Unfolding

The following is an excerpt to my UB from a recent email exchange. I thought I would share with you all, too:

As irrelevant as it may be, when you were a kid, my dream for you was somewhere in the medical arts, I thought doctor. I remember your pretty, platinum haired cranium with wide, friendly and eager eyes. You had the most delicate hands and charming persona. I was certain you would become a doctor. I really felt that is where you belonged. Politics? How ever did you get there? - UB

Funny you should ask, actually, but only because you constantly tell me who I am and how I got here, yet you've no idea how I made the switch from Republican Madame Doctor to Brilliant Liberal Intellectual (like so many of my brilliant, underachiever relatives and foreparents are/were).

How did I get here? I was left, all alone, out in the desert, with no one to look like but myself. And instead of scrambling to burn someone else's identity, I worked on finding my own on my own. In those nine months I grew 21 years. I was impassioned, inspired, in-love, in tune (with myself and the world) and happy.

And I was in a relationship, a difficult one, with challenges visibly built into the walls. But for a long while, I was eternally grateful and constantly maintained happiness. Family and friends noticed immediately, taking wild guesses at what was the cause. I'm honest with and love myself, I told everyone confidently.

It wasn't until February that I came out. That's right, of the closet.

In my delirium, I was able to deflect my mother's gut (and guzzled) response; I had faith that she would eventually get over it.

But my relationship with my father stumbled. He and I didn't speak, except through mom, who, when I asked, exaggerated the way my father felt about the situation, and, in my fragile state, I broke down. Soon after, our traditional after-dinner discussions discontinued altogether. I tried communicating with him, but was so desperate at the thought of losing him forever that I couldn't muster up clarity enough to actually be honest with him, let alone rational.

Before my in-love relationship broke up, I was having an intellectual crisis. I questioned EVERYTHING, smoked a lot of pot, and went crazy for a month or so. This may have had something do with the breakup, or it just may be my fear of commitment. Either way, alienation being the cause or the effect, was a contributing factor in the crisis.

The Summer of last year was spent dabbling in taboo and academics (another reason for the breakup); I learned a ton of information that semester, it was probably my favourite semester at UCF. I studied hard and learned about modern political ideology (with a preaching liberal) and public opinion (with a moderate Brit). I was more focused on school than anything else. I loved it and was planning graduate school.

And in October I fell in-love again. Same barriers, same cracks in the foundation. And then I fell in-love again, but forgot it right away (he was a boy and I was a girl and I panicked trying to figure out how that was supposed to work). Then I got my heart broken for. the. first. time. and continued to be delusional for four more months.

Well you'll never guess what happened next...

I fell in-love again, though, this time- I resisted, for a little while, before being consumed again, this time by two fires at once. (I resigned the boy to excellent intellectual conversations [wherein I reflected, off him, your arguments from our discussions to gain perspective] and friendship love, only to have him confess his love for me on the Holiest of Holy Days: St. Patrick's.) I made brilliant observations, expanded my horizon and inspired others (no, really, it's true).

But then my Sundays with J were abandoned, and with them my favourite intellectual challenger. I stopped sparring with you right around then, too.

Now I find myself sort of floating, trying to strike a balance between vaguely ignoring my responsibilities (of getting my degree, of supporting myself) and being depressed and/or lonely and/or a gladfly. I'm SURROUNDED by liberal gits who never give second thought to Conservative or alternative possibilities or sources of information (or information at all, for that matter). I've gone from delusional to disillusioned in one year flat. That takes skill.

And I would have voted for Kerry after the first debate, if not for a friend who challenged my reasons for voting third party when, like a fortune teller, he knew they wouldn't win.

So now you know who I am and how I got here. I'm still working on my third long-distance relationship, this being number three in two years. I know enough people up here that I'm never alone, but lonely enough to want to be alone, however too scared to make that choice. I'm rapidly absorbing personalities and apathy and I can feel myself beginning to blur. 'Scuse me while I fade out for a while...