Future Me

I just recieved an email from my year-ago-self, written on December 29, 2006 and sent by FutureMe.org.

Dear FutureMe,

It is December 29, 2006. With any luck, in 2007 you will have
accomplished the following:
*Graduated!!
*Got accepted into Grad School
*Travelled to Italy

I also sincerely hope, for your sake, that you be courageous enough to
lover someone, and let someone lover you in return. Stop falling in
love with your professors! Believe me, you are organizing your life in
such a way as to lead you straight into spinsterhood.

In 2006, you begun the year travelling to the Philippines and got
reconnected with your cousins. You worked with middle schoolers in the Latin
Project. You continued to work at HGI. You lovered Latin & Rome
professor. You made friends at school.

I also want you to have gone on retreat this year. Confirmation
especially. I hope you were more involved with the Church. Remember God's
saving Grace and His perfect Love. It is for you to share these gifts with
others. Be generous with yourself and your time.

Fight the good fight. Love. Live well. Et in Arcadia Ego.

on some things, I've done better than others. mais, c'est la vie.

Did you know...

the Vestal Virgins were a religious cult of female priestessess that exercised considerable power and authoritity in ancient Rome. Their role within the city was unlike any other position afforded to the female gender. And yet, any Vestal found unchaste would be buried alive, so crucial was the Vestal's virginity to the stability of Rome.

I want...

someone who challenges me and makes me want to be more than I am.
someone who inspires me.
someone who listens and not just hears me.
someone who cherishes me.
someone who is supportive of my dreams and aspirations.
someone who is interested and is interesting.
someone I can laugh with.
someone who isn't intimidated.
someone who teaches me new things, shows me new perspectives, and allows me to see a new world.
someone who I can grow with.
someone I can truly communicate with.
someone I can have an intelligent converstation with.
someone refreshing.
someone to have life adventures with.
someone driven & has a passion for life.
someone who sees me and who lets me see them.
someone I can trust explicitly.
someone respectful of me, of themselves and of us.
someone who allows me to be the Significant in the significant other. Who lets me be their confidant, best friend and equal in all aspects.
someone courageous enough and brave enough to fight for me, even if, and especially if, I push away.

something fierce.

looking at Good Kids 2003-2007 makes me miss the other half of me thats on the other side of the world.

On Giving Up and Giving In.

It's interesting how we depend on other people to justify ourselves and our existence. The witness of those outside of ourselves gives our lives a certain weight, a certain reality. We are validated by our daily interactions with friends, family, and loved ones. The memory of us and who we used to be lives on in the stories and in the memories of others. They reassure us that we are important--that once we really did exist and that all our own thoughts, memories, secrets, fears, emotions, and greatest joys were all real and true. As long as they remember. Because once they forget, then that part of who you were goes too. Words and memories, shared between two people, can only exist as long as the other can bear testimony to it. A lost moment is gone forever and lost to the world. Not one soul outside those two people will ever know of it--and so the world will never know that part of you. Without anyone to remember that moment, it might as well never have happened. The reality of you fades into near nothingness. Imagine all the lost memories, the forgotten people. The silence is deafening. But this begs the question of why we interact with other people. Is it to truly meet another person, or a vain attempt to gain some sort of immortalization? Are we so afraid of death?

I give in. Destroy me.

My weekend:

-Hist101 reading
-Hist601 write up
-100 pages to grade
-Hist601 outline/group work
-Hist601 reading
-3 hours Latin translating
-2 hours Greek vocab, verbs, translating

Goodbye Summer. Hello all-nighters.

I'm feeling overwhelmed.

awakening

this is how badly i want to go to grad school.... i just opened own of my final papers that I turned in in june and i edited it to make it better. no one will ever see it again but i edited it and it was sooooo enjoyable. oooooooooh

if i knew freshman year what i know now...
i would have majored in philosophy, comparative literature, women's studies and possibly political science (yes, this is impossible)
i would have minored in education still (woo! i got something right!)
i would have taken afro am studies classes
i would have done ed research and gotten involved with IDEA

THERE IS SO MUCH I WANT TO LEARN RIGHT NOW
apart from wanting to read everything ever written, i want to study: critical pedagogy, more freire, critical consciousness, cultural and race theory, socialism, the afro am experience, women's studies, intersectionality
........and i want to read so much literature and philosophy.

i feel like i am only now waking up