Cali Girl at Heart

Okay, it's official.

I hate everything that being at home means. I thought that it was just a slight feeling, because that's all it was in California. But when I came home? Everything came crashing down around me. I thought that the break from school would rejuvenate me and make me appreciate both home and school life more, but I was completely wrong. I should have known from the moment I started spilling tears in the airport, but apparently that was too large of a realization for me to make. I guess I always thought that I should want to go back, because all of my friends at school wanted to go back, and all my friends at home wanted to see me. I thought I should feel some obligation to reminisce about the people and the place that I spent eighteen years of my life with.

Turns out that obligatory feelings are not at all valid, especially to me in this situation. I feel like a caged animal in this hellhole that's supposed to be my home. My family was visiting for a while, meaning there were constantly seven people in my house, with two satellite family friends always there that brought the total to nine. It was utterly stifling. I didn't even have the solitude of my room, and I was trying to see everyone that still wanted to see me. This was stressful and oddly emptying. It also manifested in a few things.

I want to get back to California more than ever. I want my friends there, my life there, my mentality there.

My mother is the bane of my existence at this point. She doesn't understand me, and because of that I can be unfair to her, I know that. But it's really hard when I'm in such a bad mood all the time that I'm home.

I think that my locality caused me to be unhappy for so many years. I can't stand it now, after being happy for so long, and I can't imagine how I lasted for so long in it without a break.

I have no idea what I'm going to show my friends from California when they come here. I have next to nothing here that makes me happy, and so how I can show them things here that are supposed to enrich their lives is utterly beyond me.

I need to move on mentally. Everything here is just dragging me down and I don't know how much longer I can deal with the psychological weight of the past on me. I was able to cast it off while at college because I was in a new setting. But every time I speak to someone here, I'm reminded of the fact that I left everything behind here for a reason. Because all the same things that I don't want keep being brought up. Every. Fucking. Conversation. I need to get out of here, and I mean for good. I can't have some ghosts of my past wandering around every single time I come home. I can't do it. I'm trapped here and I wouldn't be complaining except for the fact that I know so, so much better.

I need to truly and genuinely thank every single person that got me out of this place. Three months ago, I didn't know how large of thanks they truly deserved, and so I couldn't adequately thank them. But I can now, because I went away and I realized that I am never coming back.

My dad's thankful for the time that he's spending with me, and is handling the whole situation with poise and grace. My mom, on the other hand, is trying to buy my love. Which is so sad. My sister is spending all the time with me that she can, but she's grateful to have me home and she's also independent. My family friend who's like my sister is simply as desperate for attention as she always was, no shock there.

I just want to be home. To my real home. In California. Where there's potential for me in every respect of my life. Love, academia, friendships, future potential, I can't end the list. Take me back to Berkeley.

This is Different.

In my life up until now, I really was never one to go on dates. I dated lots of guys, but usually we just casually hung out and then they asked me out as their girlfriend, then we went on dates. My past boyfriend didn't even take me on a proper date until like three months in. It just wasn't how we did things. But that all changed this weekend, when this sophomore asked me out. Let's call him S.

S messaged me on Facebook, telling me he really enjoyed hanging out with me over the last few weeks at my sorority's brunch (he also spent half an hour trying to find me at our date night because he wanted to say hello), and that we should go for coffee sometime. Major freakouts ensued. This was Friday night and I've been texting him ever since, pretty much all weekend. He's hilarious, attractive, a high school theater and show choir dork, taller than me, and can dance. So basically I'm already hooked. He's on YouTube, for christsake, dancing to Usher. Come ON. So now I'm sitting in Sociology class (don't even get me started on it) after being woken up at 8:30 in the fucking morning because someone decided to saw our hallway in half to fix the fire alarm system. I got mad, so I channeled my anger/nerves into laundry and dishes. Then I got pretty. How domestic of me.

The date is exactly an hour from now and I cannot believe how nervous I am. It's just coffee. Just coffee. I can do this, I've had coffee with tons of friends before. But for some reason, I'm nervous out of my mind. Because I feel like S is just too much of a catch for me. He's perfect in my mind, and that's making me so nervous because I'm all over the place. What. I'm making myself sick to my stomach, and that only happened once before, on a math test.

Doctor Update

Remember MD? Well, here's the thing.

I really had a thing for him, and it's only gotten more profound. Because when I get drunk, I like to talk to my Big about it. By the way, up until now, I didn't know that K was my Big. I found that out last weekend. This is important.

Long story short, K threw me a party for when it was officially announced that I was her Little. Naturally, it was at her boyfriend's frat and he told everyone about it. She got a handle and some cranberry juice and some beer for all of us, which was good. It turned less-good when I lost a game of Snappa, completely drunk at this point, and found myself upstairs, alone, with the remainder of the handle and MD, or Doctor.

I say less-good because there was so much alcohol in our systems it wasn't funny. But objectively, alcohol aside, this was the best fucking thing ever, because I totally wanted to make out with his face. But even in my raspberry Smirnoff daze, I knew that I had to be sly. So we set out to finish the handle, which actually turned mostly into him finishing the handle, because I was drunk as fuck. We got to talking about our lives, really intently. I told him things that only my closest friends back home know about me, and he was the first one in California that I told. It was amazing and a total bonding experience.

Earlier in the night, K had said that when her and P (her boyfriend) decided that they were both taking Littles (this was before they knew who we were), they determined that they would either be best friends or in love. This is relevant for later.

Back to Doctor and I in the room. We kept talking, and his pledge brother was being a dick, but hey, what can you do. He was jealous I was paying attention to Doctor and not to him. Boys will be boys. But eventually, I found myself nose-to-nose with Doctor, and I found myself saying "I'm not sure whether we should be best friends or making out right now."

Now I know you're all thinking it- "Wow, what a line! Props to you for that one!" And I agree. But he was drunk, I was drunk, and at that point I was just vocalizing everything that came into my head. Including that gem of a thought. Don't worry, it was well-received. He interpreted it as a cue to, indeed, start making out with me. My happiness at the fact that it was happening completely overshadowed the fact that I knew I was sloppy as fuck and my general dislike of drunk makeouts, because they're just a lot less fun than sober ones. However, that wasn't really what I was thinking of when I was kissing Doctor.

The evening ended with my Big, K, realizing that her boyfriend P had allowed us out of her sight, coming to the realization that we were definitely hooking up somewhere. She assumed P's room, and she was correct. Perceptive bitch. She also said that she was listening to both the conversation and the makeout. I love her to pieces, even though she might be a little snoop. Anyways, now I'm really not sure what the protocol is for this. The last time I've hung out with a guy sober was doing homework with my floormate. Hardly even close to a date-like situation, although it's more common here than you might think. Oh well. I'll find a way to figure things out and decide what I want to do.

For now, though, I'm secure in the knowledge of two things. 1) I will always be entitled to state that on the night of my Big/Little reveal, I hooked up with my Big's boyfriend's Little. 2) I will also always be entitled to state that I hooked up with a child actor.

Cheers.

Twitter's great, but...

...it isn't private. Everything I write is still connected to my name, therefore still connected to the person that people think that I am. Not the person that I am, but the image that others hold of me. Unfortunately, people still look up to me for doing something in my past that I currently don't uphold.

This would all be fine and dandy, but let's face it. I think I'm fucking hilarious. And sometimes, I have funny things to say that are, consequently, about drinking. Which I had to be against in high school but I'm not now. But this means that people that see those comments connected with my name still think of me as a role model against those things. Also I think it's trashy to post about drugs and alcohol all the fucking time, because that makes it seem like that's all your life is. Which my life isn't. This weekend, all of my sorority's parties got cancelled, meaning that I could find other parties, but it's much more likely that I'll be snuggled up in bed or in my sorority house watching Say Yes To The Dress and eating chocolate.

However, instructing my drunk friend last night how to wake up get on the train to go to the airport this morning was too funny. I don't know if you've ever tried to explain scheduling to a drunk person, but they don't seem to understand the fact that there are specific times they need to be in specific places. Too good. Also, what if I wanted to inform the general public that chasing cheap vodka with Double Stuf Oreos isn't as good of an idea as it sounds? I can't do that, because people still think I don't drink.

I also can't tweet about everything that I'm doing wrong and crazy since college. I can't say, for instance, "Accidentally hooked up with the pledgemaster when I wanted the pledge. #TSM". That makes me look like a whore. But anonymous accounts can do it all they want. So jealous.

Moral of the story, I've changed. And that's okay, but people's images of me haven't. And that's frustrating- maintaining an image that is no longer true.

At Least My Issues Benefit Me

Well, I've known this for a while. I have a horrible time remaining emotionally attached to people. It's something that I've absolutely struggled with, and me simply losing romantic interest has led to the demise of my past six+ relationships. And not just with boyfriends either- I don't really have that difficult of a time separating my emotions from logic when it comes to people in general.

I've always thought that the whole boyfriend-losing-interest issue was a terrible thing, until about now. I realized that this lack of emotional attachment is exactly why I can do college hookups. Because I'm not the one to get emotionally attached, or crush on someone to the extent that I can't get over it immediately. It just doesn't happen. And most girls are like "well, I can do friends-with-benefits" but really, bitch, you can't. You get attached and then the guy who's just hooking up with you because you're hot is somehow framed as this terrible individual who used you when actually, you were the one that broke the agreement. The rule is no feelings. If you can't handle that, don't put yourself in the position where you would theoretically have to deal with the consequenses.

Ten Points to Awkward.

Fuck my entire fucking life.

So I'm in a sorority, right? And in a sorority (and fraternities too), we have Bigs. Bigs are like your mentor in life, in all things greek, in school, in general. Now, my Big is a wonderful, amazing, incredible woman who is dating a guy in a frat. Typical. Now, we went on a Winnebago trip, or a 'bago', with her boyfriend's frat and I met this guy. His initials are MD, so let's call him doctor. He's a freshman, like me, and is super adorable. We see each other at a ton of parties, and he's incredibly cute and charismatic (and an actor. I mean, this is California, but seriously come on. How can I resist?). Doctor's Big is my Big's boyfriend. My big is K and her boyfriend is P. Also on the trip, I met a ton of brothers from the frat, and they all are super close with me now. This is amazing and good, except for when they start trying to set me and Doctor up. Don't get me wrong, Doctor's amazing. So funny, I could totally see myself with him. Except now that I know they think that, every time I see him is super awkward. Because I know that somewhere, someone wants us together. The reason I have to catch you up is because I'm an idiot and suck at blogging.

Anyways, my point is that now I'm always trying to impress him. I see him at tons of parties where he's being hazed, therefore drunk. And I don't mind talking to him, because I feel like he wants to talk to me. I'm drinking too, so my confidence is up. And the only time(s) I've ever seen him sober were when a. the bago was starting and he was driving and therefore couldn't drink and b. when I got pretty tipsy off of the swim team's jungle juice and literally didn't care how obnoxious/happy I seemed to see him. Well, that all just changed because I saw him in the dining hall, of all places, when he was with his friends and I was heading over to sit with my laptop, broccoli, and tortellini alone. To do some work. Which turned into blogging. Because it was so awkward. All I wanted to do was sit in the fucking courtyard and enjoy the beautiful Berkeley air and I had to have an awkward social encounter that wasn't even that awkward, I was just making it insanely awkward.

I mean he responded in all the right ways, said hi to me, asked me how I was doing, and asked if I was going to go to his frat for gameday when he left. I said I'd stop by. His smile gets me every time.

If only he weren't so short.

This isn't even anything, probably, just a stupid freshman crush.

...And Everything Changed

Perspective can be a little thing. It can be something that gradually dawns on a person, making them believe slowly but surely, things are different. This isn't how it happened for me. Today was like an in-your-face perspective situation. I realized a lot of things.

1. I'm going to fail out of school unless I get my shit together. Seriously, I failed my first midterm for a major prerequisite course. That's not exactly how I imagined things going, but what can you do? I certainly don't know. Get my shit together, that's what! But that was seriously a rude awakening. I guess I just need to learn how to study for this, which is easier said than done.

2. Relationships were given way too much weight where I'm from. Here, people hook up a couple times, and if they want to pursue it, fine. If not, that's fine too. There's no dating. And that's not just true at the college level- that's true at every level. There just isn't an emphasis on labels. Which is different, but makes a whole lot of sense. So what, if I want to act like a little bit of a whore right now, that's okay right? I'm not, by the way. I'm just fostering that option, should I choose to pursue it.

3. Everyone in California is really fucking short. Which works for them, because they can all be short together. However, here's me: "oh hey guys, how's the weather down there?" because it seriously is an issue. The vast majority of people here aren't taller than me. And that makes things a little weird, because I knew I was tall but I didn't know how tall I was. Oh well.

4. The only reason I'd go back to the Midwest is to raise kids or for a job. Grad school is happening, and that's amazing to think about (this is all, of course, considering that number 1 happens correctly). But I'm going East with grad school, because why the hell not? I don't want to stay in one area, and I'm not being tied down. I like having friends in all areas. All parts of the country.

5. I miss my sister a ton. She's coming to visit me tomorrow and that's super exciting to me because I didn't realize how much I missed her until she wasn't here anymore! But she's coming to see me!!!! That's incredible news. Anyways.

6. People that want you in their lives will make the effort to maintain connection with you. They will, and those in my life have. And that's reciprocal, obviously, but it's so true. And some people were meant to be in your life for a long time, and some were merely meant to stay a short time. That's natural, that's life. And that's okay.

Well, that's enough knowledge for now. I'm sleepy but need to shower. And you didn't need to know that.