I drove down to Corvallis for the day.
I was in a sorority. Well, I am in a sorority. I guess once you’re in one you’re in it for life. Anyway, in a sorority you get a whole “family” complete with a big sister and a little sister, sometimes more if you’re lucky enough. Normally, you get your Big sister shortly after joining. This is during your freshman (in the house) year. Then, if all goes accordingly you get your Little sister your sophomore year. Nothing about how I joined my sorority was normal. I joined my sophomore year. So in terms of the sorority, I was a freshman, but I was a sophomore...it’s all very confusing. I got a Big my first year in the house, but she (unfortunately) had to dis-affiliate...that means she left the sorority. However, before that happened, I got a Little during my second year in the house. It was late winter term when they both DA’d...not planned, and independently of one another.
So my third year in the house (my junior year in the sorority, but my senior year in school) I was “adopted” by another Big. She is amazing, and I was welcomed into a big family, because she already had 2 Littles. So I was a triplet. Then I got another Little. She’s fabulous, and I could not be happier with my sorority family. Especially my Little.
Anyway, I told you all of that so that I could tell you this. Today is my Little’s birthday. She’s a sophomore now. In both the house and in school. She joined the house the conventional way, so all of her years add up and are easy to follow. She just moved into the house for the first time a few weeks ago, and I want her to have the best time possible. I feel really bad because I can’t be there. Normally, you would live with your Big the first term you live in the house, but because I joined abnormally, I graduated before we could live together. So, I am forced to be the best Big that I can be...from afar. I don’t want her to feel like she’s missed out on having a Big. So, I wanted to do something special for her birthday.
I had these big plans to surprise her. I wasn’t going to tell her that I was coming into town, and surprise her. However, I found out that she has class until 5pm, and that didn’t really fit into my plans. So, I told her I was coming into town. It would have been cool to do it the original way, but it just wasn’t practical with such a small window.
I have a job interview in Gresham at 10am, so I had to turn around and drive right back after I took her to dinner. So, it really was just a day trip.
There’s something about driving all alone, at night. It really makes you think. I got really deep into my thoughts. It might just be the endless stretch of road. It could also be the fact that you’re passing by towns that seem to be so peaceful, but you feel all alone there in your car.
Sometimes I really feel alone. Being in my car tonight just reaffirmed that. It’s hard to go from undergrad and living with 50 girls, to solo in your car. I was literally driving between two worlds. My undergraduate sorority life which I still feel a part of, and my grown-up, jobless, alone, without a friend world. That’s a tough thing to do, driving down that dark headlight strewn road just made me wonder how I am going to make this transition.
It’s not like I haven’t been trying to make this transition. It would really be nice if once you graduated they just handed you a list of jobs, and said “here you go pick one.” Then once you picked it they gave you that job. I’m not asking for some career Eden right out of school, but something to get my feet wet would be nice. I sort of feel like OSU gave me all of this education, but didn’t provide any help for me to figure out what to do with it.
Now I think I know what I want to do, but that doesn’t help me figure out how to do it. Also, it feels like Gresham is so far from everything and everyone that I’ve grown to know and love in the past few years. It’s hard not to notice that I have no friends. I feel fine most of the time, but it would just be so nice to have someone I could call up and talk to. I would just like a friend that I felt was genuinely concerned with what I was thinking about, and wanted to hear from me. I know that there are girls that I can talk to, and they are genuinely concerned with me. The problem is that they all have their own things going on, and I feel like they forget about me.
That’s hard to take. Every now and then I go through a whole day without actually speaking to anyone, except for my parents. That just reminds me that I don’t have really close friends. I have friends that I can call, but there is no one person that I feel like I can lean on right now. Thank god I’m doing alright, but sometimes it would be nice to know that person was there.
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