Countdown on an "experience"

Today is the penultimate day of March.  The month after is April, then there's May, and then June.

Then I won't be in high school anymore.

I won't ever don a uniform again.  I won't fight to get into the crawlspace that is the small hall of lockers for senior girls.  I won't write or edit for my school newspaper anymore.  My teachers will become memories, memories will become names, names will become blurs.  And these people that I call friends, will they still be my friends come fall?  Will they miss me?  Will I miss them?

My mother once told me that life is a series of leaving people and people leaving you. My father constantly tells me that high school is the easy part, that it won't even be important or memorable or acknowledgeable at his age.

But what they might refer to, or I might refer to later, as an experience, is my life.  The average high schooler, even if they work all the time like me, has no idea what the outside world is like.  We have a ton of preconceived notions of being adults, but we have no reality to attach the cliches to yet.  This is still happening though.  I still force my way to my locker, I still eat the cafeteria food, and I'm still a kid. And if I'm anything like my parents, it appears as if these four last years won't mean in anything in the next ten.

I find it to be inaccurate, honestly. Events from middle school and elementary are still fixed in my brain, are still a part of the sum of the experiences that make me who I am.  Next year, high school will be lumped in with those.  Four years after, college will get lumped in too.  And in the autobiographical memories, I think they'll still be important.

The spelling bee I won at 10 is still important, as well as the first poem I wrote at 8.  Creating a writing compilation as a tear jerking thank-you gesture to a teacher at 12, performing in the church choir and in the school dance team--maybe my memory for good things goes a little farther back than my parents. In my freshman year of high school, I asked out my first boyfriend. I was so nervous, I shook and asked him to repeat himself because I couldn't believe he said yes.  I learned that I wasn't perfect--that despite being exceptionally smart, I still needed to work for what I wanted.  I figured out that repression and coping could be evil to my mental health, and that my own judgement wasn't as trustworthy as it was before all these new teenager questions got asked.  I nearly overcame my perpetual shyness, and now my quietness is more selective than ubiquitous.  High school wasn't a major catalyst.  There was no epiphany, nothing that might make my parents remember it.  It's just part of my growth.  And I think my progress, and I think everyone's progress is at least worth the acknowledgment, if not the memory.

My best friend told me last night that I work like a psycho, but I found someone else who's a psycho too

There's a plate of salad not eaten.  There's bits of chicken that were left alone.  The plate is bigger than a human head, and the orange juice is half gone.  The chocolate chip pancakes are in ruins; they're in bits and pieces.  The lighting is cheap, as well as the booth.  The service is mediocre.  The food itself--well, chain restaurants.  It's not even.  It's a chain diner.  The company I'm keeping is engaging but loquacious, and perhaps a little too much like myself.

This is the sad night out that is the break from this crazy, awful tailspin of a senior year.  I mean, the company I was with was great but the concept was skewed.  I just recently found out that Queens College doesn't e-mail; they send physical letters through the post office.  I don't know why Queens College is stuck in the 1950's, but I've been obsessively checking my e-mail for news from them every second of every day and now it seems the point was moot.  Now I have to search through the mail in my house, and HOORAY for that, because my mother is actually more disorganized than I am.

I'm exhausted and I was a horrible, horrible person to be out with last night. I almost fell asleep like three times, and to make things worse I took work phone calls during the meal.  I've been so sick lately, and so stressed.  I'm waiting for the point this post should be making to just get blurted out as not Rita types beside me, but a blue eyed blonde who doesn't give a rip about my existence types beside me carelessly.

So I guess the point I'm making is, the only way to get through this horrible thing called senior year is to remember the good parts.  As pathetic as the concept of the night out may be, it reminds you that you are working so that one day, hopefully soon, you will have a life where you can smile at the person across from you instead of squint at them and wonder about the work you have to do when you get home.

I want what I want.

It's really bad that I have no idea what I'm doing.

I just...I can't.  I haven't gotten zilch for acceptances OR rejections.  I have all these crazy worries that something didn't go through or my application got lost or something ridiculous that's just not supposed to happen and I have nowhere to put these worries. It's getting to the point where I'm wondering, what if I don't get in?  What then?

And what if getting in isn't what I really want?  What if I don't know what I want?  I don't know a ton about any of the colleges I applied to, just that those colleges would be okay with money and with what my parents want.

Seriously, the only thing I want is out of my house.  I want my independence, my freedom, my career.  But further than that, what if my career is wrong?  What if I change it 9 times? What if I get some weird literature degree that doesn't qualify me for any job?

I'm just really worried and anxious.  I thought I always knew what I wanted.  I've been certain since the third grade I would write for a living, and it was decided for me that I would go to college and move out and stay in New York.  I don't reject any of these things that my parents want for me; none of them are bad.  But when I look in the mirror I don't see what they want.  I know what they want.  My mother wants me to be happy.  But my father, well.  He's already seen his ideal daughter.  It was some intern at a company he worked at.  3.7 GPA and a double major who wants to work in his field.  That is absolutely not me.  My grades are up and down. I don't prioritize school or success  I prioritize doing what I love.  But that attitude has never made me popular at the dinner table or at any family gathering because my dad's parents, my grandparents, are just like him and I know they're not happy that all their kids didn't turn out the way my dad did. I'm not my dad and I have no interest in being anything like him, or my mother for that matter, or my grandparents.

But my peace of mind is contingent on my pleasing the parents I live with.  I can't be what he wants and I can't stop being me.  And I won't.

There aren't a lot of options for me in that house.