I probably shouldn't admit this, but the vast majority of my summer this year has been spent using my television to do karaoke when I'm alone, harassing my sister about her new job (that she hates), and truly testing the limits of my eyesight by staring at my laptop for sixteen hours a day.
It's been glorious.
This summer has gone by so fast that it is yet to truly feel like summer; I haven't visited a pool yet, nor have I gone backyard camping with my friends (which, if any of you are reading this, yes, this is passive aggression). And, because this is the first summer without my sister, I haven't even engaged in our usual ritual of eating strange flavors of ice cream every night after dinner while watching American Ninja Warrior -- the true juxtaposition of fitness and the sedentary life.
This ennui has got me thinking about how these are the last months of my life I'll be a grade-schooler on summer vacation. Maybe I shouldn't be getting nostalgic for a time of my life that I'm technically still in, but I can't help picturing us nine months from now -- dispersed, like blowing a dandelion in the wind, older but not old enough to know what our future holds.
We all like to think that we're the exception to, and not proof of, all the rules everyone tells us: that nobody keeps in touch with their high school friends, that you shouldn't room with anyone you know, that your high school sweetheart isn't your soulmate, and so on. And I'm usually a realist -- I'm quite comfortable romanticizing my past "glory days", quite content to visit my high school twice a year and marvel at all the changes the district has made. I often remember that episode of Friends, where Monica goes on a date with her old high school crush, only to realize that he's ... still stuck there, talking about the football games and cheerleaders as though ten years haven't gone by. I don't want to peak in high school.
But I also don't want to relearn how to make friends; after seven years with the same friend group, I don't know that I know how to talk to people who don't already know me. I don't want to rebuild a reputation, brick by brick, like a small fish in a big sea. Not to mention I barely know how to "adult" -- taxes, driving, how banks work (despite my AP Economics teacher's best attempts to educate me), how to cross the street safely (yes, it's a miracle I've survived this long), what "business casual" means, the art of email responding, how to become friends with your professors without coming across as a suck-up (or worse, stuck-up), etc. My parents often claim this stuff is easy; they say nobody knows how to do taxes until the forms arrive in the mail and the IRS calls them up (A joke. My parents are not in trouble with the IRS). But I can't help thinking as though I'm...behind.
Anyway, as per usual, I've gotten derailed. I think I was trying to say that old age has made me sentimental and nostalgic, so don't be surprised if I burst into tears during orientation. And to apologize to Jessica because I have not finished reading Circe yet, and I promised a scathing feminist review via blogpost -- it's coming, I promise. I'm flying to India this weekend so I have 22 hours and 56 minutes to unleash my full inner "turning men into rodents" goddess.
But mostly, so that in nine months, I can reread this and laugh at how unnecessarily confused and needlessly worried I was... yeah. That's what's going to happen, right? No? Yeah, no? No, yeah?
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