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The only thing I want in the world is to write books and I'm terrified I won't be able to.
Apr. 3rd, 2009
You know, I think PostSecret was amazing last night, but I also think it was supposed to cheer me up, and it...kind of had the opposite effect. I'm not sure if the knot of tension in my stomach is from thinking about things that I tend to keep quiet, from cramps, or from the fact that I have to go to band today and I really, really don't want to. (Thanks for that, Tulane. No, really, thanks. Apparently in high school I was less tied up in the music and more in it for the people and the Tulane concert band's hammered that home and now it's too late in the semester to drop the class.)
I mean, I was probably overdue for one of those vaguely depressed and listless days anyway, but still. Now I'm thinking about things, and I don't want to; it makes me nervous. And some of this was already on my mind before (thanks, mom, for the lovely conversation over spring break that basically sums up as, "Why are you paying all that money to go to that fancy private school if you don't want to do anything with your life besides write? You can't make money as a writer! You should become a professor!" when I have made it pointedly clear that one of the last things in the world I want to do is stay in academia, despite the fact that both my parents are pushing it on me. The other thing on that list is teach ESL. I could do it. I really, really don't want to; my dad has a master's in ESL and look what that got him) (and don't even get me started on my father; that's one of the things I'm furious about that I don't think I could ever actually say to either of my parents, because Jesus Christ on a fucking pony and I babbled this out to my friends at dinner last night, but god, it's one of those things I don't want to think about because it's not like I can do anything about it) and some of this is stuff I've known but don't want to say for whatever reason, but now I'm thinking about it and now I'm a wreck.
Here's a secret: I love being an American. I am ridiculously fucking glad and fucking grateful that I was born in the United States of America; I love my country, ridiculous as it occasionally is, and I love the flag and the Constitution and the Declaration of Indpendence and I am so grateful and so relieved that I'm an American woman, an American citizen, in the twenty-first century. I love my country, I love her ridiculous ideals and her rights, and sometimes it terrifies me that I could have been born somewhere else, sometime else, and I wouldn't even know what I was being denied. I'm proud of being an American; I'm proud of my American passport, and I love my country.
And I was sitting in the dark being melancholy and wishing my roommate hadn't spent the night last night, but she just woke up and turned on the lights, and suddenly the world seems less depressing. FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS.
I mean, I was probably overdue for one of those vaguely depressed and listless days anyway, but still. Now I'm thinking about things, and I don't want to; it makes me nervous. And some of this was already on my mind before (thanks, mom, for the lovely conversation over spring break that basically sums up as, "Why are you paying all that money to go to that fancy private school if you don't want to do anything with your life besides write? You can't make money as a writer! You should become a professor!" when I have made it pointedly clear that one of the last things in the world I want to do is stay in academia, despite the fact that both my parents are pushing it on me. The other thing on that list is teach ESL. I could do it. I really, really don't want to; my dad has a master's in ESL and look what that got him) (and don't even get me started on my father; that's one of the things I'm furious about that I don't think I could ever actually say to either of my parents, because Jesus Christ on a fucking pony and I babbled this out to my friends at dinner last night, but god, it's one of those things I don't want to think about because it's not like I can do anything about it) and some of this is stuff I've known but don't want to say for whatever reason, but now I'm thinking about it and now I'm a wreck.
Here's a secret: I love being an American. I am ridiculously fucking glad and fucking grateful that I was born in the United States of America; I love my country, ridiculous as it occasionally is, and I love the flag and the Constitution and the Declaration of Indpendence and I am so grateful and so relieved that I'm an American woman, an American citizen, in the twenty-first century. I love my country, I love her ridiculous ideals and her rights, and sometimes it terrifies me that I could have been born somewhere else, sometime else, and I wouldn't even know what I was being denied. I'm proud of being an American; I'm proud of my American passport, and I love my country.
And I was sitting in the dark being melancholy and wishing my roommate hadn't spent the night last night, but she just woke up and turned on the lights, and suddenly the world seems less depressing. FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS.