peer pressure, i suppose.

Being the type of person with a general attitude somewhere along the lines of, "IDGAF," peer pressure isn't usually a problem for me. The only people I've ever really felt the desire to emulate are my brothers--and The Doctor, I guess, but that's outside the realm of possibility, I think. Nobody can be that awkward.

Tonight, though, I experienced peer pressure. We had a little freshman orientation event, a dance on a boat, and all the girls on my floor were getting dressed. I decided to wear a loose, comfortable dress. It's cotton, with a multicolored design and it belts just underneath my chest.

I thought it was cute, and also that 'cute' was enough. But then I saw the other girls on my floor getting dressed... in shorts, tight tops, body-con skirts, camisoles, etc. Everything was tucked in and on display and I felt... frumpy.

One of the girls offered to let me wear some of her clothes, and I said, "No, thanks." I was proud of my cute little dress, and my minimal make-up and my lazy hair. I thought I looked nice.

But then, as a few minutes ticked by and the girls fluttered around in the hallway, I started to get anxious. I wondered what everyone else would be wearing. I wondered what the other girls would look like. Before I even knew what was happening, my mouth was opening and I was saying, "You know, I might want to wear one of her skirts, after all..."

Things got a little out of control, then. Before I could say, "Gallifrey," I found myself in a body-con skirt and a top that showed off a little bit of my sides, a little bit of my back. I was standing in my room and someone was holding a mascara wand up to my face and saying, "Blink. Blink. Blink."

(I should have known then and there that this was going to be a disaster. Anybody worth their salt knows that the proper strategy is don't blink. Don't even blink.)

I'm not going to blame the girls on my floor for being enthusiastic about their little human Barbie experiment. They're girls; they like clothes and fashion and dressing up and everything. I like those things, too, just on a different scale. In a different style.

I was excited at first, about being pretty... about maybe even being sexy. When we were waiting to go to the boat I was taking pictures with everyone and laughing and smiling and showing off my outfit.

But then I got on the boat, and pretty promptly lost all the girls I'd arrived with.

It wasn't really anybody's fault; there were a lot of people on that boat, and the crush of bodies combined with the darkness made it pretty much impossible to keep track of someone without literally holding their hand.

When I lost the girls from my floor, I wandered off and found some of my Leadership friends, and then I started to feel uncomfortable. They were all dressed conservatively, cutely, in t-shirts and shorts and the occasional sundress. They were demure while I was brash. They were conservative while I felt like a bit of a side-show.

I spent most of the night in a circle of awkward kids who couldn't dance any better than I could, and I enjoyed their company. I enjoyed their company while the girls I'd come with danced in the crush of bodies, bumping and grinding and doing things with their hips that I could honestly never dream of doing.

There was an after-party, after the boat docked, but I came straight back to my dorm. I washed off the mascara that made my eyes look too fake and I took off the skirt that was so tight I had to keep my knees tightly together all night just to preserve my own modesty.

Now, laying here in a pair of shorts and one of my cousin's old muscle shirts, with my computer on my lap and some Jack Johnson playing, I feel more like myself than I did all night. I feel comfortable and at peace, if a little ashamed of myself for caving to the peer pressure in the first place.

I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd worn my cute dress and my real smile, not my fake one. I wish I'd been comfortable enough to go crazy with my friends like I did at Culture Night, but the outfit inhibited me. I wanted it in the first place to feel more comfortable, but in the end it made me retreat into my shell.

I guess you're never too old to cave to peer pressure; even though it was a bad experience, and even though I wish I could take it back, I feel like I learned something here. Maybe once I stop feeling like such a jackass I'll be able to absorb the lesson.

(Ten points to everyone who caught the Doctor Who references. They weren't very subtle.)

my feet are lost upon this earth;

the grass is flat beneath them.

my mind is lost among these clouds;

my thoughts have taken flight.

I see, I think, I hear, I want

to touch and taste and feel

and be—

be lost upon this endless earth,

the grass beneath my feet.

be lost among these cotton clouds,

the wind beneath my wings. 

college, excel, and feelings.

As I write this, it is 10:13 on a Thursday night, the 23rd of August 2012. On Sunday, I moved in to my college dorm room and now I’m doing laundry for the first time.

My classes don’t start until Monday, but Orientation started today. My college has a program called Leadership, and I applied to and was accepted to it, so I had to move in early and attend a weeklong “retreat” (essentially) called EXCEL.

Let me just say that EXCEL was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my life.

There were about sixty freshmen in my EXCEL group (called a Cohort; we’re Cohort 26) and about twenty to twenty-five leaders. We were broken up into ‘Small Groups’ with two to three leaders to a group, and throughout the week we interacted with our own small groups and with other small groups and were often broken up into different, temporary small groups. It was fantastic. Just fantastic.

I’ve never been around so many like-minded people with the same ideas and goals and priorities as me. I’ve never been around so many people who genuinely valued me for who I was and who appreciated the things I think and say. I’ve never been around so many people who immediately accepted me as I was, no matter what I wore or how I spoke or what I did and did not do. It was enlightening. It was encouraging.

It was EXCEL. I can’t think of any other words.

The first day I arrived, the leaders helped me unpack my stuff. They did this for everyone; a complete stranger carried my mini-fridge up four flights of stairs for me just because I joined an organization that they love. After we broke into our Small Groups I made fast, easy friends and then, when we interacted with other groups I made more fast, easy friends.

Day two we went to a place called Valley View Baptist Church to do a ropes course called Faith Walk. Our leaders and the facilitators challenged us to complete obstacles that we’d previously thought we couldn’t. I, personally, am terrified of both heights and climbing, but with the encouragement of my leaders and fellow Cohorts I found the courage to scale a twenty-foot pole (on a harness, of course) and walk across a single cable with only a rope on either side for handholds and balance.

About halfway across this ‘bridge’ (a term I’ll use very loosely, as it generally implies some sort of structure) I started to panic. I was shaking and terrified and all I could think was, “What the hell am I doing up here?!” I hesitated, and then I asked my facilitator to lower me down. Instead of doing so, he asked me, “Why don’t you just take one more step?”

In the time it took for me to take that one step, my leaders and Cohorts noticed that I was hesitating. They noticed that I was scared. And they encouraged me. They shouted my name, they whooped, they clapped. They told me I could do it, and I did. I made it all the way across the bridge and was lowered to the ground with an enormous smile on my face.

And that smile stayed in place for the rest of the week. On day three we did community service, and I, along with thirty or so of my Cohorts, cleaned up the Muskingum River. The day after that we played simulation games and acted through scenarios designed to teach us lessons about the world and to challenge the ways we think, feel, and perceive our environments.

We faced obstacles in these games and scenarios. We faced hardships. There were games that were intensely difficult, games that were filled with distractions and detractions, and even games that were designed to be impossible to win. We learned how to deal with unfairness, with injustice. We learned how to block out the things that don’t matter and focus on the things that do. We learned how to make the hardest of decisions and how to do so in a way that won’t leave a bitter taste in our mouths.

We learned how to accept defeat, and how to acknowledge that there are things even we, as leaders and scholars and driven individuals, cannot accomplish.

This workshop, seminar, retreat, whatever you want to call it has given me so much. It taught me to be comfortable in my own skin and to accept all of my quirks and my flaws. It taught me that you don’t have to be 100% sure of yourself to lead. It taught me that it’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to be nervous, but that it’s also okay to open up and dispel those fears, those nerves, because there are people in the world who will appreciate you for doing it.

If anyone from Cohort 26 ever reads this post, I want to tell you thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

For everyone else reading this post, I want to say I hope you find the happiness and the self-confidence and the peace of mind that I found this past week.

words unsaid today.

I miss you.

I love you. I know I don't say it enough.

I hate talking to you. I hate the sound of your voice. I hate that I can think I'm so strong, so in control, so finally sound in my understanding of myself, and you can say one word to me and tear it all to shreds.

Nobody else on the planet calls me 'honey' except you. You were laughing when you said it, chiding, teasing, and I was almost crying because it's been so long since I've heard it.

I almost called you on Valentine's Day. Everyone was talking about candy and flowers and Valentines, and I was remembering a day when I was young, sitting on the floor in the living room while you cooked my dinner, me asking you what you got Sissy for Valentine's Day and you answering that she wasn't your Valentine, I was, and that I always would be, because nobody could ever love me as much as you do.

I was really, really angry when I left you. I told people I hated you. I don't; I never could. It's just so hard, sometimes, to make myself understand that you never hurt me on purpose. I know you didn't mean to. I know you don't even realize that you did it. I don't blame you anymore.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive you completely. I want to, but I have too much of you in me; I'm too stubborn, too quick to anger and too good at holding grudges.

I just don't understand why I was never enough. I don't understand why you needed something else, why the knowledge that you were pushing me away and that you could lose me wasn't proper motivation to make you stop.

When I think about my future, the first thing that comes to mind is this horrible fear that my kids aren't going to have a Grandpa.

Nobody else can make me feel as childish and small as you can. Nobody else can make me five years old again with a single word, or a sigh, or a laugh.

I don't have any idea how to interact with you. Or how to think about you. Or how to feel about you.

I miss you.

I love you. I know, I don't say it enough.

Here's a line I've had running through my head all day; it hit me while I was driving, and I was so absorbed by it that I accidentally ran a red light.

"And the girl thought to herself that those around her might never truly see her as she saw herself, but that this was not, as a whole, a negative thing; for while the world would never understand the girl, the girl -- in all of her starry-eyed, wanderlusting dreaming, her head lost among the clouds and her feet lost upon the earth -- would, in return, never wholly understand the world."

It has potential, I'll give it that.