Journal: 5/26/08

I feel nostalgic.  24 days ago I wrote my now-annual 'Ode to Seniors', but I still wasn't sure what was happening. Now I know.  Summer is coming, that delightful time of year.  This weeken was just a forerunner of my eventful life.  A party friday night that ended up with me hanging out with other friends.  A bonfire saturday night, which resulted in a girl sleeping over whom I had, at one point in time, a major crush on.  A bonfire last night, which (thankfully) still allowed me to get to sleep before 2 AM.  All day today was given to the preparation for finals.  Those hated tests, the last grades of mine that will be sent off to the various colleges I now find myself considering.

 

UC Berkely, Colgate University, University of St Ben's, Macalester, Hamline, University of Southern California, Ohio Wesleyan, Amherst, Luther, Kenyon, Sewanee.  Where am I going to go?  Every choice could shape my future.  I go to Colgate, with upper class students, and make myself connections for a psychologist job in Manhattan.  I go to Hamline, St. Ben's, or Macalester, and I stay disgustingly close to home, perhaps forever doomed to spend eternity in the mostly closed-minded world of Minnesota.  I go to Southern California...and maybe I'll get one of my stranger dreams, and end up owning a nightclub in West Hollywood. 

 

I don't know what I want!  I want to go and see and live and dream.  I want to experiance a life outside of Minnesota, of the North states, of the midwest.  I want to breathe the smog-filled air of Los Angeles and go for a walk down a dirt road in Tennesse.  I need to feel the wind on my face as it blows off of an ocean, a field, a forest.  I've got the wanderlust, that hateful thing that lodges in your heart and brain and never lets you free.  I am restless in the place that I was given. 

 

But I am of my family.  All is for the family.  Take, for example, the day I declared I wanted to be a massage therapist (definantly a fun career).  My mother's look of disdain was enough to banish such an idea from my stilld eveloping mind.  My future workplace needs the prestige of a New York art gallery to satisfy my parents, and the live-and-let-live atmosphere of a gay bar in California to keep me from despair.

 

I'm saying goodbye to my senior friends, yes.  But I'm also saying goodbye to the people who have given me crazy dreams and crazy thoughts, the ones that have touched me (emotionally and physically), and those that I longed to know.  Farewells are annoying things when they mean forever, which some of these may very well end up.  And it'll be my turn before long, my turn to bid goodbye and say hello to a brand new world.

 

So, where should I go?  SoCal?  Amherst?  Colgate? St. Ben's?  Luther?  Ha, my friends laugh at me.  They tell me I have months to figure it out, that applications aren't due till Janurary.  But do they realize what I am facing?  All of them will attend Minnesotan or Iowan or North Dakotan or South Dakotan or Wisconson colleges, lead lives that are the same as those of their parents, marry, have children, retire, die.  All in one area of the country.  Sure, some will travel, some will leave, some will influence others.  But the majority will continue with their lives, uncaring that the large world around them is not just one large farmer's field, one large town, one large dairy. 

 

I can see myself at Colgate, finally no longer caught between dressing as a prep and dressing as a rebel.  I can see myself making friends with the future leaders of the country, the children who are only there because of their parents money, those that will inherit someday and never need to worry.  I can see myself at Southern California, finally no longer restrained by the views of my faith and family.  I can see myself making friends with the people who will own nightclubs and bars, the people who are there only because it's in the place of beautiful people, those that will never need to worry because they've got it all planned out.

 

I know, stereotyping will be my downfall.  But I can't help it now, as I peruse college guidebooks and take virtual tours, scan over offered majors and admission statistics.  I am a 3.8 GPA student, editor of the school newspaper, member of the Leo Club, member of the National Honor Society and the National Society of High School Scholars.  I am a tutor, an honorary member of the county's public library board.  I am the student who crows in happiness when she finds a copy of Dante's 'The Inferno' in a box of free books, the one who reads gay literature like it's going out of fashion.  I'm sarcastic, blunt, harsh, in-your-face, caring, sweet, determined. 

 

But where am I going to go?