Love? What's that?

I feel like a lot of my posts have been on the more melancholy side. For this post, I’m going to talk about a thing that is a more positive emotion: love.

First of all, what is love? Haddaway doesn’t give much of an answer, but the song does bring up the emotional vulnerability that goes hand in hand with love. Over my life, I’ve seen the word “love” be used to show all these varying degrees of how much someone enjoys something or someone-- even though it’s just one word. There is no scale and love is different for everyone. That’s what makes it so challenging to express really intimate emotions like that in the English language-- we all use this one word to express our fondness for senses, objects, ideas, friends, family, significant others-- and we expect everyone else to know exactly how strong the emotion is with only that one word at any given time. Of course, we could use context clues, but what if what if there are none? What if someone says, “I love this shoe” but means “this is an amazing shoe and its style is beautiful but I’d probably trade it for something that fits me more comfortably” and a friend thinks they meant “I want every single shoe I own to be this shoe and I will wear them 24/7.” That’s definitely not the best example, or the best explained, but I hope that shows the disparity that using the word love can create between how we perceive each other’s ideas. Also “I love green” and “I love this pizza” uses two different types of love: sight love and taste love. And, once we get into the territory of loving people, that’s where everything gets so extremely confusing.

The Future of Friendships

So, the Nov 1 deadline past. I made it out alright, although it was super stressful. While I was working on everything, those college apps started to get me thinking about my college life. I began imagining what activities I could do and places I could go-- and then I realized that in all the scenarios I was making up, my current friends were with me. I had to stop myself because when I get to college I know that won’t be the way it’ll be. They won’t be with me.

It’s difficult to think about leaving the people that I’ve been cultivating these friendships with for the past five years. Five years is a long time. That’s more than a quarter but less than a third of my life. It’s been so long that I’m not sure how I’ll do without my friends by my side. They’ve been there when I’ve wanted help on homework, food from their lunches, or just needed someone to cry on and babble incoherently to. But, they’ve also been with me sharing these five years of maturation, memories, and self-discovery. I’ve gotten a taste of what it’d be like to be without them during summers when I was out of town-- and my summers sucked because of that reason. However, I can’t begin to think about what it’ll feel like for the rest of my life.

And… this is where the worry mill starts churning. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay in touch with all my friends after I go to college. Will those friendships dissolve once we leave Uni? Will we still talk? Will we try to have get togethers? Will there be falling-outs? Will we all become strangers? Are all my friends just friends by proximity? I’m not sure how to answer any of those questions. But, as college gets closer, they start to appear more often in my mind.

I know I’ll make more friends in college. However, I’m really horrible at that. There are those rare instances when I just click with someone and we’re instantly friends, but most of the time it takes me a long time to warm up to people. I do the thing where I overthink everything that I say to the point where I rarely say anything. I can tell when I’ll get along with people really well, but it’s just the fear of scaring them off that makes me crawl back into my shell.

I guess, no matter what happens, a thing I can always count on having are the memories I’ve created over the past 5 years. I’ll cherish them for the rest of my life.

AHHHHHHHHH!

Guess what?!?!? It’s almost November 1! And guess what else?!?!? I still have 5 college essays to finish writing and revising before then! :’)

Honestly though, if past me found out that future me was in this predicament, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve been a procrastinator for as long as I could remember. Over the past few years, I’ve discovered that I’m a procrastinator by perfectionism. I’ve tried to overcome that, but it’s so deeply rooted in me that even when I do manage to rip some of it out temporarily, it grows back as vigorously as ever.

I usually don’t think of myself as a perfectionist. I don’t have enough energy or willpower to try to make sure everything I do is perfect. I want for everything to be amazing, but getting myself to actually work on things is another story. There are some things like craft projects where I can’t stop myself from working on it and making sure it’s exactly how I want it without settling for less. For everything else, though, once I start working on it and it’s not going that well, I immediately want to stop. Maybe I’m a lazy perfectionist, if that’s a thing.

But, a lazy procrastinating perfectionist… Yeah, that sounds like a horrible combination. But, I’ve been those three things all at once today already. I was lazy. I came home from school and fell asleep instead of doing my homework and college work, and when I woke up I just talked to my boyfriend, listened to music, and freaked out over college applications instead of embracing the college work. It’s 11:49PM right now, and I’m still procrastinating working on my college essays by writing this-- I’m doing this so I don’t have to let myself believe that my college essays are very trashy or unwritten right now. Once I believe that, I think that’s when my perfectionism kicks in. I’ll write and edit one sentence over and over, and later I’ll freak out when I have so little work to show for all the time I’ve spent.

Usually for other writing assignments I will allow myself to leave the sentence and continue writing. These college essays are different though. I’m feel like I’m freezing up when writing them because they’re so high-stakes. For someone who doesn’t have the best test scores-- my essays might be the deal breaker. I want to convey my personality, I want to answer the prompt in an engineer type way, and I want it to be interesting. But, I keep driving into this ditch by trying to write so that whoever is reading my essay will like me. I also feel like I’m almost putting the college on a pedestal. I’m not sure why either of those things are happening. I don’t remember a time where that’s happened before, but hopefully once I get into a writing groove I can be more genuine.

It’s getting close to 12:30AM now, so I’d better get cracking. I hope a lazy procrastinating perfectionist can also be efficient.

Theatre

Last week were the performances for the fall play I was in, Arsenic and Old Lace. For all of you that came to see it, I hope you enjoyed it :)

It’s always sad once a show ends. Going from rehearsing 2-5 hours a day to nothing is really jarring. That’s partly because I have so much more time on my hands now. It makes my evenings feel abnormally long. But, it’s mostly because I’m not going to see my cast mates every day when I’ve seen them almost every day for the past three months. I run into everyone around school, but it’s not really the same. It’s not all of us together—we’re all dispersed and now the play is just a memory that we all share.

I feel like there is a special type of bonding that only comes from being in the cast and crew of a show. Especially for a small cast, like Arsenic’s. You get to bond over the stress of school during tech week, how crazy some scenes are, the costume choices. During tech week, everyone is together for 4-7 hours each night. That’s a long time to be around the same people. You get to know each person better than you did before. There is a sense of teamwork, trying to put on the best performance possible. The number of inside jokes grows each day. It’s amazing and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy theatre so much.

This fall play was my last. I feel a little heartbroken even thinking about it. When everyone started hugging me before the last performance, it really hit me that I wouldn’t be doing this again next year. Uni theatre has been a big part of my life ever since I’ve started here. I’ve been in almost every show since my subbie year. Although I’ll still have lots of other theatre experiences between Stud Prod and the musical, the fall play has always been my favorite. I’m not a hug fan of singing—mostly because I’m not good at it— which makes the musicals a little less enjoyable for me. They’re still really fun, but I don’t really get to act as much as I do in the fall plays. Studprod is still tremendously fun, but the rehearsal process is so much shorter and there are so many small casts that you don’t really get to mingle with everyone. The fall plays have been the perfect mixture of acting and mingling for me. Acting has made me happy for these past 5 years. I'm not sure that I could imagine what high school would've have been like if I didn't have Uni theatre.

Overwhelming College

I’m going to continue on my last blog about being overwhelmed—because I am still overwhelmed. Except, this time it’s for different reasons. I’m perfectly healthy now-- except for sleep deprivation, but that’s pretty much a constant at any given point in the school year. This time, it’s college that’s piled on top of my usual school and rehearsal routine that’s my problem. 

Most of the time I’d call myself a pretty strong person—emotionally at least. I’m usually able to stay calm in crisis, keep a cool head when things are presently hectic-- stuff like that. And, for the most part, I’m still doing that now. I’ve never, however, been in a situation where the stakes were so high. I’m realizing I can’t neglect any part in my life right now and still find my life okay in the future-- not even a little bit. I can’t neglect my school work for a bit to focus on college, because colleges will want to see current grades at some point. I can’t neglect theatre for a day or two, because next week is tech week (you all should come and see Arsenic and Old Lace, BTW), and in this show I’m a lead. I can’t neglect sleep, because if I do then I’ll be dragging my drowsy self throughout the entire day and my productivity will go down. And, I can’t neglect college stuff, because—well, if I do then I’ll just make my future much harder. I’d have to work extra hard to get into colleges with aid and scholarships if I don’t apply before November 1 (the early action period, before regular decision). 

The college process is a lot different than I imagined. I thought that once senior year hit, it would be college, college, college for everyone-- with the only talk being college and the only priority being college. It’s not like that at all. College is just lurking in the background. Occasionally the topic of teacher recs come up, or college essays, but everyone is just going through school like normal. Maybe everyone is just in denial of it. After all, it is deciding how we’re going to spend the next four years of our lives we’re talking about here. It’s so in the background that I still feel like I have loads of time to get everything done. In reality, I’m taking my second (and hopefully last) SAT on Saturday in hopes to get a score high enough to qualify for more scholarships-- and I haven’t started studying for it yet. On top of that, the deadline for asking for teacher recs is on Monday, and I have yet to ask any of my teachers. I have one month to write five or six essays. I have one month to decide what I want to do with my life. I wish college was more in my face. Honestly, that would make it so much easier. I wouldn’t be able to push all of it to the back corners of my mind.

Two weeks of sickness

In these past two weeks, my busy life has slowed down—actually, more of came to a screechingly slow crawl—because of the annual fall sickness. This year it’s seemed worse than the past to me, although it’s possible that I just haven’t gotten this sick in the past few years. Either way, it’s been bad.

Last week I had some germ that started off as a cough and grew into an even bigger cough. I felt like I was coughing my lungs out. Yet, no runny nose, no sore throat, no fever. Just coughing. Dry coughing. It finally turned into a wet cough, but I’ve never encountered something like that before. It drained the energy from me, and more than anything I just wanted to come home and sleep every day after school and rehearsal (which, btw, you all should come see Arsenic and Old Lace October 6, 7, or 8th). And, sometimes I did sleep. But, those times that I did, my schoolwork just built up and I soon felt overwhelmed. When one of my first exams came up on me last week, I realized that both getting well and studying couldn’t fit into my schedule. That night, I picked my health. The next day, I failed my exam.

This week, as soon as I was finally getting better, I caught the second bug floating around school. This time it started as a sore throat, turned into a nasty congestion filled nose blowing session, and now is a bad dry cough. I finally decided to give in and accept that I should stay home from school for a day and try to get a little better. And, it was glorious. I went to bed at 9:45PM the night before, and woke up at 6:30PM the next day (I woke up a few times to eat and things). I can’t tell if that was a good or bad decision yet. But, right now, having gone back to school for a day, I feel like it’s a bad one. I have a ton of work to make up. I’m not even sure how that much work could fit into one day. But, it’s there, and I have to do it for tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure it says something if I can’t even take a day to recover without missing so much important stuff that's so impossible to make up. Don’t get me wrong, most of the Uni teachers are very understanding and will do as much as they can to help, giving extensions and whatnot. But, there are still those few who just expect you to dive right back into everything even though you’re still at the bottom of the pool from that last belly-flop of a dive you took. The entire school is sick because no one will stay home when they’re sick, because no one has the time or energy to fit in two days worth of school into one once they come back. Even trying to fit in a little bit of work that you missed into your regular homework is so hard because so many of the teachers just slip around the rule about having no more than 30 minutes of homework a night. I’m not totally sure where I was going with this, but I should probably wrap it up so I can get to that other homework I’ve been talking about for a majority of this post. Wish me luck.