starlightsaoirse

to the end of goal number three (decide what you want for yourself), i've been musing (okay, mulling) for a while. at first, i made a knee-jerk jump at social work. after all, aislinn is in social work, and aislinn has the most brilliant internship ever right now (working with at-risk-for-human-trafficking-youth in jamaica, teaching useful, employable skills, at a school that provides lodging and helps find employment upon completion of the program), and social work certainly seems to have the more community-leaning focus that i'm missing in my counseling realm. i made a hurried inquiry into UK's social work program and realized i was only one week from the application deadline and decided, sensibly, that that was too short a time to wrangle recommendation letters, and etc., and went ahead with the plan to go on into the EdS in my current plan -- at least that way, i'll have to ability to become licensed as a counselor, rather than having a useless (but awfully pretty) MS after my name.

with that decision made, i've set back a little bit and thought a little more about what i actually want. but it's hard -- there are so many things that i've done that i've truly loved with all my heart that i have trouble pinning down where i ought to be.

i honestly loved every second of doing theatre, even the mornings when it was 4:00 AM and i was still on the catwalk, kept conscious only by coffee, mountain dew, and sheer determination, even when i was gritting my teeth to keep from saying rude words to the director, even when it was far too close to opening night and there was way too much yet to be finished.

i honestly loved working at camp. living and breathing for the campers, even when it was a thousand degrees outside and i got to choose between showering and sleeping, even when i was doing stacks on stacks of dishes for rude fifth graders who splattered ketchup on me, even when my blisters had blisters and my sunburn had sunburn -- i felt like i was making a difference, i was where God wanted me, and i was happy.

i honestly loved Ulster. Ulster was beautiful. even when i hadn't slept since june, the kids were picking at each other, there were so many kinks to work out, we were all learning on the fly -- it's such a beautiful mission, and i definitely still want my research to revolve there. i learned, and i guided, and i grew.

i can even honestly say, now, that i love my practicum site. i'm providing free counseling services to adults seeking their GEDs, most of whom are low SES and disadvantaged in a number of other ways. the vast majority would never have access to the services i'm providing. even the fact that i smile and greet these students by name has an impact. validating and encouraging and telling them how proud i am of them makes a difference for these students, because for a lot of them, they haven't heard that in a long time, and maybe not ever. i've learned so much from them, about myself and about my counseling orientation and about what it means to be human in relation to another human. and i've loved it, even when i've hated it and it's made me cry and i've yelled at my supervisor and i've had to call and make reports about terrible things and i've gone home with migraines.

and so, i've had varied experiences and varied interests and i've loved every single one of them. how can i ever narrow down and decide what i want to pursue? i still haven't decided. i know some further soul-searching is in order. i have a couple of people whose opinions i value, who i look up to and admire, that i want to get in contact with and mull together. i even think a good long exhausting hike at loucon might be in order. but i found a starting point.

a dear friend, one of these aforementioned people i admire and look up to, julie, finished a draft of her novel several months ago. when she did, she posted on her blog (found here! she's amazing -- http://rosewoodpencilbox.blogspot.com/2011/05/hm-that-was-quick.html) about something called love lists (originally found here, because i'm too lazy to link properly -- http://betweenfactandfiction.blogspot.com/2011/01/happy-writers-society-love-lists-by.html). this has been useful to me in sorting out my writing, so i figured it would also be useful in sorting out my life.

and so, behold. my love list, about life, and i guess more roundabout-ly, about my career interests:
( things i love )

i don't know what to make of it, as it is. but it's a start. and i think it gets at the core of who i am and what i value.

if anyone reads this, in a few days, remind me to post about washington.


<3

six months. six months is apparently the amount of time it takes to get over four years, four years spent building a life, four years of planning a future, four years with a man i thought was my fucking soulmate, and man does it make me kind of sick to my stomach (not to mention how ridiculous it makes me feel) to type that word with him in my head now.

we broke up in mid-august, after a summer of agonizing. maybe that's why it only took me six months to get over it -- even though we had my entire college experience together, and my entire high school years spent mooning over him, i spent three more months thinking about ending things. and really, the entire year prior being miserable. now, with some distance, i'm able to think about these things, and realize that things weren't as good as i desperately wanted to believe they were. and they weren't as bad, either, as i desperately wanted to believe they were, immediately after. there were shiningly bright moments, times when i was as happy as i ever was, even up until the end. and there were dismally low moments, which too many of my friends are all too acquainted with, times when i'd sit outside my dorm, huddled over my cell phone, at midnight or two or four a.m., sobbing or yelling, over things that i didn't even understand why we were fighting over.

i guess it didn't really take six months, for me to get over it. over him, over us. it was the past six months, and the three months of summer, and one brilliant month of july and ulster project, a charming irishman; it was the last year, year and a half, maybe even two years, of our relationship, where things started to go to hell. it was the natural progression of a relationship that fell apart.

and now, after a month and a half of not talking to him, of him not being in my life, i am freer than i've ever been, and i'm finally, for the first time maybe ever, a whole person, secure in myself and all of the things that go with that, happy.