Typical Tuesday- I'm Like Totally a Sorority Girl Now

As far as I can tell from my six month stint as a Texas resident, the only three things that anyone can be sure about around here is that the weather will change every single day, saying "bless your heart" will never be a sentiment of endearment, and when it comes to college, greek life dominates. The tour guides try to say otherwise, throwing out statistics to try and make people feel like going to school here isn't just about sorority and frat row. I was warned, but I didn't believe what they said. What did someone mean when they said greek life would be all in my face? That seemed like something a bitter GDI would say. Then I spent the entire first semester watching the older girls wear their pins and jerseys, sit together in classes, and go to all the cool events. It seemed like one giant exclusive party, and I could only stand and press my face up to the window and hope some day I would be put on the invite list.

Then recruitment happened, and it was one of the strangest weeks of my life. Why do my Rho Gammas always look constipated? Why do they insist on calling me PNM #33? What does give your heart to Chi O and she'll give it back to you even mean? My experience wasn't anything out of the horror stories you hear through the grape vine, but I'm here to say it happens. There should be a correction to that hackneyed saying: all's fair in love and war- and rush. Somehow I made it through the process in one piece, with only two.. okay, maybe three hysterical meltdowns. Rush is just like that though. It gets in your head and you feel this insatiable urge to be everything you think you deserve to be. Everyone says you end up where you are supposed to, and for better or worse maybe that's true. Even if it doesn't work out how you thought, I like to believe that there was an upper hand guiding you home. The truth is though, if you end up in a house, it's hard to not feel the connection when you're being showered in gifts and told how much everyone loves you. The brainwashing is real. I don't know if that's the best way to phrase it though. To me it feels like stepping across the threshold into that exclusive party, and after you enter you never can go back. Nobody on the outside really can understand, and it's beyond explanation. Sorority life is simply ineffable.

It's never too late

For what it's worth: it's never too late, or in my case too early to be whoever you want to be.

There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. 

You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. 

We can make the best or worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. 

I hope you see things that startle you. 

I hope you feel things you've never felt before. 

I hope you meet people with a different point of view. 

I hope you live a life you are proud of.

If you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. 

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Life simply goes on

I don't believe anything really lasts.

If things lasted forever,

Then coffee wouldn't cool

And songs wouldn't end

And feelings would stay the same

And you would still love me

But the cold hard truth is, 

Nothing lasts forever,

Life simply goes on,
And I'm trying to figure out where to go from here

Don't even tell me where we are going, just walk by my side

I went to the Walk the Moon concert earlier this semester, and my favorite part was when the lead singer introduced this one song that I had never listened to, called Fixin'. He said that the moral of the song is that sometimes you have these people in your life you can just be with and then life fades away. It doesn’t matter what you do, or where you go, or where you are, it just matters that you are there and you are together. That just really stuck with me and I can’t get it out of my head. I look back through my pictures and I think of all the moments in my life where I just wanted someone to walk by my side. Someone who was fixing to come with me. There is just so much horror in the world. So many people are there to tear you down, or to tell you that you can’t do it. So many people never stop and look in your eyes and ask how you are really doing. Or stay and listen to the answer. Few people want to hear about the new friends you have made and smile at your victories and cry at your losses. The world is so cold and calculating, sometimes it’s just refreshing to find a place where you don’t have to pretend. Isn’t it a nice state of existence when you smile because you’re just happy and not because you should be? 

All I wanna do is let it be and be with you and watch the wind blow by

Out with the October.. in with the November

My month in songs....

When the working day is done....
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun- STRFKR

Gotta love the way you love yourself
Heart Out- The 1975

It's so much colder, but it's no surprise. Changing of the Seasons- Two Door Cinema Club

We're all the things we do for fun
Buzzcut Season- Lorde

And in this perfect weather, it's like we don't remember, the rain we thought would last forever and ever
Sweeter than Fiction- Taylor Swift 

All Hallow's Eve throughout the years: A lookbook of shame

All Hallow's Eve. The one day of the year it's socially acceptable to play dress-up. The only question is, who do you want to be? -xoxo Gossip Girl

The cheetah posed and ready to attack

If you're a bird, I'm a bird... right?

The winged liner was a nice dramatic flair

Things got feisty in the cheetah costume. Fighting over a glow stick? Sword??

Reality, sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be

Some day, I'll be living in this big ole city....

One of the saddest moments in life is realizing that everything that made up the dimensions of your universe is gone. Sometimes I forget I have a support system at all. I feel like there is just me, and I am all by my lonesome. The truth is that's how it is. I don't have my sister here to brush my wet hair, so I work out the snarls all by myself. I don't have a mother to walk with me and listen to me talk about my problems, so I don't talk about them. I don't have a father to eat breakfast with me, so now I just eat my muffin alone. I don't have a golden retriever to cuddle with me when I'm alone, so now I don't cuddle. I don't even have my best friends to be with, so I constantly feel like I am walking through my life having experiences that are entirely worthless because I'm alone. Of course I'm not alone, but what's the difference really if you don't feel supported or loved? All I have are these overpriced textbooks to love me, and they don't. That's the problem with putting all of your investments in one place, when it fails you are left with nothing.
I'm not scared of being alone in a big city. Most of my childhoods fears don't plague me any longer. I'm not scared of flying by myself, or talking to people on the phone. I'm comfortable arguing with adults when it is justified, and taking cabs by myself. I know how to cook basic meals, and I can successfully take care of myself. I have so much to be grateful for. I was given the privilege of being offered a wide open space to try and make a new life for myself. For this I was always grateful, until the day my parents moved the last of the furniture into the room and said it was time to go. In that moment I realized that space was highly overrated. The one lesson I have managed to grasp in Economics is the concept of opportunity cost, that with every decision you give up the next best option. The opportunity cost of going away for college was much, much, higher than I anticipated. So high that I have a feeling if I had known it would have been nearly impossible to force me to go. I suppose that is why no one tells you the truth about these things. The only thing that I really am truly afraid of anymore is never being happy. What if this is as good as it gets? What if this is the "good life?" Me standing awkwardly at clubs watching other people drink and be merry, and all the while wishing I was at home watching Downton Abbey with my parents. Obviously most people will think I'm lame. But I don't think anyone can really understand until you find yourself alone in a 12 by 12 room and realize that you live in a building of 300 eighteen year old kids who have no idea what the hell they are doing with their life, and are all making ridiculous mistakes in the process of finding out. Some nights are better than others. Sometimes I look out at the city lights of Dallas and I feel so free and liberated, like I'm living out what Taylor Swift sang in Mean-   Some day  I'll be living in a big ole city, and all you're ever going to be is mean. Now that it is fall and all the leaves are changing I find myself thinking:

Now I know why all the trees change in the fall, I know you were on my side even when I was wrong, and I love you for giving me your eyes and standing back and watching me shine.