The World Is Calling.

It’s finally happened.

The culmination of all of my restless wandering syndrome had manifested in an offer from the Peace Corps to serve in Sierra Leone, West Africa for 2 years starting in a mere 138 days.

While I have some pretty proud parents, and that’s always a comforting thing, really I'm astounded with this responsibility that the government has entrusted me with. I get a classroom of 50 wide-eyed girls who have so much to offer the world, and I get to be a person who helps them get there.

There’s something sort of magical about teaching anyway, but it gets too bogged down here with standards and lesson plans and grading and bitchy parents or absentee parents. There are too many politics and you forget why you loved it to begin with.

But when I finally stopped reading the exponential amounts of paper that the Peace Corps sent me about everything from Malaria medication to menstrual cups (what in the name of God is that anyway? Besides revolting…) I finally let it all sink in. In the quiet that I so rarely let enfold me, I realized at the core of what it is that I get to do.

It’s so different living here than living somewhere like the tribal village in Africa that I’m headed. I always knew there was a world that I wanted to see. But these girls don’t know that. They know their tribe and maybe the surrounding ones. They know that they get married at 15 and then have babies. 1 in 6 of them will die in childbirth. Their lives are decided for them before they even have a chance.

But if they can read, if I can teach them how to open a book and make sense of the words on a page, they have a fighting chance. The written word is the great shining hope of the world. Even if for now they’re in the village, I want them to know that there’s a whole world out there to see, if they choose to.

I want them to go to Hogwarts with Harry, Ron and Hermione. I want them to head through the phone booth with Milo. I want them to paddle down the river with Huck and Jim. I want them to ponder in solitude with Thoreau. I want them to think the thoughts that could lead them to recognizing their dreams.

I want them to want more. And they’re going to teach me to want less.  

Harvard should take some notes, there’s a lot of learning to be done here.

I can’t wait. 

17 Again

All of a sudden I’m 17 again.

And not really in a refreshing all of a sudden I’m hot like Zac Efron and the basketball captain again kind of way, but more like I’m back in my freshman year of college.  It’s the most confusing kind of senioritis, the one that takes you back 4 years and firmly digs its heels in, refusing to let you realize that graduation is imminent.

All of my friends I came in with have graduated, married, had kids, moved away, became missionaries or cosmetologists and left me here alone. I’ve bonded hard and fast with this year’s crop of freshman, all of us proud to be North Park Vikings and not held down with engagement rings or student loans yet. It’s easy enough to forget that I’m old when I'm in my sheep’s clothing amongst these new recruits.

But then I leave Albany Park and am immediately swarmed with questions about what I'm doing after graduation, where I’m living, what I’m doing, if I’m excited, if I’m scared, what my parents are saying, have I got my graduation tickets yet? And all I want to do is retreat back into the dorms, drink coffee and pretend that I just started college and that these questions have nothing to do with me. 

The weird thing is, I know what I'm doing.

 I don’t have that post graduation uncertainty lingering over me. I'm going to whatever country requests me and serving in the Peace Corps for 2 years. It’s a fully respectable position, doesn’t require a lot of explanation, is impressive enough that my parents can say it over their respective operating tables and not feel the need to avert their eyes in shame.

If anyone should feel okay it about graduating, it should be me.

But I don’t.

The idea of leaving Chicago, or more directly leaving North Park is enough to send me into a blind panic. North Park is my home. I grew up here. I became a woman here. I met my best friends here. I found my voice here. North Park was always waiting for me to come back from New York or Disney and the thought of leaving it for good gives me the Chipotle brick in my stomach, but in a much less satisfying way.

I’m 22 and clinging to the idea of re-living my freshman year again. One last semester of being in my safe place before I have to move to a third world country, become financially independent and start being a grown up.

Is that such a bad thing?

I have 5 months until graduation. 5 months to be in love with North Park for one last time. 5 months to get ready for the world that I’ve been dying to see. I’ll get there, whether or not I can see it now.

I just hope the world is ready for me. 

One for the Boys.

On my trip home from Detroit this weekend, my friend and I exchanged a lot of “Why do women do this?” and “Yeah, well why do guys do this?” I’m not sure if he is any clearer on why girls do things, despite my efforts. And he was very patient with my most likely inappropriately probing questions.

 

I’m still lost.

 

You really can’t know what it’s like to be a girl unless you are one. If it helps you at all, sometimes we don’t really understand what our problem is half the time. But be assured, it probably has something to do with you boys.

 

When he turned to me and asked me a question, I could hear the exasperation in his voice. Like he’s been trying all his life to be a nice guy and he still comes off like an asshole.

 

Even though I don’t fully understand what I feel some of the time,  here’s some of what I do know.

 

Lesson 1: Girls never forget their first loves.

 

This is the first time that a girl experiences the complex emotions of holding a boy’s hand and the first time that you really understand a love song. Since you’re usually 15 or something, they never work.

 

(If you’re one of the 6 people who married their high school sweetheart, you don’t count. But you don’t count for a lot of things anyway, so this shouldn’t be new.)

 

Guys, if you feel like they bring them up a lot, it’s because they had a lasting impact. It doesn’t mean that they care about you any less. They’re just always going to be there in some capacity. Buy them a beer or something.

 

Lesson 2: If they’ve had their heart broken, it’s going to take you a bit longer

 

This cock-blocks a lot of guys. They like a girl, but all she can talk about is how her last guy told her that since she wasn’t attractive enough to hold his attention, he would probably cheat on her and it wouldn’t work out between them. Or something like that.

 

This should have nothing to do with the next guy, but without fail, it’s going to. Any one who’s ever seen the wake of a hurricane or watched a documentary on Pearl Harbor knows the devastation of tragedy. While it seems petty to compare your problems to these massive ones, to a girl, having her heart broken is going to rank up there with these.

 

If you really care about her, you need to be willing to push past these things. You’re going to need to put a bit of work into this one.

 

Lesson 3: Don’t be fast and loose with the word ‘Beautiful’

 

That there are so many words to objectify a woman, but really only one that will make them feel good about themselves. Beautiful.

 

But here’s a secret: women know when you mean it and when you really don’t.

 

When someone says that you’re beautiful right after you tell them something devastating that happened to you, it always sounds insincere. Like they just want to make you feel better.

 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice thing to say. But when you say it, it seems like what you’re really saying is “You have a beautiful soul.” or “You’re a really great friend to me.” Something like that. When I’m of the opinion that the only real difference between love and friendship is physical attraction, this kind of ‘beautiful’ is a death sentence.

 

Lesson 4: Listen to what we mean, not what we say

 

I know this is the most frustrating one.

 

Sometimes, even the most outspoken of us (ahem) have a hard time saying what we want to say. Read our body language, read our blogs, try to understand us more than you listen to us.

 

Lesson 5: All girls have a secret Princess Complex

 

This one is embarrassing for any feminist to admit, but we like the notion of being saved. Let me explain though.

 

We don’t mean that our lives aren’t complete without a man to tell us we’re pretty, but that when you fall in love, it really should enhance your life. We want to be rescuing the guy as much as they’re rescuing us. I hypothesize that men think the same thing, but don’t really have a label for it or know what they’re feeling exactly, but you guys have a Princess Complex too. We should be rescuing each other.

 

 

 

There’s thousands more, but that’s all I’ve got for you boys today. The bottom line is- just love us, okay? At the end of the day, that’s all we can really ask of you.

Never Say Goodbye

Goodbyes are not something anyone is good at. And if you are, you should write a book and jack up the price of publication because the world wants to know.

I am many things, spontaneous and flighty being two of them. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a little hard when I can almost hear my parents sigh when they answer their phones, knowing that I probably have something new that I think I might want to do. Sometimes I think they’ve given up hope that I’ll ever find one thing to stick with.

They never know what I’m going to tell them next.

I usually don’t either.

It’s really great for people that know what they want to do and they go out and do it. They get the grades and then become surgeons. Or they see a burning bush that tells them to go help people. They have something that guides them to an end.

But to me, that idea makes me squirm. I don’t like the idea of an ending, and that’s all anyone seems to get. They know where they want to get. I’m more interested in how to get there.

Despite never having a steady answer to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I don’t mind being a wanderer, struck with a bad case of the SOTHS (Somewhere Other Than Here Syndrome. Don’t ask, it itches). Too many wonderful people have become part of my life because of wandering. I’ve seen things and I’ve been in love, and there were good and bad times in both. I can’t say my last breakup or anytime I’ve spent in Canada was the high point of my life, but living at Disney world and having more best friends than any one person needs seems to balance it out for me.

I have had to say goodbye many times. But I’ve been the luckiest person to always have Hellos again when I’m supposed to. I think that’s all a wanderer can really ask of the world.

“Never say goodbye. Because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

 ~Peter Pan

Fifty Shades of Cock Block.

Okay, while I try not to fancy myself as someone who follows the crowd, sometimes I give in.

Being surrounded by women at my new job is a brand new experience. One that’s interesting but yields different types of rules. Comments need to be thought through, hair flips need to be poignant and sometimes eye contact needs to be broken. Keep your head down, do your work.

But when in women town, do as the women do and all the women are reading fifty Shades of Grey. The English major inside of me doesn’t like to be kept out of any kind of conversation about books, so I hastily jumped onto this bandwagon.

The book itself is odd. It’s popularity stems from a mainstream book having such erotic imagery that is usually reserved to a mattress book or the back pages of Cosmo. But Christian Grey puts it out there for all to see.

Reading it confuses a lot in me, mostly because I don’t believe the character of Grey. Someone who is so into bondage and possession gives way when a confused virgin enters his world? I doubt if this were true life someone like him would even invite someone like her into his Red Room of Pain.

This then begs the question, how does this affect the men?

I have so many guy friends. I like them because they’re simple. Uncomplicated men who say what they’re thinking. How many relationships are confused because this is the way that men really are when all the books and movies paint them as these complicated layers that need to be peeled away?

I wonder what men think when they read this book. The women have had such a reaction to the complexity of Grey, that I know men are picking it up just to figure out why their women are all of a sudden glaring at them when Sinatra comes on and they’re not immediately asked to dance.

Sorry, boys.

But I bet it’s not the first time a fictional character has cock-blocked you.

And let me tell you a secret…

We’re not as complicated as we seem. This won’t be the last time it happens to you. 

Can't get no satisfaction

Some famous person, philosopher, writer, someone, once said something like satisfaction is the first step toward death.

Something to that effect.

Like, if you stop dreaming, aspiring to something more than what you’ve achieved, you’ve given up.

What happens when you have a dream for your whole life and you achieve it? Satisfaction is an unacceptable reaction to that, apparently. I go back and forth about how I feel about this whole thing.

I know when I first read this; I nodded, understanding where they were coming from. Born with the heart of a wanderer, I think that this is something that I can get behind, at least for the foreseeable future.

Having decided to forgo all the things it seems everyone else is doing, mainly getting married, having babies or just doing what their parents did in general, the whole world has opened up to me. I can go wherever and do whatever I want with only my dreams to keep me company.

Satisfaction seems to be the last thing that I want. Half the fun of getting somewhere is the journey. How do people fuel themselves further when there is nothing driving them?  Satisfaction seems like the last thing in the world most people want.

It’s really an odd idea- that we spend so much time working toward satisfaction and then loathe it when it gets here. Like maybe the journey was the best part, but we didn’t realize it until we got there. And we really wished we had taken more pictures.

That’s all I’m planning for right now- the journey. Because I don’t know where it’s leading yet. Maybe I’ll meet satisfaction someday down the road. Maybe not. But I’d like, if I ever do meet it someday, to maybe meet it on my way out of here, so that I can hold it’s hand, okay that we didn’t meet sooner.

Life is all about the journey. 

Atychiphobia

I’ve always been afraid of clowns.

I couldn’t tell you why. As far as I can remember, I’ve had no traumatizing experience. I didn’t get lost at a circus as a kid and wander into the clowns tent and see them shooting up or anything. I just don’t like them. I never will.

When people ask me what I’m afraid of, clowns are always my answer.

But when someone scoffs at a story idea, or tells me a character isn’t believable, my dialogue too trite, do I really get gripped with the one thing that could scare me more than a vat of clowns- the fear of failing.

I’ve always felt like my dreams are too big for the world that I live in. My feet were never on the ground, and my head was always in the clouds. I wanted to be an actress; I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a chef, a lawyer, a teacher. I changed my mind so many times because I was worried about failing.

There was always someone better than I was. Or someone who had more people that believed in them. I come from sensible stock- a modest family that believes in hearty careers that if you are willing to work, you can do it. Doctors, nurses, engineers. Scientists. But I blew in from Dreamland. Where everything is a possibility and the world is too big for me to stay in one place.

I see people that just seize their dreams in a chokehold until they get them. People who are in bands that got their chance when they were 17. Singers who put a video up on YouTube and got signed by Usher. Luck found them, and they are doing what they’re supposed to.

But how do you keep your faith in a world that’s running out of room for dreams? Too many people want too many things. When you have to depend on your parents for everything because no one will look at your manuscript. How do we grow up and give our dreams a good kick in the pants?

Dreamers are always lonely. I think that’s because only people with huge dreams would be willing to call themselves dreamers. These people are often frowned upon by society. Such hope makes most people uncomfortable.

But at this moment in time, people need to get used to it. I refuse to leave this world without having meant something to it. I don’t want to live trapped in a dream that I couldn’t fight my way out of to make it happen.

I have to find what my path is. I know it’s to something amazing. I was meant for more than I’m living now. I know I am.