"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."
Guess what?
I'm going to India in July.
I am SO going to go to India in July.
I am taking Amanda and Gabby with me. (don't argue Gabby, be like the Dalai Lama.)
OMG we're gonna go to INDIA!!!
And somewhere along the line, I'm going to Japan. You know why? Because I can do it. And I fully intend to have a European Trip with my friends before law school. IT WILL HAPPEN.
Holy shit, all this stuff is actually going to happen. India, Japan, Europe...damn, I need to get my passport soon.
I was talking to a friend about it before. I don't think I was very clear at the time (ie, I was talking complete nonsense with no point at all). So I'm going to try and talk about it here. Still kinda pointless, but I think I'll hit on something if I ramble on enough.
I think the whole 'rootlessness' thing I feel goes back to when I first moved to Florida (yes, back to that whole story). I was so set in my ways in Jersey. I never wanted to leave, but then I HAD to leave and yeah, trauma. There are many, many different kinds of trauma, different degrees and different types. Suffice to say, I did not handle the move very well.
I kind of think that I might have stayed in Barnegat for most of my life if things had been different. And I'd have been content. But that's not how life turned out. I ended up in a whole new place for four years and in those four years, I never let myself get too attached to my surroundings. Pembroke Pines was always just a place for me, a steping stone. It's like, once I got pushed out of Jersey, that set off a chain reaction where I just had nothing to stop me from moving.
From the start I knew I was going out of state for college. I ended up at Loyola and I absolutely loved it.
But.
From the beginging, I knew I wasn't going to stay in New Orleans. I love the city, I love the school and I was (am still) happy to spend four years of my life here. But after? I'm going someplace new.
New Orleans is wonderful, but I'm not going to spend the rest of my life here. Certainly not in Louisiana. And I think part of that came from my NJ/FL experience.
Michael says that being in FL made me self-relient and that I'm stronger for it. I kind of stared at him like he was a crazy person and told him that there were whole parts of that experience that really sucked and he just said, "I know. And you are so much better for it and now you're gonna go to India." I smiled.
A whole 'nother aspect is the Katrina Effect. My class, especially, was effected strangely by Katrina. We ALL had to leave. Even before our first day of collage (but after Orientation and after we had moved all of our stuff in) we were basically put into exile.
Most people went home, went to a college near where their parents lived.
I got in a plane and went to Cleveland, Ohio. Why Cleveland? They had dorm room.
The strongest memory I have of that time is getting off of the plane in Ohio, looking around the airport and realizing there was no one to pick me up. It was a stupid thing, but for a girl that never had a car and knew exactly no one IN THE ENTIRE STATE? That was a pretty big deal. I had to figure out how to get to a school that I couldn't even point to on a map. I didn't even know the exact street it was on. All I knew was the name. And I had to figure out how to tip a cab. Then, I had to wonder around a strange campus with my luggage, figure out where the hell my dorm room was, sign random papers (and actually READ the random papers) and bully my way into closed classes that would actually transfer over...
I survived, though. ^_^ Freshman year was certainly interesting.
I think the whole class of '09 from New Orleans is really unique. Not only for what we had to go through, but for how we adapted. Life threw us the most random curve ball ever and we all managed to make it work and find out what was the best option for us. We didn't have the straight and narrow path of the typical 'Your First Year of College!'. No. We got kicked out of our city, we were told to not come back. We had to find new schools where we wouldn't really fit in because we were from Loyola or Xavier or Tulane. We had to deal with freakish tuition problems and different climates and telling our stories over and over again. And we were freshmen. Straight out of high school, with no idea what 'normal' was even supposed to look like. All of the decisions we had to make in the span of a couple of days were mind boggling. And all of the descions afterward were equally as pressing and as hard.
It's all about adaptablilty. Everyone I know has it to some degree. I know all of my friends here can, when push comes to shove, handle all of the crazy shit that comes their way. We've already been through the worst of it and did the best we could. Not saying that no one made mistakes along the way, but that's just a part of it, isn't it?
So I'm ready to go. I've got my goals and my aspirations and at this point, there is no limit to what can get done. What can be accomplished. Of course it will be difficult. Of course there will be times where I want to pull out my hair. But the point is, I am going to try. And like Michael said, I've got the whole self-relience thing down and Katrina taught me how to be open about unwanted change and how to make the best of it. I feel strangely free.
I keep remembering this quote that said, "Make a desciion and the universe will conspire to make it happen."
Well. I made my descion. I'm gonna go get that passport.
I'm going to India in July.
I am SO going to go to India in July.
I am taking Amanda and Gabby with me. (don't argue Gabby, be like the Dalai Lama.)
OMG we're gonna go to INDIA!!!
And somewhere along the line, I'm going to Japan. You know why? Because I can do it. And I fully intend to have a European Trip with my friends before law school. IT WILL HAPPEN.
Holy shit, all this stuff is actually going to happen. India, Japan, Europe...damn, I need to get my passport soon.
I was talking to a friend about it before. I don't think I was very clear at the time (ie, I was talking complete nonsense with no point at all). So I'm going to try and talk about it here. Still kinda pointless, but I think I'll hit on something if I ramble on enough.
I think the whole 'rootlessness' thing I feel goes back to when I first moved to Florida (yes, back to that whole story). I was so set in my ways in Jersey. I never wanted to leave, but then I HAD to leave and yeah, trauma. There are many, many different kinds of trauma, different degrees and different types. Suffice to say, I did not handle the move very well.
I kind of think that I might have stayed in Barnegat for most of my life if things had been different. And I'd have been content. But that's not how life turned out. I ended up in a whole new place for four years and in those four years, I never let myself get too attached to my surroundings. Pembroke Pines was always just a place for me, a steping stone. It's like, once I got pushed out of Jersey, that set off a chain reaction where I just had nothing to stop me from moving.
From the start I knew I was going out of state for college. I ended up at Loyola and I absolutely loved it.
But.
From the beginging, I knew I wasn't going to stay in New Orleans. I love the city, I love the school and I was (am still) happy to spend four years of my life here. But after? I'm going someplace new.
New Orleans is wonderful, but I'm not going to spend the rest of my life here. Certainly not in Louisiana. And I think part of that came from my NJ/FL experience.
Michael says that being in FL made me self-relient and that I'm stronger for it. I kind of stared at him like he was a crazy person and told him that there were whole parts of that experience that really sucked and he just said, "I know. And you are so much better for it and now you're gonna go to India." I smiled.
A whole 'nother aspect is the Katrina Effect. My class, especially, was effected strangely by Katrina. We ALL had to leave. Even before our first day of collage (but after Orientation and after we had moved all of our stuff in) we were basically put into exile.
Most people went home, went to a college near where their parents lived.
I got in a plane and went to Cleveland, Ohio. Why Cleveland? They had dorm room.
The strongest memory I have of that time is getting off of the plane in Ohio, looking around the airport and realizing there was no one to pick me up. It was a stupid thing, but for a girl that never had a car and knew exactly no one IN THE ENTIRE STATE? That was a pretty big deal. I had to figure out how to get to a school that I couldn't even point to on a map. I didn't even know the exact street it was on. All I knew was the name. And I had to figure out how to tip a cab. Then, I had to wonder around a strange campus with my luggage, figure out where the hell my dorm room was, sign random papers (and actually READ the random papers) and bully my way into closed classes that would actually transfer over...
I survived, though. ^_^ Freshman year was certainly interesting.
I think the whole class of '09 from New Orleans is really unique. Not only for what we had to go through, but for how we adapted. Life threw us the most random curve ball ever and we all managed to make it work and find out what was the best option for us. We didn't have the straight and narrow path of the typical 'Your First Year of College!'. No. We got kicked out of our city, we were told to not come back. We had to find new schools where we wouldn't really fit in because we were from Loyola or Xavier or Tulane. We had to deal with freakish tuition problems and different climates and telling our stories over and over again. And we were freshmen. Straight out of high school, with no idea what 'normal' was even supposed to look like. All of the decisions we had to make in the span of a couple of days were mind boggling. And all of the descions afterward were equally as pressing and as hard.
It's all about adaptablilty. Everyone I know has it to some degree. I know all of my friends here can, when push comes to shove, handle all of the crazy shit that comes their way. We've already been through the worst of it and did the best we could. Not saying that no one made mistakes along the way, but that's just a part of it, isn't it?
So I'm ready to go. I've got my goals and my aspirations and at this point, there is no limit to what can get done. What can be accomplished. Of course it will be difficult. Of course there will be times where I want to pull out my hair. But the point is, I am going to try. And like Michael said, I've got the whole self-relience thing down and Katrina taught me how to be open about unwanted change and how to make the best of it. I feel strangely free.
I keep remembering this quote that said, "Make a desciion and the universe will conspire to make it happen."
Well. I made my descion. I'm gonna go get that passport.