Season 2, Episode 8: Big Girls Don't Cry

A lot has happened since we last talked. I cross-stitched some fun stuff, I watched Parks and Rec (and swooned over Leslie and Ben-side note, I need to find myself a Ben Wyatt), watched Harry Potter, watched Sherlock...I did a lot of Netflixing over break, okay?

My future husband and me, obviously.

But I went home for a month and got to see my friends, I went to see President Obama's Farewell Address, and I went to see Hamilton (still crying over that one brb). As awesome as those things are, there's been a lot of doubt running through my mind lately as well. 

*only nineteen but my mind is older*

I decided to participate in Rush for the Greek life on campus, and while I don't regret it, it's certainly been something else. I remember being at home with all of my friends and having nearly every person I told about it respond with "You're rushing??" because apparently, I don't fit their view of a sorority girl. That's fine, I guess, except, well... It's not really their place to tell me what I am and am not. I know that none of them meant to offend me, and for the most part, they didn't, but I have to wonder, what exactly do these friends of mine think I'm joining a sorority for? Did they ever ask? (The answer to these questions are 'who knows?' and 'no, they didn't' respectively, in case you were wondering.)

Most accurate depiction of what goes through my head everytime says "I didn't picture you rushing"

So to lay it out for everyone who's eager to hear, I wanted to find a home out here in Maryland. I love my sister, don't get me wrong, and I love that she lives 40 minutes from me, but I need to be able to establish myself as a person independently of her. So while I have a literal home in the sense of my dorm, and a familial home in the way of my sister's apartment, I wanted to find my social and emotional home with a group of women that would accept me for who I am. 

Ask me about the story behind this ice cream, I dare you.

Admittedly, I'm not sure why I'm speaking this in the past tense, as I'm nowhere near done with the process. I've got three more days/nights of figuring all of this out. I'll also admit that this isn't necessarily the most comfortable thing for me either. I like to refer to myself as either an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert because there is always a part of me that craves either socialization or isolation. It swings back and forth between the two but tends to land (more often than not) on the extroverted introvert. I'm perfectly content with socializing for a duration of time, but I get tired and worn out after a while. In other words, it's draining. What's hard about the Rush process is that it's essentially a combination of two things: speed dating, and auditions. Allow me to explain. 

*me looking at all of the houses I was going to be visiting for Rush*

Speed Dating is probably the easier to explain, at UMD as a PNM (Potential New Member) you flit from house to house (there are 16) over the course of two days. At each of these houses, you talk to any number of women, usually ranging from 1-3. Then you rank your top twelve and come back the next day to do it all over again with the twelve or less that asked you back. Essentially you have very similar conversations with many of the girls at the houses, and in a sense, both parties (the PNMs and the Sisters) are trying to figure out if it would be a good match. 

The similarity to auditioning became more evident to me as time went on. In each round, you attempt to put your best foot forward and to make a connection with however many women you speak to. The thing is, they're the ones who choose if you get to come back, so in trying to make a good impression, you essentially are having a blind audition for a role you know nothing about. 

To say that I'm not nervous or stressed out would be the fallacy of a millennium so for the time being, we'll just dismiss the point. It's weird to talk about being stressed about Rush anyway, in a few senses. First, there's a part of me that's overly aware of the fact that must more important things are happening in the world and in our country right now than Rush Week here at UMD. There are so many significant things happening that to discount them all and focus on Rushing seems almost petty to me. The other is that it's quite truthfully very hard to describe the emotional experience of Rush to someone who isn't currently going the process-or hasn't gone through it in the past. It's almost like a "you had to see it in order to believe it" or a "you had to have been there" scenario, except with emotions, so....?

#personalitypics

On a different note, this blog post was typed up about a month ago and looked nothing like what you see now. I had everything all laid out to write about La La Land (excellent film, a 12/10 on the Amanda scale of recommendation), and then by a foolish mistake, I accidentally deleted the entire post. So instead, we're here. I do want to chat about La La Land for one second, so bear with me and I'll do my best not to ramble.

La La Land is rather obviously musically driven, as one of the main characters is a struggling jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling). Within his story arc, I enjoyed that the movie showed the road to success, and how it truly isn't always as easy as "I found a nightclub to sing at, and now I'm a star!". The director, Damien Chazelle, did an incredible job of showing the rougher parts of show business and performance, and because of that, I was already appreciative. There's also the struggling actress, however, and that's where the movie struck home for me. Emma Stone's character, Mia, is an aspiring actress and former playwright, who, in muddling her way through auditions and callbacks, manages to write and produce a one-woman play, pertaining to and starring herself. She follows through with her one-night-only performance, and afterward, sits in the wings and listens to the remarks of the audience as they leave. The comments of "what was with that whole window thing?" and "don't quit your day job" are understandably hard to stomach given the personal nature of her play, let alone the effort she must have put into its creation. 

*pose of the century, also of the movie*

She ends up going outside and talking to Sebastian (Gosling) and saying "it's done", packs her things into her car and drives back to her childhood home in Nevada. Some time later, Sebastian pulls up outside and tells her that a casting agent attended her performance and wants her to audition for a role they've got in mind, and their conversation goes as follows, starting with Stone's character, Mia:

"I'm not going to that. No, that one's going to be...That's going to be...No."

"I'm sorry?"

"That will kill me."

"WHAT"

"What? What? Shh! Stop! You have to be quiet!"

"If you want me to be quiet you're going to have to make sense."

"They're going to call the police."

"Why?"

"Because. Because, I've been to a million auditions, and the same thing happens every time, where I get interrupted because someone wants to get a sandwich, or I'm crying and they start laughing, or there's people sitting in the waiting room, and they're, and they're like me but prettier and better at the...because maybe I'm not good enough."

"Yes, you are."

"No, no maybe I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Maybe I'm no."

"You are." 

"Maybe I'm not."

"You are."

"Maybe I'm one of those people that has always wanted to do it, but it's like a pipe dream for me, you know, and then you said it, you, you change your dreams and then you grow up, maybe I'm one of those people, and I'm not supposed to, and I can go back to school, and I can find something else that I'm supposed to do, 'cause I left, to do that, and it's been six years, and I don't want to do it anymore."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why don't you want to do it anymore?"

"'Cause I think it hurts a little bit too much."

That hit me. Hard. Because I realized that I had a moment where I said music hurt too much for me to keep chasing it.

I had a moment where I felt and that it was worth it to just stop.

I had a moment where I was afraid to keep going because otherwise the feelings and emotions might run too deep and kill my happiness. 

I had that moment and it was every bit as devastating as it sounds.

I remember the context of the moment, and the event itself very clearly because I gave up, and that's something I don’t do often. (Just ask my mom about the time I put my mind to riding a bike on my own lol.) 

To make a long story short (too late) that was one of the reasons I was particularly taken with La La Land, because of its emotional impact on me, but there are plenty more reasons (feel free to message me if you want a verbose essay on why you should go see it)

Speaking of emotional reactions, I've got a bit to talk about there too. This week, my first full week back into classes, has been quite the time. I've been on an emotional roller coaster, for multiple reasons, but it all came to a peak on Thursday night, when I had my personal cry-fest, it would seem. So there's a picture and a bit of an explanation:

I typed this up right after I took the picture that accompanies it, and decided immediately after I wrote it that I wanted to use it in this blog post. I posted it on two forms of social media (FB and Instagram), with abridged versions of the text, and received an overwhelming amount of support from people who took it to mean that I was going through a really rough time. So that's what I'd like to clarify. 

Nothing ridiculously awful happened to me. I didn't fail a class, get expelled, or lose a close friend of mine. I just had a rough week. It was a long week, and it was hard for me. I know I'm not the only one who has them because I've had the privilege of getting to converse with other people about similar things. Sometimes, certain days or weeks or months are just hard. It's not always as simple (an adjective which is the understatement of the year, even in this context) as you making a mistake and a situation snowballing from there. Sometimes it just...happens. 

I, for example, had spent the week trying to justify to myself why I'm taking 19 credits this semester, (in comparison to my '16-but-really-13' last semester), figuring out how to get back into the communities I was a part of back at UMD, and effectively worrying about Rush and commitments I had that were quickly approaching. It was a busy week and a stressful one. Thursday night to Friday morning was not the first time I had cried, but it was the first time I had contextualized why I was crying. 

As a female college student, I don't particularly enjoy getting up in the morning. (Admittedly, once I'm up, I'm up, but that's another story for another time.) My earliest class this semester starts at 9:30, and my alarm goes off at 7:30 usually. What do I do in all of that extra time, you may ask- my responses are relatively simple. I read, I do work, I text a friend of mine. More often than not, however, I mindlessly scroll through social media in order to see what I've missed in the 3-8 hours that I've been asleep. 

I see celebrities doing incredible things, and kids from my graduating class getting involved, going on missions trips, and loving their lives. And those things are great—don’t misunderstand my intentions here, it’s awesome that people are doing incredible things. But the thing is, no matter how much of a celebrity they are, or how much they attempt to portray it otherwise, their lives aren’t always awesome.

The people we follow on social media, whether they’re Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran, or the kids you’ve grown up with, are all just as human as we are. And an intrinsic part of humanity is failing and getting back up, disappointment and what it spurs you to do, hurting and overcoming challenges and pain—not all of life is made up of “sunshine and peaches” as I’ve said to everyone who’s questioned if I’m okay. 

In short, social media is largely used to convey all of the incredible things that people do but it tends to misrepresent the everyday struggles of people as. No one is going to post on twitter “Just failed my finals. #hopeicanstillgetajob” and be excited to share that with people. 

As a Slytherin, it pained me to wear this sweatshirt (lol)

Social Media extrapolates the idea of unattainable perfection and I wanted to remind myself (and others) that there’s more to our lives than the “perfection” we present on our social media outlets. Because if we forget that, we perpetuate a culture in society that says “everything always has to be perfect”, and when we attempt to achieve perfection and fail, it makes the ‘tumble from greatness’ even harder to deal with—and it’s something we shouldn’t have to deal with at all!

Life is pretty great as is, and social media is a fantastic tool that we can use to share some of the cool things that happen, but just keep in mind that there’s more to everyone’s life than they show on their different accounts. As a quote I found once said, “Stop comparing your behind-the-scenes to every else’s highlight reels”. (check out the link for a great blog post about this)

So here goes nothing:

I'm a fan of makeup. I've always loved the dramatic look of a winged eyeliner or the allure red lipstick. See, makeup can make you look and feel confident—even when you're not. 

Makeup allows you to present yourself in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, regardless of how your emotions may be faring. But that's why I'm here. I want to remind you that feelings other than utter excitement and happiness are okay. I took this photo of myself at 1:00 AM on a Friday, I've got no makeup on, no nicely brushed hair, no fancy shoes or nice blouse. No, this picture is just me. Soft smiles because I've cried so much today that I don't know if I can open my eyes fully. No makeup because I felt like I couldn't be genuine if people kept looking at me thinking I had everything together. No nice hairstyle because today's priority wasn't looking nice, or even feeling nice, for that matter. Today was about being raw and vulnerable. 

Today I cried because college is hard. I cried because I left behind my friends and family to pursue a dream that I don't really know if I can truly reach. I cried because God has given me so many incredible opportunities and I'm often too afraid to take advantage of them. I cried because I made a mistake, because a group of people may or may not like me, and because for the second time this entire year, I had someone pray with me individually because they knew I was hurting. 

College and High School and life, in general, are great. There are so many incredible things to do and see—social media makes sure you're aware of that. But the thing that makes social media a dual-edged sword is that it doesn't show the bad aspects. You don't get more followers by posting about your bad day. You don't get more likes if others can tell you've been crying. You don't get more shares if people know you've been miserable for a week. Social Media has been designed to allow us the freedom to create an online presence that reflects the best parts of ourselves, but it also stifles our desire to share about the bad parts of our lives. 

So I'm here to tell you that college isn't always going to be a breeze, making friends won't always come easily, and coming to terms with the fact that you've made mistakes is going to be a blow to your pride. You're going to have points where you're sitting in your dorm and you're wondering why you ever thought leaving was a good idea. You're going to wonder if you're doing things right, or if you've just made a huge mistake. 

College can be great because there really are hundred of things you can choose to experience, but you're also trying to be an adult and make up your mind about your future, while still a relatively young person. 

It's okay to love life most of the time and think college is the best thing that happened to you. 

But it's also okay to cry, and it's okay to let people know that you did. Sometimes you need a person or a community to just sit by your side and say that your feelings aren't crazy, but justified. That they've been there too. That they understand. 

Because trust me, someone understands.

So that’s that. 

I’m good, life is grand, but sometimes there are low points, and for the time being, that’s where I am. 

Don’t worry about me too much though, I’ve still got plenty of cats and books and board games and Netflix to have fun with, I’m nowhere near deprived of fun. 

Just trying to figure life out, one step at a time. 

Quite possibly my favorite picture of myself ever. 

Signing Off, 


Amanda