Chi Speak

Carlos had this wonderful idea for our monthly community collaboration, so I gave it a shot. Here is my brief reaction, each month given a brief afterthought, for the past half-year.

January –

I will call this the spinning top month. My ex and I spent most of winter break together and on January 1st it was decided that we should be an official couple again. He stayed the night, returned to the Midwest, and we proceeded to not really talk for two weeks. I stayed in my dorm hall for three weeks as a winter RA and played pool with international athletes. I felt a certain reluctance to admit that I was taken again and not single, independent – together - I was very much a solid person alone and felt my new routine coming undone. I wanted stability, but he was gone again. I wanted to know that I had made the right decision.

February –

I invested time and energy into my passions – a group-established journal on campus, going out to local places with friends, and allowing myself to get entangled in wonderful conversation. I felt the beginning of something wrong taking hold within me, but could not locate its source.

I sought to overcome it with outside distraction – fighting ontological distress with ontic means.

March -

The internal discombobulation set in before the Ides of March. I felt irritated the entire month and tried to smooth it over with hours of billiards. I knew I was avoiding something. I was in a constant wave of unfounded anger and discontent. The mystery of this feeling assailed me and I tried to understand. I became introspective and withdrawn in an attempt to sort it out.

April -

The approaching month of my friends’ graduation started to take physical shape and my unrest pooled around the threat it held as the days blended together and passed. I began to question my future plans. A large hourglass seemed to be set before me and the sand trickled cruelly behind glass I could not penetrate.

May -

I came to terms with the signals of change and with the actual changes themselves – I learned that I could not stop the future and that the present would soon turn into tomorrow once again, just as it had before. It was a difficult, monumental self-examination process that left me unable to concentrate or tend to my studies as much as I would have liked. Yes, time had always passed without my full attention or appreciation, but this was a time where I specifically noticed the significance of the change. I am not one to remain static in panic or uncertainty – I reacted with force and set about to clean my life of insecurity. I felt more restful after establishing future tasks and courses of conduct – an internship position for the summer, a re-assessment and decision concerning graduate school goals, and at last I was able to temporarily settle into the neat cocoon of structure I had quickly built in order to starve chaos into submission.

June -

The loss of a semi-permanent dwelling, a place for privacy, confronted me. I learned the hardships and joys of working in foster care. My mind was active, but my body was slothful and lazy. My boyfriend returned from a thousand miles away like a radiant knight on a steed. I held out a token of trust to him without hesitation and he placed it within the depth of his being for safekeeping. I was surprised at how loyal friends turn distant when the presence of one around another each day is withdrawn.

July -

I stand at the end of the calendar month and feel physically weakened, but mentally stronger. The upcoming weeks will test the limits of my patience (with standardized testing) and I will embark on the last semester of my undergraduate education. I am ending my internship on August 1st, which is the most appropriate date for the end of something and the beginning of the new to take hold. I look forward with eagerness and wise caution, with a strength to stand up for what I believe in and re-evaluate all I have held dear.

I can scarcely imagine what will happen in the next six months, but I have no reason to believe that this blog will fail to chronicle the highlights of it all. I only hope, dear reader, that you will be here to share it with me.