reason that this was so shocking/eerie was because i'm now fast approaching the age that my parents were when they married and began their lives together, and consequently, my life. the pictures i'm looking at with them holding me as a baby ....i'm looking at them as they were at roughly my age. it's a crazy sensation. surreal in fact. it must be akin to the feeling of what parents feel seeing their kids grow up. now, maybe, i understand the tears and parents' pain of aging more.

- lots of my friends are getting engaged/married and a handful are already having children. i get so excited to hear all of these announcements and consider all of it great news. now that my original graduating class of '09 has officially graduated from their respective colleges and universities, many of them are working real jobs, living in their own place, paying things bills and taxes, and having "office holiday parties". that's real. that's SO real.

i've been thinking a lot about the person i always thought i would be. what i expected my life to be like. the daughter i thought i was supposed to be, the sister i was supposed to be, the friend i was supposed to be, the student i was supposed to be......... the success i was supposed to be.

starting in late elementary school i had always imagined that i would grow up to be an academically successful graduate of WHS; a prominent member of the freshtones (select freshman show choir) and then the famed Concert Choir, decorated soccer player, governor's school alum, and social butterfly. then i'd go on to UVA where i'd study to become a doctor and play on the soccer team (i also remember the fantasy of dating a Cavalier football player...but the team was a lot better when i was younger.)

needless to say.... this didn't play out exactly as planned (in many cases, not at all as planned).

i was a pretty successful honors student who did end up going to to governor's school. i did make Freshtones and then when auditions came, landed a spot in Concert Choir making it to second chair, choreographer, and house manager. i also wrote and performed sketches and parodies in the biannual CC variety shows just like the ones i idolized growing up. i did have a soccer career that garnered some notoriety as a starter, rookie of the year, captain, all-district...and i did enjoy a pretty lovely social scene and moderate popularity. those things were somewhat close to what i had imagined as a 5th grader at Westwood Hills. but there were some things that weren't as close or that didn't go "according to plan".

I decided not to go back to Governor's School for my senior year. starting my sophomore year, my habit of adding on extracurriculars and biting off precocious bits of academic ambition was gradually wearing me thin and taking its toll on me. i began to feel the heat too much and the stress caused me to crack and eventually have a mental breakdown at 17 (despite trying to internalize and keep shit from hitting the fan). i hurt my mental health severely, it hurt my motivation, it hurt my relationships, it hurt my self-esteem and confidence, it hurt my academic performance.

Once i became eligible for NCAA recruitment i began to get calls and letters about playing soccer in college. i went on a few visits and began talking to coaches but then, after thoughtful consideration and discussion with my parents, decided to remove my name from the clearing list. I had suffered quite a traumatic mental storm during the latter part of my high school career and felt strongly that now that i had reinvented my schedule and cleared out what i didn't need and attempted to eliminate my stressors... it was time to start clean and allow myself the opportunity to explore life after high school and completely reinvent myself.

i only applied to one in state school and eventually decided to attend a small private (wealthy, white..) college in the south. i loved college and had a blast living in an entirely new place. at first i thought it was like summer camp plus school work, minus curfew, plus things like alcohol. but the transition proved to be more bumpy than i anticipated. i decided to drop my pre-med major and go undecided. my roommate had a toxic personality and i hadn't had to share a room before ...needless to say, it became a hostile living situation. i was suddenly wrecked with stress, uncertainty, and later depression. while i still went on to have truckloads of good times and made some of my very best friends, i was in a perpetual struggle to find success. after 2 1/2 years, over thanksgiving break, i decided with the support of my parents, to discontinue my time there.

i was soon searching for new possibilities and finally (over winter break) narrowed down some choice schools to apply for transfer to that would have an environment and programs more conducive to my vision for college and thereafter. before i could complete the process, i broke my neck in a freak winter car accident on my way up to work ski patrol. what followed was a [mentally and physically] painful recovery period. the really horrible thing about the nature of my injury was that all i could do to rehabilitate was to wait. sit still, and wait. i became a prisoner of my own mind. thankful to be alive and not paralyzed.. but still desperate to be active in some greater capacity. i was in a state of circumstantial depression. miserable and tortured.

Then, in the last month or so of my recovery i gave myself an attitude adjustment. things may have veered far from the path i had initially laid out for myself. but that's the bitch/wonder/joy of life...things are subject to change. shit happens and you have to learn to roll with the punches and work with what you've got. sometimes it's a harsh realization but a necessary one. so i decided to suck it up and try to work my way back to where i wanted to be. i decided to become "the comeback kid".

so immediately following my recovery i took some summer school classes to catch up and i applied for transfer. i took 12 hrs of classes close to home and kept a 4.0 then i officially transferred in January of this year (09) to the largest university in the state with a program i'm exited to be in and that i feel is preparing me for a career that i'm enthusiastic about. i'm back playing soccer and started playing lacrosse as well. i'll graduate in may 2011. as a new 24 yr old.

i often look back on my whimsical, winding road with regrets. sometimes those regrets include things like: not studying harder in high school, not loving myself enough as a kid or teenager, not allowing myself to be comfortable in my own skin, not treating people well enough, not going to med school and becoming a doctor, not having the balls to go out and pursue my love of comedy, not going to an ivy league school, not controlling my sassy mouth more.

most people think that regrets are useless or even counterproductive. but i think there's something to be learned from regrets. reflecting on why you regret those things, what it was you wanted from those things, and whether or not that's still what you want. reflection is like self-therapy; giving yourself a progress report.

like a good presbyterian, i believe in a certain predestination. i believe things happen for reason. some call it fate, others call it a plan. for now, i'm a work in progress. doing the best i can since 1987.

love