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Confessions of a Sober Girl: The End

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In the chaos that is my life right now, I fear it is time to say goodbye.

As I sit here drowning in grad school applications, colds, finals, preparing to move, and just the general hell that graduating actually is, I’ve had a lot of time for forced reflection of what I’ve learned over this short 3.5 years.

And it wouldn’t be my column if I didn’t make it a list.

So, here it goes.

Freshman Year: I Learned How to Bullshit

Freshman Year is all about bullshit. You are trying so hard to understand who you are and how you fit into this great big world of ours and at the same time convince these people you’ve never met before that you have your crap together and know what you are doing.

So, if you are in this position wondering how that girl two doors down seems to have it all: the grades, the looks, the man of her dreams, and perfect teeth, she doesn’t. She’s just really good at lying. And if you are the person that thinks they had it all together freshman year, you are a big fat liar.

I tried to be that person I thought people wanted me to be and the person I thought I should be and after a few sub-par tests and nights crying in my mouse-hole of a dorm room I realized that I can only be me and that’s okay. That even though it’s all about the grades because “you know grad school,” if I had to kill myself for them, maybe I was trying to stick a square peg in a round hole. I learned that if being a sober weirdo with an affinity for books, YouTube, and wacky fashion was okay; the right people will find you.

 

Sophomore Year: I Learned How to Take Care of Myself

People like to think that you become self-sufficient in freshman year but I think that’s a load of crap. You only really learn how to take care of yourself sophomore year. And even then, I don’t think you are ever really self-sufficient; self-sufficiency isn’t healthy. You should always use your support system, be that family, friends, pets, or internet friends, use them. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Living in an apartment teaches you a lot about yourself. Living with people is hard and it’s all about compromise and communication, as dumb as that sounds. And that’s a tough lesson to learn. It’s hard and it hurts and takes forever, but eventually, you start to figure it out.

You also become aware of how expensive life is. Food is expensive, and it takes a time and effort to make if you want to eat something halfway decent and it’s the saddest day when you learn how expensive ordering pizza every night is not to mention how fat it makes you. And utilities suck because I guess I could live by candlelight and just wear 6 pairs of pants, but life is a lot easier with heat and electricity. Not to mention all of the things you took for granted for just existing at your parents’ house, like pencil sharpeners and 409. That crap adds up. After sophomore year, not only did you make it on your own but you are officially an amateur chef, plumber, housekeeper, and procrastinator.

 

Junior Year: I Learned How to Love

I have and always will love junior years. For me, this is when friendships solidify and you can really just let loose. You have a feel for who you are as a person and you’ve figured out how this whole school thing works (and how to get the best grades while doing the least amount of work). I feel like this is the year where you really fall into friendships and they go to that deep, scary place that you couldn’t go before you reached that level of trust.

This is the year for living so fall deep, and fall hard because those leaps of faith have the greatest pay offs. These people aren’t going away and when life gets tough; they are invaluable.

Personally, I’ve always been a brick wall. I don’t ever let people in and I realized that you can’t do it alone. You have to ask for help. People are good and being honest with them is so satisfying. To use a stupid analogy, carrying 50 lbs. of emotional baggage by yourself uphill is hard, so hard it could literally kill you, but each person that you let help you carry that 50 lbs., the easier it gets.

Until I figured out this really easy and seemingly dumb lesson, I was really sick. Emotionally and physically I was in a scary place, but I’ll let you know from experience you will never regret asking for help. Because even if people tell you no, just one person saying yes makes a world of difference.

I feel like this is also the year of romantic relationships, at least it is for me. I paid attention long enough to realize that the guy I’d spent the last 3 years being the best of friends with was way cooler than I thought and would maybe be a good choice. And so far so good, but talk to me in 10 years; you never know what’s gonna happen, but for now I’m happy. And when it boils down to it, all that really matters is that you’re happy now.

Not to mention, most people turn 21 this year, which makes you feel super grown up because now you can go get fancy drinks at a real bar with your friends without risking being laughed at and kicked out. And, people start to make the realization that it’s better to drink less nice beer, than drink more cheap, nasty beer. Which helps when you’re sober because you get to do a lot less babysitting and have a lot more fun.

 

Senior Year: I Learned that Life Sucks–and That’s What Makes it So Great

Senior year has been utter chaos, but that’s okay. I don’t know why everyone always thinks that senior years are these walk in the park where you sit around drinking champagne and eating bonbons doing nothing.

I hate to break it to you but, senior years suck. You spend most of the time having panic attacks about what the future holds and what happens when college ends. You have to do stuff like look for jobs and interview or apply for grad-school which is basically undergrad except not fun. And you have to think about back up plans because you don’t know anything for certain.

You just have to jump and I’m usually not the one to jump. Jumping is scary and I hate it but when you just do it you normally land someplace really great. At this point, I’ve just turned into this cynical, angry person because I realized that the real world isn’t sunshine and butterflies but when something works out, it’s complete and utter euphoria. It’s so rewarding to accomplish things and the harder the journey the better the pay off.

I’ve really just learned to enjoy the ride and the small triumphs, like being able to do 14 push-ups in a minute (doesn’t sound hard, but is really tough when you have no upper-body strength) or finding out that people actually might want to you to work for them or go to their school. So even though I dread growing up and being a “real person” I don’t think you ever become one and so I’m just going to be happy and enjoy whatever life throws at me good, bad or indifferent.

 

I hope that through all of my social blunders and strange, strange life that maybe you learned something. I learned a lot about myself.

Mostly that I can be really creative under pressure, and that sometimes I actually can be funny. You never know if the whole professional big girl job thing doesn’t work out I can blog, write self-help books, or try my hand at novel writing.

Granted, I will need a million and a half grammar lessons, but a girl needs to have dreams or life is not worth living.

So keep on keepin’ on. Read a book. Jump high. Fall down, but get back up. Dance, Cry, just live goddamnit!

 

Cheers,

 

Little Edie

 

P.S. I sincerely apologize for the sappy, cliché fortune-cookie-isms. Growing up does that to a person.


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