peter-versus-mr.-darling

I took the GRE today. I did okay on it.
When I say "okay" I mean I got way higher than I anticipated on the math and not quite as high as I wanted on the verbal.
Because it's a computer-based test the results were available as soon as I finished so I called home while I was waiting for mayhem to find the bizarrely located test center to pick me up and we (my mother and I) fell to talking about my summer's plans, and it hit me in a solid and peculiar way:
"summer plans"
will not have much meaning in my life for much longer. We even talked about my getting a job and an apartment and things. And as abstract concepts those things do not bother me at all even remotely.
But applied to me, on the phone with my mom, they are foreign and frightening and I do not feel like childhood should be over yet. And it is.

Soon my life will not be defined by my double major, or my number of Facebook friends, or the grades I get. Grades. Tiny convenient measures of worth: how many times have I looked at you and felt so good about Me?

I am not sure how my life will be defined.
I know how it should be defined
and even how I want it to be defined.

So really? I will graduate college in seven months. I will either go home for the summer or work and rack up cash and find an apartment and a roommate and get a driver's license and maybe a haircut or something
and my life will go on
because I am alive
and that is what happens to people: they live.

I just have to get used to that living looking very different from what I've been accustomed.
I am
a little
afraid.
That I can't do it without someone else there picking up the pieces of my mistakes.
That the lives of the people I love will also go on but
without me in them
without theirs in mine
and I am a selfish beastie. I want to keep them all. I can't.

(this is only part of it. since I know there are wonderful truer-than-true answers for all of these. but...I needed to write them out at least a little anyway.)

A First

Candidly:
When I imagine you reading this, I squirm
Discomfited, like a Frog
Self-pinned for dissection. Because you knowing how I feel
Feels that way: fate Worse than Death.
But I am no true Introvert, and reticent as I am
or Wish to be, my fingers curl
of their Own Volition around the pen
and I write. Even as the words form
my mind registers a Protest, lyrical Roadblock,
cautioning against the following:
Sap, Cliches, and Flowery Language. So I do my best
To avoid the offenses. Not such an effort: I do not think
I could be Those with you, despite
whimsic and ironical Effort, or Anonymity of Subject.
But, since I cannot say even these things to you
When we are sitting, silent, at a red light:
You always smell like Clean Laundry
And you know when to take me Seriously
far more often than I give you credit for.
You keep a low enough Profile to be overlooked,
and for some reason I did not intimidate you.
And even though
We've hardly gotten started, I suppose
I wanted to say thank you.
Because if it has been obscured by Cynicism (third Wheel
Which makes our Tricycle go) I think you're pretty amazing.
And for those Insignificants of yours, the ones you sneaked in and forgot
(which is like you, very) a long Time ago,
I noticed
Even though I tried hard not to.


Like a diamond in the sky how I wonder

Summer Child Care

When I think about my future,
I can only hope
That it does not involve this summer's pastime:
Cleaning up a five year-old
Who succumbed to diarrhea,
(Sans toilet)
And immediately
Blamed the devil.

Hello, July.

Habit Kickery

I had a weird experience, and I am going to blog about it.
There are any number of people in whom I can confide. I am sensible of this, and take full advantage of it. Unfortunately ("Repeatedly" and "Stupidly" would also be good sentence openers here) I have this tendency to turn to the support system around me before turning to God. With problems. With fear. With grudges.
And this is a problem because people
can't
fix
anything.
Shocker.
People, in and of themselves, are just as screwed up as I am (some of them more so). Yet we expect each other to be able to solve our problems.
Normally, all I really need is someone to talk to. A listening ear. And most people have two, which makes people ideally suited for that sort of task. But the times when listening won't change anything, when I need to be changed, there's nothing people can do to help.
I learned this lesson when I was about sixteen, when I talked about a problem with a Trusted Person, to realize as I walked away that nothing had happened.
I've been learning it again over the past month.
I tried to talk to a friend about something important--and couldn't. For the first time, I couldn't say a word about what I wanted to. Normally it is no problem whatsoever for me to talk about myself. I have a blog. It's inherent.
But I couldn't talk. I couldn't segue into the subject, I couldn't just blurt it out, nothing. Because really-- what I needed to talk about was no one's business but mine and God's.
My friends, great as they are, can't be my relationship buffers with Christ. This blog, useful as it is at times for self-expression, is no place for that conversation. When He and I have a problem, I have to talk to Him about it.
Even if it means keeping my mouth shut.

I'll learn.