You know why I like this? It's because I don't have to answer to anyone. I don't have to engage in some exhaustive (but usually just exhausting) debate.
So, there's this thing we do at my school. I find it very symbolically powerful - regeneration at the middle of winter is always high on my radar - and though I can't really talk about it, I have tried to tell some of you (especially if the likelihood of your attending my school was slim to none) about it in the past but mostly just end up confusing you.
So, this thing, which is a pretty important thing requires a lot of planning and work on the part of the upperclasswomen. And someone, named me, totally forgot to take care of her part before she left the country.
So the thing, I suppose I won't participate this year, and that has me a bit sad. I love our traditions.
Today, as I was walking along the sea, and as I was standing up against winds so strong they could have blown me right off the cliff, I realized that I don't feel like a woman exactly, but like a person instead.
I do not want pity about my school choice, for the record. Neither do I want to make you jealous, or feel bad, or whatever. I just get tired of defending my choice (especially when I know, I know, the young strapping men at Harvard or Princeton or Yale never had to answer questions about how they would find a wife, how they would interact with women - back when those schools were for men only) to bus drivers and my brother and my family and the people I knew in highschool.
Once, when a cab driver asked me if I was lesbian, I said gleefully, "Not yet!"
Anyway, co-ed existence seems to have thrown me no curve balls (Unless you count the hunk of cheese someone TOOK A HUGE BITE OUT OF - and I don't know if it was a man but for some reason I can't see a woman doing that. What the fuck, am I living with George Costanza? I mean, honor code and all, people stole food at Bryn Mawr. But they never took a HUGE BITE out of my cheese. Fucker.) I feel utterly comfortable talking to men and women. I am at ease, I am comfortable. I'm golden, baby. I don't really think I'm socially inept. I flirt with bus drivers. I smile at babies. I seem to be fine.
I love it here. I don't want to leave.
I'm a bit lonely though.
What was I going to say? I actually have no emails to respond to, and there's a party in my dorm and I thought I'd make an appearance. I am the life of a party.
Or not.
Anyway, most of the time I'm fairly pleased with myself. And to the point where I don't even want to qualify this or apologize for this or worry about how saying this makes you feel. But I am a proud woman - and beautiful in my pride. (Though I pray, in my semi-irreverent way that I pray, that I am not ever, ever arrogant.) And it feels good to be me. It feels very good. I am proud I made it here. I'm glad that I haul my ass out to places, that I've grown more brave, that I don't waste time. I like who I've become.
I don't care if people dismiss me as not only an amateur but a rank one, as a blow-hard, as someone who toots her own horn more often than she deserves. Dismiss all you want. I don't care. It doesn't register. I feel untouchable.
Sometimes I feel almost spectacular.
2003-01-25, some fucker ate my stilton
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