104/365: 1985-1986

Sunday, 07 September 2008.

 

40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]

An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.

 

For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.

 

Year 18: 1985-1986

 

Over the course of my senior year of high school, my relationship with my boyfriend, who was away at college in Ohio, remained strong. We spoke on the phone frequently, and spent most of our time together when he returned home for the holidays. For Christmas, he gave me a gold necklace (I gave him a sweater... I felt like an idiot). In the spring, when it was time for me to visit colleges, I convinced my parents to add an extra day to our trip so I could go see him at his school. I was supposed to have stayed with a female friend of his, in her dorm room, but of course, I did not. I was tired, though, so we just spent the night curled around each other, sleeping. In the early morning, we rushed over to the dorm I was supposed to be staying in to shower and wait for my parents to pick me up.

 

College applications had literally been piling up since the previous year. I had a growing stack of them next to my bed, and when I just couldn't put it off any longer, I grabbed the first one off the stack and filled it out. Then I grabbed the next, and then the next. And that was how I conducted my college search. By luck of the draw, I applied to College of Wooster, University of Dallas, and Northwestern University. Wooster and Dallas both offered me generous scholarships, and opportunities to study abroad, and my parents were hoping I would take one of them up on it. I chose to go to Northwestern.

 

Commencement ceremonies for the class of 1986 were held in late May. I was to deliver the Valedictory Address, and I begged my boyfriend to make the trip back to be there for it. It was the week before finals for him, so he had to decline. I walked down the aisle, got my diploma, and gave the speech I'd been working on for four years (how's that for confidence?). There was cheering and clapping and hootin' and hollerin', and when it was all over, we all filed back out into the hallway to greet our families. Before I saw anything else, I spotted my boyfriend at the end of the hall. I broke into a run, cap tumbling away, and gown billowing out behind me, and jumped into his arms. He told me that he loved me, and that he would not have missed this moment for anything. The world seemed to unfold before me, and I felt the power of new adulthood. This would be our time.

 

A few weeks later, he returned home for the summer, and refused to speak to me. He was cold and distant. Heartbroken, I gave him back his ring, and spent the rest of the summer getting ready for college. He never told me what had changed, but I suspected I knew, and it broke my heart all the more. I had gotten drunk one night, and in a pathological grab for the male attention I'd always craved, hooked up with one of his friends. He must have found out about it. I was devastated, not only at the loss, but at my own acknowledgment of the wrong I had committed and the hurt I must have caused him. I felt disgusting and irreparably broken.

 

In the fall, my family loaded up the car with some of my belongings, and drove to Chicago to drop me off at Northwestern. I spent the first week at marching band camp in Wisconsin, then returned to the dorms to start my new life as a Wildcat. I allowed myself to become completely immersed in it. I became a Northwestern Superfan, and a social dynamo. I walked away from the old me, determined to become something else -- something stronger and harder. I had looked to many things to save me over the years. Now I would look to Northwestern.

 

Who am I?

 

I am smart, but not as smart as I think I am.

 

When I was growing up, I was repeatedly told that I was very bright. I sailed through school, never studying, never taking work home with me. I graduated at the top of my class, and was accepted into a top-tier university. I assumed that college, and in fact, the rest of my life, would be no different. I believed my own hype. I quickly learned that, outside of my little northern fishbowl, I was a very small fish, indeed. Nearly everyone I met at Northwestern was every bit as smart as me, and most were a good deal smarter. There were a few pillars around which I had built my identity, and one of them was being smarter than everyone around me. With that pillar crumbling into ruins, I found myself flailing at anything and everything to try to figure out how to reconstruct myself. In the end, I chose the most destructive path, and merely reinforced the overly-sexualized to appeal to men pillar. If my purpose was not to be smart, then I would be desirable. It sounds pathetic to me now, but it seemed like a lifeline then. It was something I was already good at. And, so the more intimidated I became by the intellects around me, the more vampish my behavior. It's taken me a long time to make peace with the fact that, yes, there are many people in the world who are smarter than me, and no, I don't need to compensate for that by amping up any of my numerous other neuroses.

 

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