The World Ends Slowly (And Then Not At All)
You know how in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the world ends by basically just blowing up? And that's it, it's over? Well, that's not how a world ends. A world ends in bits and pieces. I would know because lately I've been a bit of an expert on the ending of worlds.
I often feel like such a hypocrite on this blog because one minute I'm proclaiming my readiness to go out and explore the world, to spread my wings and FLY! And the next I am sobbing in misery at the prospect of moving an inch from my bed and the comfort of my friends. Well, as DL has reminded me time and time again: feelings are fleeting and oftentimes deceptive. And as a teenage girl I can confirm that this is entirely too true. Yes, in that moment at the carnival, feeling slightly queasy in the pirate ship next to AP, watching my former high school swing in and out of view, while down below middle school girls showed off their bralettes...I was ready to leave that very instant. And then days go by and I'm sitting on the metro with high school friends, walking through the boiling hot streets of D.C. with them, making stupid jokes with them, and...I am so not ready to leave.
And then I got home, washed off all my bubbles and sweat...and started feeling sorry for myself again. Well, not sorry. More just like panicked. I mean, that's a normal reaction to the destruction of one's carefully crafted world, right? (The melodrama is intentional). I think the main problem (and this has always been the main problem) is that I simply think too much. When I'm with other people, the panic subsides because I can't be actively driving myself crazy while carrying on a conversation. But as soon as I'm alone, or just alone in my head, I start up the spiral. If you've ever been to Hershey Park, it's similar to that giant funnel thing in the water park. I start off with this massive idea--college--and I delude myself into thinking that if I simply think the crap out of this subject, I will eventually funnel this idea down into nothing and the panic will be over. But the spiral always gets caught up in one place, about a third of the way down: my friends. And that stupid, awful creation that is "saying goodbye". I don't care that it's just for three months. It's still the end of normalcy in so many ways. Because right now, we can still pretend like everything's normal. I mean, high school doesn't start back until the 17th. We're still just a bunch of kids on summer break. So why do we need to say goodbye? Am I right?
Okay, it smells like cat pee. Ew. This is disrupting my creative flow. I lit my granny smith apple candle that's supposed to crackle but just sounds like a static-y radio. Hurry up and smell good, candle. Nope, not working. Time to break out the strawberry lemonade candle.
Anyway, as the song that's playing in the background just said: 'time erodes. And all along you slept on gold...' I've been sleeping on gold and time's been eroding around me and now I'm awake and I'm freeeaaaakkkiiiinnnnn' out. Because once you've slept on gold...you don't exactly want to go sleep on a bed of needles. And I don't want to say goodbye to all my precious gold (cough cough, my friends), because I like to pretend like we can leave time just hanging, go sleep on our bed of needles for half a second, and then go back to the gold life. I think that is another problem of mine (this is why I blog: to self-diagnose my own issues): I keep thinking of college as this temporary thing. I keep thinking of it in increments, like a prison sentence. Like, I get incarcerated on the 23rd and in three months, I'll be set free. Then I go back for another month...and then I'm out again. And so on and so forth. And I keep thinking about any potential "friends" I meet there as being my temporary prison comrades. Like we're all just substitute people, as Claire from Elizabethtown would say. I know I have it easier than most. I'm going to school a relatively short distance away from home and, what's more, my brother will be blocks away. Even though we're not BFFs, I've known him my whole life. We have a connection much deeper than anyone I meet on that campus. I know I have no right to be freaking out, and honestly, right now I'm okay. It comes and goes in waves (like that Greg Laswell song). It's just that sometimes the wave is more like a tsunami and I drown a little bit.
The music playing in the background is not helping anything, let me tell you. I don't know what it is with me and depressing music.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one really worrying about this whole thing and then I feel stupid for worrying about it because literally millions of people just like me have gone to college and (surprise!) not died. It's not a big deal whatsoever. And most of the time I have no trouble believing that. The paradox is that when I'm having the most fun (with my friends, doing fun things), that's when I start worrying. Actually, it's when they leave that I start worrying. So then it's this awful cycle because I WANT to see my friends and I'm having a great time when I'm with them, but as soon as they go home I'm like "NOOOO!!!! COME BACK!!"... "But also don't come back because it sucks when you leave!" And I'm like "One time it's gonna have to be a last time." But not even. It's not like we're gonna die and never see each other again. It's just three months. Ugh. I'm spiraling. This post is the worst. AB and DL help me!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, I thought that I would come to a happy resolution to my dilemma by writing about this subject to death (just how I think that if I think about it to death I'll get all the water through that little funnel) but that didn't happen, so instead I'm just going to change subjects because clearly this is one that needs to just be pushed aside and not addressed.
If you have not done an "Escape the Room" game, I suggest you do one. It may seem expensive for an hour of fun, but it's worth it. If you're anything like the eight of us, you'll be awful at it but have fun anyway just walking around the room and fooling with all the stuff they put in there and having fake revelations ("It's the rainbow!") before realizing that your ideas are completely idiotic and then eventually the lady on the other end will give you enough vague clues (and then super obvious ones when you continue to be dense) so that you can actually get a few tasks completed and feel slightly accomplished so that you'll come back again and try the other rooms that have a slightly better escape rate than 10-15%.
Also, if you go to DC, take the metro. For one, it's less stressful than finding parking downtown and it's kind of fun! The seats look like they've been ripped from dentist offices and apartments from the 70s and the carpets look like they've had their fair share of bodily fluids and poorly-sealed foods dripped on them but...well, we can't all have nice things. Sometimes the crappy ones are the most interesting anyway.
As for the bubble run, it was the best run I've ever been on (been to?). Usually I despise running but FZ and I just jogged and talked the whole time and obviously you can't be panting and talking at the same time so talking made me moderate my speed so that I didn't feel like I was going to pass out/throw up/combination of the two by the end of the race. I felt like I could've run another 5K! (As long as the whole thing was through bubbles...) The thing I liked the most about the race (besides the bubbles and talking to FZ) was that everyone was super laid back about it. It wasn't even timed. It was purely for fun. I don't think people do things just for fun enough anymore. It was refreshing. After we finished, we met my mom and she had to get some pictures of course and then I debated playing in the big bubble jets for about ten seconds before realizing that it would be a very long time (if ever) before I got to play in a giant puddle of bubbles while bubbles rained down from above me. FZ and I had fun making bubble beards and bubble hats for a while and getting totally soaked and sticky from the foam before I took an eyefull of bubbles and had to go crying to mommy to pour water on my face (as aforementioned). On the way home I wanted a milkshake and fries so we stopped at McDonald's but they were still serving breakfast so I settled for a mango pineapple smoothie and an egg McMuffin instead. Mmh. Then I came home and freaked out (as also aforementioned) and then stopped freaking out and had a great day! I guess this all just comes back to what's been my M.O. this summer: it's okay to feel whatever you're feeling. Yeah, it's probably exaggerated and irrational and silly. Feel it anyway so you can get past it. Go ahead: feel irrationally sad. Then you can feel irrationally happy. And we can all live irrationally happily ever after.
And guess what? The world's not ending slowly. It's just changing. In bits and pieces. And as it keeps changing we'll keep seeing each other, at different stages and different places but always in the same crazy world, as the same crazy people.
Thank you to all the crazy people in my life that let me feel these crazy, stupid, inexplicable, spiral feelings. Sometimes I think it'd be easier if I wasn't so attached to you, so then I couldn't miss you in the future...and then I realize it wouldn't be easier. It'd be wretched. And life would be a miserable pit of nonexistence. Instead, my life is, of course, a giant puddle of happy-colored bubbles.
Quotes of the Day: "Even when I was eight I remember thinking that Antietam Rec was a cesspool of corruption."-EA
FZ: "Did you know that otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't float away from each other?
BL: "Otters are cannibals."
"Zebras are the pandas of horses."-BL
"Do you know how much an elephant pees in a day? Twelve gallons!"-SR
Day 995 Song Recommendation: "Broken Love" by Rain Over St. Ambrose.
Day 996 Song Recommendation: "Foreign Fields" by Doji.
-SE Wagner
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| Posing in front of our favorite recycled trash fish at the zoo... |
Yesterday was so much fun, going to the zoo, the Holocaust museum (okay, that wasn't fun per se, but it was informative), eating dinner, getting our pictures taken by "Mom" (AKA FZ), and completely failing at Escaping the Room. But underneath all of the fun of it was this undeniable, unshakable sadness. A lastness and a finality that I hated. At the end of the day, I knew that in some ways it was an overly-tired sadness and that I just needed to stop crying and go to sleep and wake up five hours later at the ungodly hour of 4:30 and I'd be okay. And for the most part, I was. I woke up feeling a little resentful to be getting up when it was still dark but I felt much more like myself and much more "okay" and once FZ and I were running through seven-foot high mounds of bubbles, it was much harder to feel sorry for myself.
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| Believe it or not, this was the best one of everyone (minus "Mom"). I will miss being able to be so openly dysfunctional. Having your shizzle together all the time is exhausting. Or rather pretending to have your shizzle together... |
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| Hey, at least we lose in style. |
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| (The best 3/8 of the group...) ;) |
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| On the way home...(crying inside (me at least. FZ looks happy)). |
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one really worrying about this whole thing and then I feel stupid for worrying about it because literally millions of people just like me have gone to college and (surprise!) not died. It's not a big deal whatsoever. And most of the time I have no trouble believing that. The paradox is that when I'm having the most fun (with my friends, doing fun things), that's when I start worrying. Actually, it's when they leave that I start worrying. So then it's this awful cycle because I WANT to see my friends and I'm having a great time when I'm with them, but as soon as they go home I'm like "NOOOO!!!! COME BACK!!"... "But also don't come back because it sucks when you leave!" And I'm like "One time it's gonna have to be a last time." But not even. It's not like we're gonna die and never see each other again. It's just three months. Ugh. I'm spiraling. This post is the worst. AB and DL help me!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, I thought that I would come to a happy resolution to my dilemma by writing about this subject to death (just how I think that if I think about it to death I'll get all the water through that little funnel) but that didn't happen, so instead I'm just going to change subjects because clearly this is one that needs to just be pushed aside and not addressed.
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| Playing in the bubbles at the end of the race. The fun ended when I got soap in my eyes and had to have my mom dump water on my face. FZ was smart to wear glasses. |
If you have not done an "Escape the Room" game, I suggest you do one. It may seem expensive for an hour of fun, but it's worth it. If you're anything like the eight of us, you'll be awful at it but have fun anyway just walking around the room and fooling with all the stuff they put in there and having fake revelations ("It's the rainbow!") before realizing that your ideas are completely idiotic and then eventually the lady on the other end will give you enough vague clues (and then super obvious ones when you continue to be dense) so that you can actually get a few tasks completed and feel slightly accomplished so that you'll come back again and try the other rooms that have a slightly better escape rate than 10-15%.
Also, if you go to DC, take the metro. For one, it's less stressful than finding parking downtown and it's kind of fun! The seats look like they've been ripped from dentist offices and apartments from the 70s and the carpets look like they've had their fair share of bodily fluids and poorly-sealed foods dripped on them but...well, we can't all have nice things. Sometimes the crappy ones are the most interesting anyway.
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| After playing in the bubble jets at the end of the race. Notice my mini hat and FZ's full beard. Lookin' fabulous. |
And guess what? The world's not ending slowly. It's just changing. In bits and pieces. And as it keeps changing we'll keep seeing each other, at different stages and different places but always in the same crazy world, as the same crazy people.
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| Photo cred FZ. |
Quotes of the Day: "Even when I was eight I remember thinking that Antietam Rec was a cesspool of corruption."-EA
FZ: "Did you know that otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't float away from each other?
BL: "Otters are cannibals."
"Zebras are the pandas of horses."-BL
"Do you know how much an elephant pees in a day? Twelve gallons!"-SR
Day 995 Song Recommendation: "Broken Love" by Rain Over St. Ambrose.
Day 996 Song Recommendation: "Foreign Fields" by Doji.
-SE Wagner
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