Done

Consultation letter is done. Tuition will be going up 7.9%. Not what we wanted, but it could have been worse.
The letter was the last thing I had to do. My time with Senate is done, and as I had lunch with Nolan today I realized that I really am okay with it. Feeling like I gave all that I could give and took what I needed from the experience, and now it's time to move on.
Phew.
That was a crazy 2 years.

Adjusting

To him being only 30 minutes away.
To not leading 26 people...not having to watch what I do all the time because the microscope is gone.
To living by myself.
To not having homework for the first time in 2 years.

I gotta say...it's great. To hang out with him and have the pressure gone. He'll be around tomorrow, and so will I. We're so much better like this.
To realize that the friendships I've formed through Senate still exist, only now the business doesn't take over. It's fun. That's it.
To know that I made all the dishes in the sink and left the lights on.
To read for fun and not worry about what I should be doing.
Summer...stay forever.

Go Us

Maybe we'll stay together and maybe we won't. Maybe him moving away wasn't the best choice for either one of us. But we did it. He chased his dreams while I chased mine. We compromised on the little things, but not who we were or what we wanted.
I admire us for that.

I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want it
I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if you need it
You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs and I'll hold it
You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life and I won't judge it
(and there are no strings attached to it)
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return
You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I'll grant it
You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you'll have it
You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I'll support it
You can ask for anything you want anything at all and I'll understand it
(and there are no strings attached to it)
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return
I bet you're wondering when the next payback shoe will eventually drop
I bet you're wondering when my conditional police will force you to cough up
I bet wonder how far you have now danced you way back into debt
This is the only kind of love as I understand it that there really is
You can express your deepest of truths even if it means I'll lose you and I'll hear it
You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss I'll empathize with
You can say that you have to skip town to chase your passion I'll hear it
You can even hit rock bottom have a mid-life crisis and I'll hold it
(and there are no strings attached)
Alanis Morissette

I want to learn how to love like that.

Sometimes we forget who we got
Who they are, and who they are not
There is so much more to love than black and white
Keep it loose, keep it tight
Amos Lee

Grad party yesterday...good food, lots of family, fun times. Despite all the hoopla I still don't feel graduated. I remember graduating from high school. It felt like the world was ending, or at least would never be the same. That we would walk across the stage and life as we knew it would be completely and utterly different, and in a way, it was.
But now...it doesn't feel like the world is ending, but instead continuing. Maybe it's because I have to go back to student teach, or because I knew that Bemidji, and Minnesota for that matter, would be temporary. Either way, it didn't feel like I thought it would feel.
*********
In a week the distance will be over. We will be in the same city. What that brings only time will tell.

Pissed

Every week big companies shut down American plants and move jobs overseas.
Gas prices are rediculous.
Education is severly underfunded.
Old people can't get the medicine they need.
We're at WAR (even if they don't call it that).
And all our elected officials in the Senate can do is talk about judges.
19 days.
They've wasted 19 days on ONE judge.
They think we won't remember how stupid they were when it comes time to vote.
Unfortuneatly, many of us won't.
But I will, and I'm pissed.
Damnit.
Just like last year, when Minnesota's legislature failed to pass a bonding bill. They pass it this year, and tell people (higher ed), that we should be happy - they gave us building money. We were supposed to get that last year, punks.
We need less politicans and more advocates.
Unfortuneatly, most of the people that believe in something enough to advocate for it won't put up with the bullshit.

Pull...at...heart. If you knew her journey in to our family, it would pull at yours too. 

She'll be walking before we know it! 

Ready

To graduate.
To move.
To go home.
To play with Liyah.
To come back.
To study education without getting a grade for it.
To advocate for the little people who bring so much joy to my life.
To kiss him when I want.
To sleep next to him when I want.
To take walks alone when I want...knowing that if I want him to be beside me, he will be.
To live in a big city again.
To be in the same city with somebody who makes me feel safe and oh so alive at the very same time.
To read books that have been collecting dust all year.
To soak up sun.
To eat food from farmers markets.
To begin the next chapter of my life.
I'm ready.

Sleeping with the Devil

"It's utter nonsense, of course. If an election were held in Saudi Arabia today, if anyone who wanted to could run for the office of president, and if people could vote their hearts without fear of having their heads cut off afterward in Chop-Chop Square, Osama bin Laden would be elected in a landslide - not because the Saudi people want to wash their hands in the blood of the dead of September 11, but simply because Bin Laden has dared to do what even the mighty United States of America won't do: stand up to the thieves who rule the country.
Saudi Arabia today is a mess, and it is our mess. We made it the privage storage tank for our oil reserves. We reaped the benefits of a steady petroleum supply at a discounted price, and we grabbed at every available Saudi petrodollar. We taught the Saudis exactly what was expected of them. We cannot walk away morally from the consequences of this behavior - and we really cannot walk away economically. So we crow about democracy and talk about someday weaning ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil, despite the fact that as long as America has been dependent on foreign oil there has never been an honest, sustained effort at the senior governmental level to reduce long-term U.S. petroleum consumption."
Robert Baer

Yeah...we're hypocrites.

I wanna be soft and resolved
Clean of slate and released
I wanna forgive for the both of us
Alanis Morissette

What if there's too much work to be done? Too much hurt and pain and things said out of anger? Too much intensity, too much looking out for ourselves because it was the only way to function...
I love him. I'm pretty sure he loves me too. I'm excited to spend the summer with him, living separate lives but being able to easily share things with him.
I just don't know if it's enough.
I want it to be. I want us to find what we used to have. I want to talk to him without crying. I want to forgive both of us for even letting it get to this point.
But there's a part of me that's built walls...walls I don't know if he's persistent enough to climb...walls I don't have the strength to tear down.

Engaged

Somebody asked me today if we were engaged. "NO!" I quickly said.
'It's okay, everybody thinks we're dating, but we're not,' I said, in part to make her feel better about the mistake she had made, in part because it's true.
'You two are really going to miss each other,' said another.
"Yeah," was all I could say.
Do not remind me that he is leaving to go across the ocean, or that life as I've known it is about to be over, or that this person who is a part of my everyday decision making process will suddenly be gone.
I'm not sure that anyone will ever understand the friendship that we have. Maybe I never will. But it's fun, and uncomplicated, and I like that.
I will miss him, but I will never tell him that.
I think he'll miss me too, but he'll never tell me that either.
It's okay though, because we'll both just know.

There's no combination of words
I could put on the back of a postcard
No song I could sing
But I can try for your heart
Our dreams, and they are made out of real things
Like a, shoebox of photographs
With sepiatone loving
Love is the answer,
At least for most of the questions in my heart
Like why are we here? and where do we go?
And how come we're so hard?
It's not always easy and
Sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing its always better when we're together
Jack Johnson

I'm In Love

With our neighbor kids who play in the back of our driveway.
Their laughter floods our house through the open windows and reminds me that I should be outside.
Not doing homework, or blogging, or working out logistics for this summer...but outside, soaking up the sunshine and everything that is this place because soon I will be leaving, and the good and the bad of my last 4 years here will be only a memory.

I Like

1. Strongbow cider at Bridgids - it tastes like England and getting drunk with Julie A and dancing until they kicked us out.
2. When people comment on my blog.
3. A boy, even if he lives far away, because he's not mad when he calls and I'm at the bar with other boys. He knows where we stand and I find strength in that.

This time of the year is always weird.
So many endings collide with so many beginnings, and I guess it only makes sense, but somehow it all feels too natural.
Next year will bring a lot of big changes. The end of Senate, the end of normal college life...yet somehow I'm calm about it. My last class was today. I have a take home final, and I'm done. Our last Senate meeting was tonight, and while part of me was sad, another part of me was satisfied with the work I had done and simply ready to move on.
Maybe this sense of peace is life telling me I made the right decision - by staying, deferring, doing an internship and student teaching.
Or maybe my brain is exhausted from the craziness of the last 2 years and it doesn't have the strength to analyze any more - only the strength to sit back and be okay with where the journey has led.

Epiphany

We've been friends for the last 4 years. At times we were closer than others, but friends none the less.
In the beginning he fascinated me. He had a focus and a drive I'd never seen before. There were times when he let that focus push me away, which caused resentment, which eventually led to an apology and a good conversation. At times I've felt like his equal, at other times felt like I had nothing to offer the friendship. Good times and bad, I never really got him - until today.
I have a job - my dream job, in fact, at least for this stage in my career. Not only do I have it, but I have a year to prepare for it. I will be teaching special ed - I've had one class that prepares me for that. I'll read and volunteer and soak up all I can and I'll be ready. 100 times more ready than I am now.
It's as if by always knowing what I wanted to do, I missed the passion that comes with discovering it.
Today...riding my bike home from the rec...I discovered it again and it came with this overwhelming sense of focus.
I have a purpose - a very specific one. I will study. I will teach. I will advocate. I will seek relationships with those who inspire and support me, and not worry so much about those who don't.
Everything he's been trying to teach me for the last 4 years suddenly makes sense.
Weird.

Summer Reading Begins...

"My students, primarily students of color from low-income families, taught me, their white, middle-class teacher, valuable lessons about the situated nature of ability and disability and about the ways in which class, race, gender, and languages intersect with power and privilege to shape opportunities in and out of school. Throught their competence and resilience, they taught me to question my place within an educational system that had rewarded me with high grades, scholarships, and opportunities to pursue advanced degrees, but positioned them as at-risk, low achieveing, emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and, in some cases, simply dangerous."
Kathleen Collins

Goodbyes

He takes so much with him when he leaves that parts of me can't help but feel empty.
In a few days it will be better - I will have re-adjusted to his absense.
But now I keep expecting him to be beside me or in the other room and he's...well...not.