if you cut me I could shine
2007-11-05, 6:18 p.m.

I've just spent the last couple hours accomplishing what seems to be nothing except lying stationary, draped somewhat luxuriously over various pieces of furniture in my room. In actuality, my mind is reeling. It's one of those days where the portion of my brain that controls wild anxiety and loves to engage in the "Worst Case Scenario" game kicks into overdrive.

Things eating my mind in the past couple hours:

• my future career, or lack thereof
• the sorry, sorry state I will be in when CMSB goes off to England next semester
• the mostly exciting yet also slightly terrifying idea of starting to teach my unit next week
• the troublesome aches and pains have been experiencing in the past two weeks or so
• the fact that I seem to have gained 10 lbs in 2 months, and what I'm supposed to do about that
• a generally unpleasant feeling of uncertainty and fear about the way this semester is going.

So it hasn't been a very fun day, inside of my head.

On the plus side, I wore some spiffy new red shoes today and three people said they were nice :o)

Sometimes it's not very fun, being this age. It's a time of growth and stuff, and newfound independence, sure. But I find myself also becoming greatly self-conscious and... well, I feel like I'd either like to either move onto a place in my life where I'm an adult, decidedly and irreversibly, or otherwise, retreat and forfeit. Unfortunately, that's not an option.

You know, I think I'll let Billy Collins take it from here. This poem's about turning ten, but I think you could apply it to being twenty, as well:

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

-Billy Collins

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