I was walking to the diner the other day, and the temperature was perfect, like summer had begun to pull out it’s autumn clothes from under-the-bed storage. I was in a real huff about everything - what do I want to do with my life, who do I want to love and be loved by, where do I want to go, what do I want to experience. Just a regular Tuesday night, you know. And then, this boy biked past me quite quickly, and I heard a woman in a nightgown sweep sweep sweeping her front porch, and a breeze licked me right on the shoulder, and it hit me a little too hard that I’ve lived in the same place for my entire life. Except for, literally, one night in freshman year when I braved a dorm room, I’ve been in the same house, in the same city, in the same state my entire life. Whenever I meet someone new, and hear about where they’ve lived, where they grew up, where they intend to go next, it catapults me yelling and kicking into the sky, thoughts and decisions whizzing by me as I sort of spiral back down. Walking down my same old block, I thought about how four years ago, there was no way I wanted to go away to college, how two years ago there was no way I was going to study abroad. The problem is, it seems, that we have to make decisions for our future selves (possibly almost entirely different folk) in the present. We can only assume what we want now is what we will want in a weeks, six months, four years time. I am not the same person I was when I started college. I look sort of like her, with better clothing choices most of the time, but I’ve grown and warped and developed and learned so much about myself and what I want, become someone so, so miraculously different. First, I was scared, really scared, by the things I didn’t do, by the things other folks my age have done and done again a million times. But then I got a different sort of scared, the one I think people call “good scared.” That fear that I imagine one has when they’re about to skydive for the first time or bungee jump or hike to the top of a huge mountain. A slight fear of failing, but predominantly the excitement of seeing something entirely new, or something familiar in an extraordinary way. I began to think of how big the world is, and to bubble over with thoughts of interning somewhere I’ve never been before, some
wheres I’ve never been before, living, working, meeting, dancing, party rocking, loving, in a bunch of somewheres I haven’t been yet. I’m not sure exactly what I want, but every now and then these moments of fear and possibility pop up and I figure it out just a little bit more. This is not everything I wanted to say, exactly how I wanted to say it. I’m terrified of moving, terrified of never finding love or recognizing that I am a person who deserves certain things, and I’ve sort of spent the past few days mulling things over, watching lots of Doctor Who, and convincing myself that I am charming and not weird in an all-together off-putting way. But this is me, growing, and growing, at least a little bit more.
Sorry for the break in disney posts. I was feeling what experts often call "quite thinky" and felt the need to write and share, and this outfit sort of fit my feelings in a weird sort of way. Don't worry though, the post of me with 8,000 disney characters will be coming along shortly.
Dress: JCPenney, Sweater: H&M, Boots: Lucky Brand
Until tomorrow,
Nicole
