Starting at Zero

It's June 20th, which means that I leave my family tomorrow, Italy the day after tomorrow, ad actually get back to my home sweet home in 3 days. Yikes. It's hard to believe that this "year" is almost over. So much has happened (good and bad) since I left 9 months and 5 days ago. It's going to be very strange to leave this country and return to Gtown.

Whenever anyone asks if I'm happy about going home I usually tell them that I am sad to leave but happy to go home, which is pretty much true, and serves to satisfy & not offend the questioner [as "YES I AM SO STOKED TO GET OUT OF HERE" might], which was basically the point. I am sad to leave, sad that this experience is finally coming to an end. Of course, another week in this apartment and I'd go completely off my rocker (just kidding. kind of). And I am happy to go home to my friends and my cat and my frozen peas. I am also pretty worried though. Over the past few months I have been fantasizing about this summer and how awesome it's going to be, but little by little reality (dang that reality) has been encroaching on my plans. Some of my best friends are leaving for long stretches of time (though, to be fair, I am, too), and I'm beginning to remember that my relationship with the 'rents is not all that it could be. Funny, how you start to forget these things after some time away, it's like how you forget how exceedingly painful it was to get your wisdom teeth out a few months after the operation.

It's not really my parent's fault that we don't get along perfectly — I fer sure do my part, and am far from being the daughter they would like me to be. And it's not like I am too happy with who I am, either. When I sit back and look at myself there are so many things that do not match up with the "could be" version that I carry around in my head that it's kind of ridiculous. The real challenge is getting the actual me to match the "could be". I think that I could do it (or at least get an acceptably decent likeness), but you have to understand that when I'm at home I am working under 17 years of screw ups (and that is a lot because I am awfully good at screwing up) which can make changes (and looking at the bigger picture) rather difficult. This year has kind of been a chance to take a puase and step back, to look at exactly how much I have messed up everything. I also think that it has been a chance for me to grow up a little, to change a little. But I think that if I go back to the way things were before, that won't matter and soon enough I'll be back to the sullen teenager thing and nothing will ever change.

I guess what I really want to do is to start at zero. That's a hard thing to ask of anyone, and yes, it is virtually impossible. But I really think that, if given the chance, I could prove to my parents, myself, and everyone else that I can actually do it, I can actually become a functional human being. I can't do that under all the rules and regulations and expectations and everything that structure my home life now. Not that I'm saying that we need to dump all rules sex drugs & rock 'n' roll, not that at all. It's just that in my house we have a lot of kind of arbitrary rules and ways of doing things that have come from me not managing to do OK, and a lot of them date back to elementary school. As I am going into senior year, it makes sense that some [all?] of them might be the smallest bit obsolete.

So what I'm proposing to my parents is this: give me the summer. Let me try to do things my way [indeed figure out what is my way]. If that works out OK, maybe I can take a crack at senior year. Maybe I'm delusional. Maybe I'll screw this up as much as I've already screwed up everything else ever. At least then I'll know it's me and there's not much point in thinking about it anymore.

I hope I don't mess everything up, though. I really actually want to do well and succeed 'n' all that. We'll see.

On a more Fun and Exciting note, my FredFlare and Hot Topic Orders are all ready to go! 10 pts for new hair and craze amounts of cute!!


Hopefully optimistic,
Charlotte