I haven't been on here in a while. I actually forgot my password. I've been really busy with emotional lapses and losing 30 lbs. Also, I feel utterly incapable of stringing together one long and thoughtful post, so I will present a series of vignettes.
I graduated. All during college I had this lurking fear that I would snap unexpectedly and become incapable of going to class or studying and I would have to drop out and be the new homeless man, (as if there is only one), on the corner of H and 7th street. That didn't happen. Graduation was decidedly anticlimactic, the proverbial kthnxbye moment. The nostalgia is inside of me though and it will probably hit me in a massive wave while I'm riding the Metro and I will just start bawling in front of everyone who is on the train between Columbia Heights and National Archives.
I went to New York City this past weekend. I met up with an old family friend that I hadn't seen in ten years. He turned out to be flamboyantly gay (hence, living in Manhattan). He took me to a "club" that turned out to be emphatically gay. This was kind of awkward because I had to act nonchalant about the 360 degree views of exposed penises. His gay friend hit on me the entire night. He kept commenting on my lips and at one point told me he was imagining my lips in dirty places. I didn't really know how to react to that so I just took his comment "as is" and applied some chapstick.
My boss at my old job used to write me really mean emails telling me how inept and fat I was. Then she would end every message with a :) as if that was an appropriate substitute for social propriety. I kind of miss that about working in an office. I finally got a job. It's in DC so thank god I don't have to come up with a new name for this blog. Starting September 15 you can expect the bulk of my posts to be about how work is slowly draining my soul.
On Monday, I'm going to Europe for a month. I fly into London and fly out of Athens (LP <3) and will be visiting 13 countries in between. I bought tickets for the French Open but I'm scared of French people and I'm worried that I'll get beaten up and robbed on the metro while local Parisians watch, laugh, and ridicule my clothes. So I'm looking forward to that with equal parts excitement and extreme worry.
I'm still seeing Tall Blonde Alcoholic. Our relationship has taken on a strangely cyclical pattern where we fight about how he doesn't love me, we get drunk, I end up in bed with him, and I wake up and eat something really oily and dense. And then we do it all over again. He is going to Princeton in the fall. It's kind of depressing to think that one of these days my go-to melodramatic drunk rant, "Goodbye, I will never see you ever again" is actually going to stick.
I feel like every aspect of my life is changing and I am in a constant state of free fall. While I look forward to Europe, and upon my return, my new life as a young professional in DC, I worry about the uncertainty of it all and I wonder if reality will meet my conservatively low expectations. Like a book I don't want to end, I cling desperately to the last few pages of college life, not wanting to say goodbye to the familiar characters yet. Who, if anyone, is going to be a part of the next chapter in my life? Should I make an okcupid account?
I have a friend who graduated one year early to start working. She came home for the weekend and I met up with her for lunch today at New Big Wong in Chinatown. Talking to her made me feel like no time had passed at all since high school, giving me hope that the connections we make with real friends will last. But undoubtedly, she has changed, now a part of the corporate world and with a new boyfriend who leaves messages for her in the morning by putting blueberries on her laptop keyboard.
