reality bites

my life has become so unbelievably cluttered. there's so much to think about, so much to do. how do people handle it all?? right now, i have to clean my bathroom, find something to eat, do laundry, go find the zipcar my boyfriend and i are driving to NY tomorrow, read basically an entire book (discourses on livy by machiavelli, which is as boring and awful as it sounds), go to cvs and buy shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant because i am out of all those things, shower, find clean clothes to wear, watch the OC if i have time... all of this has to get done today, which is not encouraging in any way. my allergies are going nuts and i am so tired and overwhelmed.
not to mention, i am pretty stressed out about bringing my boyfriend home to meet my parents tomorrow. well, he's met my mom and that went well but my dad is the one to worry about. there are certain immediate problems with the BF: he's not irish or catholic, he has an earring, he's not particularly masculine, he drives foreign cars. sounds hilarious that these would be potential reasons to dislike your daughter's boyfriend, but for my dad, these are pretty much deal breaking things.
and yes, what my parents think still means something. i'm only 22 and i'm not in a position to tell my parents i don't care what they think. so if my dad doesn't like him it's going to be a problem. apparently though, my dad has been going through some midlife crisis where he has become infinitely less gruff and interested in home decorating. so, who knows. apparently he told my mom that he doesn't care what my BF is like as long as i'm happy, which makes me snort in disbelief, but as they say-- "don't look a gift horse in the mouth." i know he'll have his silent opinion but hopefully it will stay silent.
it's strange because the BF and i are entering that stage when the lovey-dovey-ness of our relationship is over. it's been five months and there is a palpable change in the time we spend together. part of it is that i can't really let go of this fight we had a couple of weeks ago when he said "it's always about me." that really burned me and i'm trying to forget about it but it's hard. especially when the other night, i wanted to go home with him, clearly so we could have sex, but since i had to do stuff for school i would have to get up earlier than him-- 830 instead of 9. and he said NO, that he hadn't been sleeping well and didn't want to get up early! ha! of course i was kinda tipsy and therefore got pretty upset about it, but i didn't say anything. and on top of that, there was a stabbing on my block the other day, and he was sending me home alone. jackass. of course, when i did get home he called and apologized and said that he should have said it was ok and got up at 830, and he actually said he was sorry, which was kind of vindicating. but its kind of hard to adjust to this sort of twisted shit. i mean we love each other and we still have fun together but now the little things are starting to rear their ugly heads. and whether or not you can deal with these little things is what makes your relationship survive, so i am attempting to deal.
in general i just wish things were less complicated. i hate whining about it because everyone has to grow up, right? it's an unfortunate fact of life, and one that i'm having trouble getting used to.

fifth time's a charm?

well, here we are. blog #5. the first, i've had for almost five whole years now. but i am becoming increasingly frustrated with the service, which gives preference to paid members and limits posting access times for non-paying members. i still have the blog and keep it, but i feel like i have moved on from it. #2 was another incarnation at blogspot. i wrote exactly three entries in it, two when the aforementioned first service was down, and 2 more when i discovered that my younger sister had been reading my original blog. #3 was at xanga, which i liked for the ability to link to current books and/or music. but i hated pretty much everything else about it and shut that one down. #4, and most recently, i have been residing at livejournal for about eight months now. however, i have given friends the address and thus can't really remain as anonymous as i would like to at times. also, my livejournal has taken on a very utilitarian feel where i write more about what i do than how i feel. my first blog was a place where i worked out my feelings and worked on my writing at the same time. i am looking to do that again. i need some sort of creative outlet. i find writing very theraputic, or at least i used to. now it has taken on a more perfunctory slant for me and i would like that to change.
so. a little about me. i am a 22 year old female living on the east coast. i am in graduate school for political science-- specifically political theory, but i am also interested in comparative politics, and democratization in particular. that interest, along with some great polisci profs in college, are probably what persuaded me to go to grad school for political science rather than philosophy. i've known for a few years that i want to get my phd and become a professor eventually, but it is still a toss-up as to which discipline i will end up in. ideally, i would like to be somewhere in between.
i guess that sums up a lot about my life right now. i am 22 and i feel a bit caught in the middle of everything-- adolescence and adulthood, insecurity and swagger, politics and philosophy, action and contemplation, doubt and certainty. the old ways of approaching things have given way to a slightly more jaded, yet also somehow optimistic, view. more than anything, hope is important to me. i need to believe that somehow, things still mean something. that good people can be happy. that life isn't just one big cosmic joke. that love conquers all. some might say this is naive, but i'm more inclined to think that it's a pretty nice way to go through life not being miserable.
still, i am an odd manifestation of the eternal optimist. normally pensive, often insecure, and frightfully overanalytical, it would be hard to conceive of a more quixotic attitude than the one i've adopted: that people and things generally suck, but somehow, it will all work out. it usually does for me. my mother maintains that i was born under a lucky star-- things are always seeming to fall into place in my life. i do have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, and i have an especially hard time of it coming to terms when i'm not. my favorite refrain as a kid was "but that's not fair!" this was extended from more than sibling relations or not getting to stay up late, to my perception of systems of justice-- playground rules of engagement, classmates making fun of one another, and, at a fairly early age, economically exploited people. don't get me wrong, i was no mother teresa. but i think being the dork with my head stuck in my book often put me on the receiving side of teasing and contributed to this feeling that none of my peers understood me... which pushed me to understand bigger things. why things work the way they do. my dad recalls a time when i was thirteen or fourteen and my mom told him that she thought i would become a philosophy student one day. at the time i was more interested in sports, writing, and history... of course, i hadn't studied any philosophy at all. but there was always a bit of intellectual snobbery in me, and a fairly inexhaustible desire to learn. so in the end, it made sense. the quiet, bookish girl who felt compelled to lead becomes a philosopher. (not that that means that i'm good at it.)
anyway, i guess the thing that i am really interested is the few times in the world when it seems that life IS fair. that truth beats lying. that love beats hate. that what you do is more important than who you know. that people can actually make a difference. true, these times are few and far between, but for brief, shining moments they do exist. and if they do exist, then why settle for less?
it's a tough spot to be in-- sometimes everything makes sense, but mostly nothing does.
lately i've been feeling like a fish out of water in a lot of ways. grad school is not really as fantastic as i thought it would be. i don't particularly like my current school, and i can't figure out if that is attributable to the school or to grad school in general. i'm not sure that i will even be able to get into any phd programs, and i can't help wondering if this hasn't been a waste of time and energy-- that maybe i could have found a great and interesting job doing something else. then of course, there's the inkling suspicion that i just don't want to try anymore-- because i have realized that i am not so special, and there are plenty of worthy students out there who are just as good as i am, and better. and let's be real-- failing is not my strong suit. my interpretive framework has been quite skewed-- you see, i never really failed at anything, and if something was too hard, i basically just quit. so i'm wondering if i am going to spend my whole life running from everything hard. i'm wondering if i will ever want anything enough to do the hard thing and risk failing. because the truth is, for all my world ambitions, i am pretty lazy. and i could be content just teaching high school somewhere and marrying my boyfriend and that's that. not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would mean letting go of lots of the dreams i used to have. were those dreams unrealistic? maybe. but it's more like i am afraid to find out.
fear. it's a problem for me-- the latest manifestation of this problem arriving in my current relationship. it's really my first mutually serious relationship. (i was quite seriously in love with my best friend in college, but he, for various reasons, wasn't sure about his feelings for me.) anyway, my boyfriend and i have been dating for five months and it feels like forever-- in a good way. i can actually see myself marrying this guy, which is quite unexpected. in the beginning of our relationship, i wasn't sure about how i felt... and it took me quite a while to be sure as compared to him. now i'm sure i love him, but this same old doubt sometimes rears its ugly head-- what is he doing with me? it doesn't make sense, because i know we are pretty evenly matched. we make a good couple. i'm not out of his league, he's not out of mine. we make sense together. we love each other. but i can't help it, these massive bouts of crippling paranoia and doubt. they keep coming. that's the problem with hope-- if you believe in miracles, will reality ever be good enough?
i am utterly confused, and i don't entertain thoughts that anyone will find this interesting. but i want to get back to a place where writing means something to me, and where writing maybe helps me be more aware of my specific feelings. that's why i am here.
so, enjoy the ride.