take it back to the beginning, back to the start. when gravity's pulling, you're still holding my heart.

on our third day here, we had our french placement tests. the main message of the dictation we had to transcribe was something like:

"you will never know paris until you have suffered here."

i didn't understand what that meant then. i just laughed somewhat nervously and moved on with my day. but i've been thinking about it a lot lately, along with so so so many other things. (i guess that's what being sick, and therefore unmotivated to go on random adventures, gets you.) and honestly, my life in paris is nothing close to suffering, although there have been down times for sure. i've made great friends, seen incredible things, and lived a life most people on earth can only dream of. what i think IS suffering is my life at "home," my relationships with the people there, and all the plans i should be making to prepare for life after college but i'm not because i'm here trying to ignore them. these four months are a respite, where i cut myself off from the "real world" by escaping INTO it. but i'm afraid of what awaits me when this journey (which is half over already) comes to its all too swift conclusion...

FRIENDSHIP
had a long talk today with one of my new friends, about our inability to hold onto our old friends. it's scary because i feel the drift already. and it brings up so many questions i have about the nature of friendship:

how much of being friends is dependent on being near one another, being immediately accessible and intricately woven into each other's lives? isn't there such an enormous gulf between "keeping each other UPDATED on your lives" and "BEING a PART of each other's lives"? is it just inevitable that when you "move on with your life" you move on to new people too? could it be less painful to just accept that people are meant to leave your life than to try to cling to something that's not meant to last?

i don't want that to be the way it is. i refuse to believe it, despite all the evidence that i'm wrong. there are several people in particular who i can't imagine my life without, and i can't even bring myself to try. losing them would be like losing a part of myself because of all that we've shared and gone through together. and already feeling like there's a distance growing between us...it just makes me want to scream, "can't you see how much i love you??? can't you see how important you are to me? am i as important to you? then how can we let this happen???? let's BOTH try harder because our friendship is worth it!!!!!"

yeah, that pretty much sums it up. so that's what i'm going to do, i'm gonna try harder. these four months are just a test run for what's to come after this may...and i really don't want it to be this way.

THE FUTURE
why does this topic give me an ulcer? i'm usually not a stresser but, man, when it comes to thinking about the future my heart starts beating a million times a minute and i feel like i'm gonna throw up. i guess there are several reasons for this reaction:

1. i feel like i've fucked up my college career. having your only involvement for the past four years be a sorority...yeah, that's not gonna be impressive on the resume i don't have. i'm an intellectual, it's an inherent part of my identity that i cherish. so why didn't i do ANYTHING intellectual the past 4 years??? i'm passionate about helping people and making the world a more humane place. so why didn't i do ANY volunteer work, use my summers to do ANYTHING useful, or even bother to simply educate myself about ANYTHING going on in the world that might point me on a career path? what have i been doing with my time? not a whole hell of a lot apparently. so now i'm panicking because there's no rewind button on the remote of life, and so i've basically screwed myself over completely. i think there's a chance i might even have been excited to go out into the world and get a job if i thought i had a chance of being competitive in the applicant pool. but yeah, i already see the scorn and/or uncontrollable laughter of the people who read my applications and the doors slamming in my face. god, i just don't want to be a failure...because i know deep down that it'll be a crushing blow to my confidence, and i guess i'm also afraid the people in my life will think less of me. there, i said it. i'm afraid of looking bad in front of my friends and family. they all have so much confidence in me...misplaced? i hope not.

2. instead of having a clearer idea at the end of college, i'm actually less sure what i want to do NOW than i was as a freshman. combine this complete cluelessness with my wanderlust, and the fact that i'm not gonna get to be picky about whatever job i take, and who knows WHERE the hell i'll end up. which is exciting and completely terrifying at the same time. because i want to give reassurances to people, to be able to say confidently "i'll always be there for you when you need me." but the fact is that i don't know where i'll be and how that'll work. ugh, and the problem is only compounded by the fact that i attract people like me, people who won't limit themselves to anything less than the entire world, people who are just as uncertain about where they'll be as i am. so i can't be their foundation and they can't be mine. god, things would be so much easier if i was friends with simpleminded people who just wanna live in (insert city/region here) their entire lives...but the truth is that i hate those people, so that wouldn't make me happy either. lol. it's just scary to think in a few months we're all gonna scatter and who knows if or when any of our lives will coincide again. home is where my friends are and once that concentration no longer exists, i won't have a home to go back to. from my experiences with recent college grads, that's the hardest part of the experience: you lose your home which is traumatic enough, but then none of your friends are really there for you because they're all going through the same thing and are caught up in their own scramble for a new life...i'm just not ready to start all over again, make life from scratch again. but i'm starting to realize that it's something you have to do repeatedly in life and, just like this isn't the first time, it isn't gonna be the last time either.

i know i need to get over these hang-ups, let go of the mistakes i've made and make the most of the time i still have. do something productive NOW instead of worrying about how unproductive i've BEEN, because by just giving in to my panic and pessimism i'm just making the problem worse. i know this. but still, thank you to the people who continue to remind me when i forget. just like the friend thing, i'm gonna try to pull it together now and make things how i want them to be rather than just settling for the way things are. not sure how exactly to do that, but yeah...what can i say? i'm a work in progress...just like everyone else, i guess.

ok, it's time to bring this most massive of updates to a close. i'm kinda scared to push the "publish post" button...because i'm really putting it all on the line here. i think sometimes people who don't really know me have the false idea that i'm super confident and unshakeable, an idea i must admit i foster whenever i can. i want to be strong for my friends and i guess i think the best way to do that is to pretend that i never fall apart, that i have it all figured out. as you can see, that couldn't be further from the truth...