the lost feeling

Oh gods. I read them... The old posts. These old posts. I feel unreasonably jealous of the seventeen-year-old who wrote them. And guilty for being nineteen and feeling negative, disappointed, blahblahblah.

When I wrote those old posts...
I was sixteen or seventeen. High school junior or senior.
I wore a uniform every day, with odd against-the-rules touches like combat boots disguised with legwarmers, a non-uniform sweater, and Celtic pendants.
I was the most confident I have ever been.
I was worried about college. I wanted to go to Wheaton. I thought going to a fancy out of state school was the only way to succeed in the world, and that if (oh noes!) I went to a place like URI, I would end up living forever on the same street on which I was born, or something.
I was unemployed and somewhat irresponsible.

School was a safe, fun place, a place for passing notes to friends in the backs of classrooms, drawing comics about our adventures, passing out cupcakes on weird holidays like the Ides of March, loitering in the parking lot when we borrowed our parents' cars.
The future felt wide open. Because I didn't have to do anything about it right away, it still seemed easy.

Interjection: God it's so vivid. The snowbanks out the window in the tiny AP Statistics classroom. The constant cold in the hallways and classrooms and especially the auditorium. The swishing of a school skirt. The heavy stomping in my boots down the tiny hallways. Lockers slamming. Friends' voices. The carols at Christmastime and smuggling candy in the pockets of school sweatshirts. The foul smell of the carpets when spring rains came. The red platypus. The dawn of summer and warm rain every day. The sound a slinky makes in physics class when you pretend it is a sound wave. These memories & sensations actually hurt. The small hot creative writing classroom, surrounded by claustrophobic computers, nervous about reading a new poem, hands shooting up into the air, debates, friends everywhere. That last one kind of really hurts. The sand and sea and feeling of drenched polo shirts and seaweed around our ankles, screaming with the seagulls.

Don't get me wrong... I would not go back to high school if I could. Seventeen is so small. The place was so small. But all of it - how it was - is beautiful... partly because it is gone except for the memories.

When I was seventeen, I thought that one's life was supposed to take off after leaving high school. Everything would open up and be great. Possibility! Adventure! But, no. Everything closed and shrunk. I was in a relationship in which I felt small and protected, nothing like how strong & confident I had felt as a high school senior. I actually felt like I was a few inches shorter.

Perhaps what I have been feeling these past few months is post traumatic stress or shock or whatnot. Breaking off that relationship caused me to examine just how much confidence and drive I had lost, and the results were pretty staggering. And then my favorite aunt passed away. Aside from missing her terribly, it puts childhood even further out of reach.

Honestly, I feel lost. Not really depressed or "woe is me." But just... lost. I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know how to find this out. I have around two and a half years until I graduate with an English degree. Until I won't be covered by my parents' health insurance anymore. Until I will have to find a place to live, a job to do. Until I will probably have money problems. Until I will have to figure out how to do all the things I have always dreamed of doing, while still making enough money. Ahh!!!

Reading the old posts, I was jealous of my seventeen-year-old self because everything seemed possible. Not only possible, but probable. I would probably become a published writer. The universe was probably divine. College would probably solve all my problems. Everything would probably be okay. I didn't really have a list of goals back then either, but I did have a strong belief in possibility. And I sure as hell did not feel lost.

Addendum:
After I posted this post, I started to reread it. Then I had this odd moment where I felt like I was looking at myself from outside myself, or that a self in the future was reading this... just like I read the old posts. And somehow I had this strange but fleeting feeling that I would be okay eventually and would wonder what all this worry was about. I hope that's true.