That word....

I think it was Senior year of high school when people started referring to my peers and me as “young men and women.” It was around that time when church leaders started emphasizing Bible verses about becoming “men and women” of God and parents started talking about “womanhood” and “manhood.” It was also around that time when I wanted nothing more than to stay 17 or 18 forever without having to deal with the responsibilities of becoming a “woman.” Just hearing the word “woman” made me want rip my knotted intestine out of my stomach.

Then I went to college.

It was definitely my Freshman year of college that I was actually being referred to as a “woman,” and knowing that I wanted to gut myself at the thought of becoming a women, you can imagine how I felt when people were assuming I was officially a woman.

I don’t know why the word “woman” holds such negative weight in my mind. I have been exposed to many incredibly smart, gifted, and insightful women and my parents have been nothing but supportive of my “girliness” (or lack there of). So why this word makes me want to punch a cement wall, I still don’t know. How words themselves can trigger deep emotion stuns me as well, but that’s a question for a different blog post.

What I do know is that I have always had a fear of getting older. I distinctly remember crying on my fourteenth birthday because I wasn’t done being thirteen yet. I spent my entire seventeenth birthday sulking in my room, because seventeen was “too old.” Nowadays, I’m very convinced that if I came across a magic lamp and a genie burst out offering me three wishes, my first wish would be to never get older than twenty-one. So I’m petty and don’t want to get old, but I’m not ignorant of the fact that I will age and physically become a woman. But this isn’t the type of “woman” to which I hold such great disdain.

I’m not one for stereotypes. I have always been the dancer who climbs mountains and the girl that says “dude” and the cheerleader who gets good grades and the outdoors type who like clothes and of late, the writer who holds conservative views. To me, “woman” has a lot of baggage. The word “woman” comes with lots of stereotypes—domestic, nurturing, teacher-like, curvy, moody are a few that come to my mind—and although I can identify with many womanly stereotypes, I hate the idea of falling into any of them. I guess you could say that I don’t want to just be “normal.”

Here’s the big BUT: I want to be a teacher and a homemaker and eventually a mom and a wife. Does that mean that I actually fall into preconceived stereotypes? Maybe; and for the first time in my life! But it’s not because I’m conforming to societal rules, it’s because I’m becoming more myself. I am proud to say I have come a long way from my “never getting married or having kids and spending my entire life furthering my career” self.

Yes, I still don’t want to get old and yes “woman” still makes me want to choke a little bit (I’m working on that) but I’m becoming ok with taking on this task of being a woman (just writing that makes my heart twist).

Here’s the other big BUT: I will never ever, EVER lose my title of mom and dad’s “little girl.” I refuse to let knowledge or wisdom or increased responsibility (“womanhood”) tear me from my childhood or the fact that I will always be younger than someone and have the ability to learn from those more “manly” or “womanly” (“adulty?”) than me.

On Romanticism and the 21st Century

What is this world? Wild yet fatigued.

Cement scrapes the drowsy, pewter sky

that mourns the loss of pure sapphire hues.

Vacant faces pass each other by

without a glance of love or of loathing.

Hurried feet don’t think before they step

upon the barren ground who violently struggles

to stay firm, struggles to support them.

They. Those. Anyone. No one. We

human creatures once hunted treasures

of knowledge; once found truth buried

in daffodils. Our species once knew

that iron did not create equality but

corruption, that Bastille Day did not

conclude an eternal struggle, and that wealth

isn’t made out of gold. Humans once

saw chocolate dirt and singing weeds.

Humans once called upon God,

who’s intangible beauty reigns tangibly

throughout the natural world, to inspire truth.

What now do our grimy hands grip

in spite of reality? Gray is the new brown.

Gray is the new blue, orange, green.

Pages of priceless words have turned to screens

of propaganda. Conversations of philosophy

have turned to texts of flaming gossip.

Children have filled their brains with lies of war,

sex, entitlement. Old values are lost.

Father Time bites his lip and smirks

as we ignorantly try to break free

of his choking grip. Oh wait. We can’t.

Liberty bells do not ring freedom.

They ring the sweet sound of opportunity.

Opportunity to dream of aqua skies,

to dwell on innovative thought, to drift into waves

of love and passion, to dive into fields of color.

We once stood atop mountains and thought,

listened, observed, reflected, respected beauty.

Our minds once bloomed with creativity

and sprouted brilliance. What is the mind?

Wild and fatigued. Begging for inspiration

in a world where solidarity is long gone.

The sand between our toes has been replaced

with poisonous thorns of apathy. The warm breeze

that brushed our hair has turned to icy wind.

We search for beauty screaming from the trees.

We search for truth floating through the air.

But the leaves crumbled and the air turned to smoke.

What is this world? Wildly fatigued.

Books and Professors

I am in a class called The History of British Literature II. To most people, I think that the name itself sounds daunting—not even daunting just straight up boring—and before I set foot in the classroom, I was a little unsure. I like history and I like literature, but that British thing was a whole different story. I’m American why should I care about British lit? Well, as it turns out I have this super cool, brilliant Irish professor and English Romantic literature is my long lost love. In other words, I’m obsessed(obsessed enough to annotate a poem in a letter to my boyfriend and tell him what it means to me…NERD in action) and want to spend my life studying Europe and its literature. Not really…..but possibly.

Anyway, that long (mostly unnecessary) introduction was to set context for a book club I joined. Yes, nerd in action again, but my too-smart-for-his-own-good Irish Brit Lit professor told me I should join it and my fascination with professors and their intelligence wouldn’t let me say no. So I picked up the book, Cloud Atlas, by David Mithcell, from the English department on Tuesday, and went to the first meeting yesterday.

I walked into the room rather certain, but as I took my seat in a circle among English professors, Philosophy professors, graduate students of both studies, and undergraduate students of both studies, my confidence dissipated. The atmosphere of that circle screamed “scholarly” and I was most definitely at the bottom of the present academic totem pole.

I think the only words I said during the whole hour and a half discussion were “Hi my name is Allison and I’m an English major.” I mostly just sat and marveled at the wisdom bouncing about the room. Literally, these people’s words rocketed effortlessly off their tongues eloquently and accurately, and landed gracefully in the center of the room ready for someone else to add their share of flawless intellect. The acute knowledge shared between the people in the room was truly inspiring and as I walked out of the English Village humbled and inquisitive I felt….excited.

I know excited isn’t exactly a typical emotion after an overwhelming experience but I was stoked! It was the first time I really, truly realized that the world is filled with endless knowledge. Sometimes I stress out about cramming as much knowledge into my brain as I can because I want to know everything about everything—especially literature—but in reality, I’m never going to know everything. I could spend my whole life in school getting hundreds of degrees, traveling, talking to people, researching, and working, but I will never reach the full capacity of learning potential.

So for now, I am comfortable being my fairly uninformed, inexperienced, curious, 19 year old self, enthusiastic about higher learning and infatuated with professors. In fact, this may be one of the only times in my life where I can be a blank canvas to life’s teachings without too much prior opinion or knowledge skewing pure forms of learning. So call me a nerd, or a teacher’s pet, or a try hard, or whatever, but I am overly passionate about learning and there is nothing that can stop this growing fire.