there is a place for us in the box above my head
2006-10-09, 1:25 a.m.

I think I was a bit ambitious when I told myself I would try to write in here everyday. It's not that I'm so busy that I simply don't have time to try to make sense of my day... it's actually more the opposite. Nothing analyze-able has happened in the past few days. I guess this is my euphemestic way of saying that my life is boring and I have nothing to write about sometimes.

Anyway, this weekend I was visiting home, which, again, went pretty much the same as always (are we seeing a trend here?). Today though, my mom and I got in a huge fight over I don't even know what. We started out talking about whether or not they would feel alright about me going to the Philippines this summer and ended up with a lot of yelling and me sort of just walking out of the house and into my car and driving back to school.

So yeah, the Philippines volunteer trip is officially a no go. God, if I had known suggesting the idea would have turned into this huge thing, I would never have even brought it up. All of the fighting was totally not worth it. I mean, okay, congratulations, parents--you convinced me not to go! You enabled me to see how helping citizens of a third world nation could actually be a bad thing! I hope that makes your day...

I mean, I'm going to be 20 soon... I guess in a way this trip was going to be a way to assert the fact that I'm an adult now, if not financially, then in spirit. But I think I'm seeing that if I still hold myself back because my parents don't approve, then I'm really not an adult in spirit.

And I think I knew that the whole time. Somewhere, locked away, bound and gagged, was the voice trying to remind me: I still feel 16 years old. I really do. All of my closest and oldest friends seem to be aging at a constant, natural rate, engaging in the rites of passage that are appropriate for 19-and-20-year-olds, blossoming, growing into their skin.

But I'm stagnant. My sense of humor hasn't changed. My taste in music hasn't changed. My values have barely changed. My ability to write convoluted, emo-licious entries (clearly) hasn't changed.

No, seriously, though. I think maybe the one thing that's changed is I have better taste in books and movies, I have a more advanced proficiency and analyzing things into oblivion, and I gained about 15 pounds. (Which is bad. And something I'm trying to work on.)

The reason I use 16 as a landmark age is because that's the age I was when I went to Spain and no joke, it completely changed my life. It's like, okay--bear with me: there's this huge debate over whether or not we, human beings, are more like oak trees or butterflies. Do our personalities develop gradually, moment by moment, almost undetectably, like an oak tree seed slowly grows from a seed to a sapling to a huge tree, becoming more and more oak-y as it goes? Or are there like, these certain experiences that engulf us and totally re-align our personalities, our morals, our outlooks on life?

A big inside joke between me and Lauren that year was referring to Spain as the womb, for reasons that I can't recall. But every time I think back on that, I realize how right we were--Spain was a womb, a cocoon, from which I emerged a changed being.

Then there was the other "womb" experience: my first semester of college. It taught me to be cautious, untrusting, prudish, almost. It didn't reverse what Spain did, but it certainly disillusioned me. I could make friends in a foreign country, but here, right in my home state, was a floor of awful people who I had little to nothing in common with. It really wore me down, and whether I like it or not, it made me into a less assertive, less self-assured individual. It didn't totally break me down, but it certainly broke me somewhat.

It's kind of a cool concept, isn't it? That some events in life are so big that we have no choice to be altered by them, positively or negatively. I like it.

So I don't know what I'm going to do about... the trip... or the fight... or anything... I'm going to have to end the entry because I let it sit for a while because Andrea came in and we started talking and now I can't remember what I was doing. Sorry for another entry that totally sucks.

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