Stir of Emotions

So the banquet is over (there are pictures here) and people are leaving slowly from the house. I am going to be here for another two weeks; one of the few girls here for that long. It was eerily empty in my room today when I woke up (for a minute, I thought I had woken up too late!) and the bathroom was completely open for my use. But somehow I missed the hustle and bustle that I used to curse every morning; I guess it's true that you don't know what you've got until it's gone. I definitely got to work sooner than expected, but was without my usual subway ride buddy. It might be nice to remember what being alone feels like, because I am somewhat of a solitary person, but having been surrounded by so many people and then to suddenly not be will take some getting used to.

I also don't know about how I feel about the way I spent this summer. You see, after the banquet, we went out to Great Falls Park for our MSN end of the program reflections. I had very little to say; this experience was neither life changing or providential revelation (everyone else said that this has been an awe-inspiring summer; I can't say that I enjoy that kind of exaggeration - it has to be an exaggeration). That isn't to say I didn't have some things to learn about life and people or even a few things from our classes, but overall the experience has been fun. No epiphanies of the intellectual sort to be sure. I have met friends; we have yet to see if those friendships turn into the ones that I will cherish all my life. Friendship is a two-way street, and while I might want to keep in touch with some people, they might not want to, and (dare I say it) vice versa. There are those people in the program who confuse my feelings a great deal; I don't have the heart to say anymore here, but call me/email me if you want to know the full deal.

And on top of this melancholy is a sort of fearful excitement for the coming school year. Everything that could go wrong before this year started went wrong, so that does not bode well. And I KNOW I will be stressed like no other, but I have always made the most of my time, and I am still excited about classes and living with so many of my friends again (I am sure that will keep me out of the junior slumps, if that even exists). Ok, now I am just trying to make myself feel better by talking myself out of my fear and into my excitement. I'll stop now and I should get back to work. I have a list of things that I want to talk about (of a more scholarly nature) but there other pressing matters on my mind that keep me from being a pretentious blogger. I hate how life drags you down sometimes when you want to be in the clouds.

Almost Over :(

So I realized that people actually read my blog, so here I am, updating my blog, so that people might know what I am doing, rather than calling me. This time, I won't write a post about my miserable time, but instead about how the summer is almost over; my work with the NEH is almost over (we had our end of the summer staff lunch today at a great Italian restaurant) and the program with MSN is almost over. So as stressful as these next two weeks are going to be, and as much grief as I have experienced with the people in MSN, I have overall been incredibly happy with my summer.

Not only has my day internship been great, with all the different things I have had to do, I have enjoyed MSN. It's because there are those few that I really connect with and feel like I could be friends with them after the program; those few that can read your face like a map in discussion when someone is saying something utterly ridiculous or they can complete your sentences. The funny thing is that I may not know that much about their life or their problems the way I know other people's in the program, but I feel like I know them better and that they in turn know me better. We think alike, we act alike, and we are on the same level (more or less). There is a connection that is unspoken; sometimes it takes years for that to develop, but not in these relationships; the synergy is fantastic. There is this one intern in the program constantly tries to get to know me better (I think he finds me a fascinating specimen of a Muslim woman) and so he tries to find times when he can talk to me, but the situations are so contrived that he ends up asking me stupid, shallow questions (I hope he isn't reading this...wait, he probably is.) But at least he is trying, so I suppose I can applaud that effort. I really am not that complicated or hard to get, you just have to try a little harder with me than most. And I don't wear my heart upon my sleeve, so you can't just sit me down and ask, "What are you about?", which is what I think he was expecting. But overall, I really can't complain.

Now I am just sad that it's almost over...

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.

No Pity Party For Me

It's been a while since I last posted, because I have been incredibly busy lately. This past weekend was 4th of July, and my sister came over, and that was a lot of fun. The week before that, there was a massive storm in D.C., which shut down my office building for the entire week! It was incredibly relaxing to be able to sleep in during the summer, the way you are supposed to! Anyway, I was feeling down for a little bit about MSN, because everyone was leaving constantly to go back home (a luxury I do not have) or because I felt like I kept hitting my head against a brick wall when I would talk to some of the girls about life and what they should expect from it. See, lately, all the girls seem to want to talk about is marriage and boys, a topic that I usually like to stay away from with a 10 foot pole (more applicable to the topic of marriage than boys, of course). I feel like they all have this pie-in-the-sky notion of what marriage and love is, something that completes that missing half of you and leaves you feeling like you're walking on a cloud. I, of course, know that realistically there is a lot more to it than that, but that doesn't matter to these girls...they don't want to have to grow up so fast and be realistic. WAIT...they don't want to grow up so fast and be realistic, but they are jumping to get married. Is that not a contradiction in terms; an oxymoron if you ever saw one?

But they didn't see it. On the contrary, they didn't realize why I didn't see the error in my ways. Now I was the object of pity, that I had somehow missed out on childhood because I was more acquainted with the rougher things in life. And for a while, I bought into this rhetoric. How could life have dealt me such a shitty hand? All these girls were as successful, if not more, than me in life, and they were happy and content. And most of all, they wanted to do the normal thing that all people want to do at a certain age: get married. Why had I not developed a sense of need for companionship? Why didn't I feel like I could burn all my bridges and boats and just dive right in like these girls? Why was I so inhibited; why did I insist on being complete before finding someone to spend the rest of life with? I cried myself to sleep that night, thinking all these things and pitying myself for having lived the unsheltered life. Of course, I woke up the next morning, eyes puffy and feeling like shooting myself in the head, but when I went to work, I had a realization. Why should I pity myself? I am going to Yale, having a wonderful summer, have a great life, and going to have a successful future, God-willing. So why should I dwell in the past, a past that has molded me into the person that I am, someone that people respect and look up to, someone of life experiences that could benefit someone else if I just let them in on the knowledge. And it was then I decided...no pity party for me...I am going to take things in stride, as I usually do, and brush the fact that I see some things very differently from the rest of the MSN interns aside, and try to enjoy my summer with them. Hell...I might even learn something from them...