(no subject)
I woke up this morning at 8:00 without an alarm or other distraction, without a hint of fatigue, and decided to admit to myself something that I’ve been denying for awhile. This is the life I would have led had I been the same person I was through the first ten years in my life. And that is not to deny that everyone changes, but it was to admit to myself that had I continued down the same path I had lived until that point, I would be only a semi-noticeable, non-offensive, straight A student who did exactly what his parents told him, never kissed a girl, never smoked pot. But somewhere along that line I moved to a different path, several paths even, driven by whatever forces social acceptance forced on me. And I became over a period of time a boyfriend, a drug dealer, a celebrated athlete, a camp counselor, a B- student, an A+ student, a hippie, a wannabe scenester, a beatboxer, a frisbee coach, and countless other stereotypes I once defined myself as. Defined myself as. I never let others define me. If you press long enough, others will come to see you as you yourself do, and they did. And this progressed until I finally arrived at some amalgam of social traits. An A student who got drunk in the summer, read novels in his free time, spun discs on his finger and loved intensely the few people he found to be real.
And I was content with that. So completely content. To put on my diligent learner face at school, run track in evenings, philosophize at night. To sleep in on weekend mornings and go out on weekend nights in search of whatever there was to find.
And then I arrived at college, eager to be surrounded by intellectual prowess, by creativity, by free spirits and desire to do good. And find this I did not. But this is not another piece to complain about my environment. It is how it has affected me.
Because somewhere along the line, I lost that slight disdain for education. I love knowledge, of course, but what student wants to be holed up in a school for eight hours a day? I appreciated what I acquired, but still educated myself by other means. I still looked down upon those girls, nervous for an A, who in their fear of failure wrote down every note and word in their notebooks. And I just sat and absorbed, content to let everything soak in and figure things out on my own. And that way I was free to learn other things at night, with my own books, my own ideas, my own impulses I acted upon.
My first day of classes, I wrote down every word the teacher said. And the next. And the next. And then I got scared of not getting enough sleep for classes. So I went to bed at 11:30. And then 11:00. And then 10:30 and 10:00. And then I stopped being able to think on my own. I didn’t just highlight books, I near paraphrased every page in my notes. I wrote summaries for paragraphs that were longer than paragraphs themselves. And I looked across the classroom at the girl scribbling furiously in her cahier and realized that I was writing faster than her. And on weekends when drunk people ran screaming around my dorm, I locked my door as footsteps got louder near my door, and looked down to my notes. If I deemed I had studied enough, I watched movies.
And this is where the path that was before interrupted by a strive for social recognition ended. An introverted boy, concerned with his studies and his parents, abstaining from alcohol, rarely going out, oblivious to women and boring as all hell.
I’d like to say I could end this by recognized I’ve erred. I’d like to say I’m going to change my ways because I know there are better ways to live. But will I? I wish I had a more fitting way to end this. All I can really say is that I pray a change in season brings with it a change of mind.