I have a love/hate relationship with change, and right now the love for it is stronger.
I started college; something that I never thought I'd accomplish in a million years. I assumed I'd have to move on at some point, it never came to me that it would be now and not in another lifetime. The college I'm going to is also unorthodox in accordance to what I thought my next Alma mater would be. When I was younger, and honestly as I think about the future now too, I always had big, fairy tale dreams. I say fairy tale because they're dreams that don't particularly apply to me. They're dreams that are unrealistic and far more materialistic. I used to think that I wasn't good enough for my dreams, but now as I make my future a priority and I work to better myself, I realized that my dreams just weren't mine. They were what society wanted me to be. What I saw on TV, as opposed to what I was given, or what I worked for. Now, I'm revolving my dreams more around who I was, who I am, and who I will be. I thought my next step would be at a unique university, but now I'm more than grateful that it's at a community college because of so many different things.
I love it for the people I've already met, the path I'm beginning to take, my building and the shuttle I get to ride on, and the sister that I get to live through this with.
It wasn't my sister's intention to attend this college either, which is another thing that changes so rapidly but it has to be welcomed because there isn't any other way. She had a complication with the financial aid part of attending the university she was attending, so she made the switch to come here and it is so easily becoming one of the best choices she has made. She's closer to me, her family, and taking a detour towards her clear path towards everything to do with child/adolescent psychology. She's winning, and she was winning then too, but now she has me and the sweetest roommate ever to look forward to here at our college.
And on the topic of roommates, I'm blessed with two. Our room is really nice, and we're all branching out and we're so different as people. But even that's okay, because I need to learn how to let loose and be unconditionally happy and welcome all these new people into my life. It's crazy just how many mixed feelings I had about living just an approximate twenty minute walking distance from campus, but as I go on to live here, all feelings are associated with happiness.
It's crazy how much college offers you, and welcome week is even crazier. I didn't know that there would be so many different ways to enjoy college, and so many terms and things you didn't know even existed until you're actually attending it. I had no idea there were going to be events to attend, dances to relish in, games to cheer and pay a crap load of attention to in hopes that your home team will win.
One of the things that I didn't expect there to be was a hypnotist show. And what I didn't expect was to volunteer for a whole hour and embarrass myself in front of fifty people. I wasn't the only one doing embarrassing things, but at the time I didn't care and looking back at it there's not really anything that I can do about it, but even if I could do something to change it, I wouldn't. I didn't particularly know what a show like that would encompass, but now it's blatantly clear what it would be.
It would be a person with a wild, encapsulating personality insisting that everything that his volunteers would do wasn't embarrassing and yet it was. He swore it was supposed to be comical, and just as the poster and schedule that we received had said, it was funny. It just never said anything about it being so long. It never said anything about me cuddling up with strangers on command, sleeping on command, making an absurd pose and superhero name and occupation on the spot. The poster never said anything about me having to reiterate it in a microphone, dancing for an imaginary 10,000 dollars but not having it in me even under hypnosis to dance my heart out.
And then there was this painting class that we did. I held the idea of the painting in my head. I knew exactly what I was going to paint: holding hands. It's something that I'm obsessed with but solely because of intimacy, and the "empathy" and the "unity". I quote these because that is exactly why I scrawled them across my painting.
As I continue on in college, I keep learning more about empathy. I am really knowing stories and breathing the people's lives in and holding their hypothetical hands as they continue on their own journeys. I have learned to love people that I have met merely a week ago. And it's absurd, and what I never expected, but I'm accepting it the more that I fall deeper and deeper into the abyss that is becoming my adult self.
And with that, I'll leave it but I am certain I will have so many more thoughts on it. Thoughts that I'm assembling and work that I'm investing myself in.
I'm busy, but I'll never be busy enough. I don't say that with any negativity either, I say that with content and capability.
We're at peace.
Finally.
[This picture was not my idea. The volunteer was really invested in doing her job and reporting to the coordinator that the class went really well. She would do so by showing them pictures of our final paintings. She then asked if we wanted pictures, so I didn't hesitate to bring her my phone. I definitely had to get my picture with my best friend, and relish in the fact that we're finally living together and "making it happen" in the process.]