...

I keep going through bursts of distress. I don't know how to not be melodramatic about it... and I'm simultaneously embarrassed and weirdly pleased. What I'm worried about is being trapped. I'm worried that I follow too many rules and that I'm just being corralled into a system and I'm going to feel like I never lived. Which I KNOOOW is melodramatic. But it's also, to all my knowledge and feelings, true. And what I'm even MORE worried about is that the feeling is going to go away. That I'm going to lose interest in these feelings. 

So for a while I've been trying to decide what I want to do... and it's almost funny how difficult it is to think about. I would think "okay... I want to go to New Orleans, learn how to play the guitar, get a shitty apartment maybe... get a job chopping wood or waitressing or... some job I can't even imagine and see where that takes me... but I'll have to graduate first... I don't want to be stuck without a degree..." which is TRUE but also EXACTLY what I'm talking about... not being able to escape... because I'm scared. I mentioned the issue to my grandpa, and after appreciating what I had to say, and he told me to join the peace corps or something after I graduate. And I was like great, perfect. And then I realized that that's just ANOTHER organization (if I do join... I'm going to feel shitty about this entry (LOOK AT HOW I JUST DID IT AGAIN-- wanting to escape but planning for when I come back)).

What I mean to say, is that no one I've ever met has regretted their decision to run away from home or do a shit-ton of drugs or quit school or spend all their money and move to Europe. People don't regret that because it's life and they lived it. Some people die that way... but who cares? People have BIG regrets when they spend 20 years in school and end up in the "job of their dreams" and ... then what? People regret never breaking away.

  

Also, I'm 20 years old and I literally have nothing to show for myself... not to show other people... but I can't even think of anything that I think is great just for me. Nothing but talk. And even the learning that I do never means anything to me. I forget everything that I can't relate to something bigger, anything that I can't use in my thoughts later. 

I'm sad because I'm pretty sure that I'm not actually going to gain anything from my last year of college. I'm antsy. I want to stop. I had this experience and now I have to ride it out with $25,000 more debt and another whole year or else it was just a waste... which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm sad because this is the age... the age when you're idealistic and you can do something about it. That's why the best revolutions happen when 20 year olds take action. That's how we got out of Vietnam. That's how China became communists. 

If Natalya was going to leave school now, travel around and see what she could do, I bet I might go with her. I didn't get it as much a year ago. What hurts me more though, is that I don't seem to be able to do it on my own. 

But hopefully, today I'm going to buy a guitar. It's a cop out... a symbol of how I REALLY want to be able to be brave and free... but at least I can do SOMETHING that I want to do. I don't have to be afraid of that. 

Note: Sometimes when I read my blogs (or other people's) I can read the passion in them. This one is a hallow echo. I don't know if anyone else can read that but I HAVE to make the clarification because I feel strange and stupid writing so dramatically about something that IS so much in my control... and yet feels so out of my control. BUT this is important to me... and I know that I didn't express it well. I just need that to be noted... I'm not joking. I AM worried. And I know, also, that saying it doesn't mean anything at all. It's on the same level as thinking it and it's only one step above NOT thinking it.  I'm going to have to do something about it. That will be the leap. And I hope I start taking these steps soon. I hope I don't forget.