Old Habits Die Hard

It occurred to me as I was leaving the dorm tonight that I was carrying the things that are most important to me. If there was a huge earthquake or tornado at this moment, I could just crawl under this desk in the library and pull my backpack with me, and even if everything else was destroyed, I'd stay pretty much intact. That is, of course, inferring that if the stuff in the backpack were destroyed, parts of me would be too. It's pretty much empty at the moment, but I'm talking about my computer, some water, an umbrella (one thing I learned this year - never count on Worcester weather), my iPod (although unneccessary, since my library's on my computer), my lab manual (OK not crucial, but I'd be able to identify parasitic tapeworms and that's pretty damn important in times of distress), my sketchbook, and pencils. Likewise, I really don't draw often at all, but it's a comfort I need. I think I blog instead of drawing - if I didn't have this, I might have a freaking porfolio by this point. Oh well, I guess this counts for something too.

I can tell already that this last month of school is going to be the hardest. I could care less about the workload, but I mean that it's going to turn into a waiting period for me. I guess by this point I've come to terms with a lot of the stuff that's been on my mind this year, and now I'm ready to keep going. You wondered what we'd be like now if we hadn't had last year to build off of. Frankly, I probably would still be trying to transfer from HC, but I don't think I'd be handling it the way I have. I guess it's ironic to say that I've been handling it well, but I can't imagine what I'd be feeling if I didn't know what I was looking for. I looked back through some of the things I wrote junior year, stuff that I saved onto this computer because I knew I'd be interested in it at some point, and I see myself as I was. What I mean is that it's recognizable - the writing's pretty similar, though there's some screwed up punctuation, and I can hear my own voice when I read it to myself. But it all was a little cynical; there was this closed aspect of my thought, where you can tell that I wasn't really sure how to see things other than the way that I did.

If I was still that person, I'm not sure I'd have survived the way I have here. I'd have cracked on my roommate a long time ago, closed up away from everyone a long time ago, and I certainly wouldn't be writing about it. But needless to say, we both learned a lot about living last year, which is why all the things I wrote for my Humanities final senior year are still pretty relevant to the way I'm living now. Thank God I changed, is all I have to say, because now I can actually see the world around me instead of making up a sketch of it in my head and going off of that. I'm more tolerant, too, which makes a huge difference. Teagan has probably always had the most accurate image of me in her head over the years, and I know she gets how it all fits together somehow. She's always joked that I'm out there, that my sense of humor is just strange and that I have to think of everything in the most complicated way possible, but how I apply that to how I live has changed dramatically. I used to be a whole lot of sarcasm and nothing else, and now I feel like the sarcasm makes more sense and has lost its bitter edge. OK maybe I'm still bitter sometimes, but nothing compared to how I used to be.

All in all, it just takes a backpack and a short walk to take me away from my roommate, from a lot of my frustrations, from boredom... a lot of things in general. I'm getting back to that part of me that spends a lot of time alone, but it's not such a scary bad thing anymore. I'm not sure if you remember this, but a long time ago you told me that you wondered where I went after school, like I had this whole other life that no one knew about. I thought you were crazy at the time, but now I know what you meant - I'd gotten really good at falling off the face of the earth for hours, so good that I did it without thinking. Does it make a difference if I do it consciously now, if I know why I do the things I do, and that it makes me more whole instead of more fragmented?