Ketchup.

I've arrived at the point that I wasn't sure I would ever come across. It isn't like the words weren't fruitfully circulating. Why would anyone become an English major? A question, I'll admit, that might have been helpful all those years ago when I was applying for college, back in the day before my high school graduation. I never really thought about, although that isn't a fair excuse because I question what all I was actually thinking about then. Boys, certainly. Work and school and football and cheerleading and my car (freedom) and the radio. I was dancing and singing. All of which, as you can see, don't require the full capability of my brain's attention. Not that I am undermining my intelligence! I'm here, aren't I?
The point is, I've been thinking recently, about what it means to be an English major. What am I going to do now? What skills do I have that might qualify me for positions and even allow me to excel? What stigmas or false pretenses do I have from this journey in college, what do I want to leave behind, in a sense? I think that last question is important because in this environment of learning, I feel like it is possible I have picked up some negative traits as well. Like, questioning everything. That is a motto highly regarded in a college campus, but you know what, it hasn't gotten me very far. I question myself every time I make a decision until I'm wallowing in self-doubt or confusion and maybe I'm taking the idea to its extremities, but it has affected me in other ways as well.
Before I had a car, my first two years of high school, my mom or siblings or the parents of my friends were my means to and from school. I was generally happy with the set-up, except for the hours of stress and anguish waiting on my sister and mom for what felt like infinity and typically led me straight to the attendance window for a tardy note or something to that effect. Like I said, even those uncomfortable circumstances are now blotted out by the feeling of togetherness I have from those memories. I was late, sure, but I also had a sister to blame for my troubles and a sister to whine to when I got glares from my teachers. She was late, I was late; we cared and did not care all at the same time. The same is true of my experiences whenever my mom became the shuttle to, but mostly from, school. She was not very good with time. I told her activities started an hour before they actually did and ended only a half an hour earlier because if she was late I could always hang around with the kids who stayed late too. Either way, I'm not exaggerating. That lady would come to get me as the sun was setting and it was all I could at times to not panic and remind myself that she would come, eventually. With all of that said and done there was something my mom did that caused my anger to subside and recharge my battery for whatever the next day would bring. We had our little routine and maybe it wasn't perfect, but I came to rely on it, to expect it. That was enough for me, the comfort of an unstable stability. I never thought more about it because as far as I knew, every family had issues, every child had their secret pain, mine was no different and it was certainly not the worst.
When I got to college all of this started to change. I began to "think critically" about what all of these issues meant, what effects they had had on the person I was now. It isn't that college had been the first time someone had told me to think of my past in that way, I saw a counselor once or twice when my parents divorced and in church your problems are never your own, they are the sins of your fathers and so on. However, "the self" became the utmost. What had become of me? Who had that little girl come up to be? A question I will most likely never answer, mostly because I don't care anymore. Honestly. It is a bore walking around with all those labels on me. "I am such and such a person and I do X,Y and Z. I don't like this and I will certainly never be doing that." It is unrealistic and unhealthy. I could never live up to those standards and expectations and the worst part is that they were my own. The people who love me never asked those questions. I thought it was a lack of concern about who I really am, but I think now it is something else. They saw me for what I was capable of, they saw the good in me, they were friends and family. We weren't perfect, but we co-existed.
I'm realizing now that those times produced happiness because they were authentic. I was never questioning their love and weighing out the costs and benefits of reactions to gauge the damage done on our relationship. Do you know how time consuming that is? Not to mention dreadfully painful and self-destructive. I guess I'm coming from a place of nostalgia. It isn't that I'm not thankful for the past, most recent years, of my life. I am. I'm thankful for the experiences, for the family I still have that loves me from afar, for the skills I have worked on (my vocabulary has definitely expanded), but I'm also dreaming of what will lay ahead. I'm thankful for the people God has put in my life, then, but also recently that have inspired me to think like I did back then on what it is that I want to happen in the future. Who is it that I see in ten years? As the picture of myself becomes clear again, after what feels like an eternity but I know hasn't really been, the fading away of the morning haze that had to happen to get me to this place for which I am extremely thankful because over all, the journey has been rough but it would probably go unaltered, I could never change a moment if given the opportunity because right now, God has me where I want be. Anyway, coming from this place, I'm looking forward, rain or shine and I can't wait to decide and see where I'll be next.
Amen.