Past lives are a strange thing. Exes are a strange thing too. My current college will be my former college by the end of this semester. After 6 years there, despite the turmoil, it will feel strange to not be going there. Literally every person I physically know as a friend since age 26 (really since age 11) came about because we met there in the past 6 years. That is how small my life is. My boyfriend, who I also met there, is graduating from his current university too, and that will feel strange. I seriously dislike change. It twists my insides all around. Even good change does that.

Having said that, about 1% of me is reluctantly excited. I am a skilled pessimistic optimist. I truly believe my life royally sucks now, however, in 10 or 20 years it will all (somehow) be okay. At this not too sucky moment, I am looking into potential universities to go to. I am looking as if I were not the world�s biggest agoraphobic girl with a thousand justified (and a million unjustified) fears. I am seeking ambitiousness that I am absolutely sure I cannot handle, at least not with any sort of sane reaction. 99% of me wants to hide in a hole and never come out as soon as I graduate�no preferably before, so the 1% my overly-ambitious little toe doesn�t actually go through with forcing the rest of me to walk in the commencement ceremony.

I will be graduating with high honors. Even if I get C�s in my final classes my GPA will not drop below a 3.8 something. I will be graduating with many honors actually. I will have a medal and ropes and a gold sash, and maybe a pin too. In the program, I will have at least two honorable mentions as well. It seems so surreal when I think of where I came from. When I think of that 11 year old girl I was, who loved school but was forced to leave after a 5th year of repeated unrelenting bullying and the subsequent breakdown, from which I have yet to fully recover. I am still undecided about what exactly happened to who I was in the aftermath of 9 years in complete isolation from society, and another 5 years struggling to experience the dignity of buying my own underwear. It changes perspective on life when you have to re-learn, or learn things you should know by your age - when you have to relearn to speak to people at age 18, all on your own (I still prefer writing), learn to use a debit card when everyone else staring in line at you already knows how, shop not looking utterly freaked out, shake people�s hands without it feeling really weird (it still does), etc. Leaping into doing things was all a desperate act to choose to live. And there have been many subsequent leaps, despite fearing failure (again). Living is really scary.

I am at a point where I am realizing that I just may suck at social things like small talk, buying or sending gifts on time, morning chatting, understanding the point of or pronouncing complicated foods, and greeting people I don�t know, among many quirks, for the rest of my life. And I will always hate telephones. This is just how I come. At least I can eat in semi-crowded public places now; that only took me (in total) 17 years to be able to do again. I have become skilled at finding the agoraphobically friendly nook somewhere amongst the chaos, and it becomes my safe place while I am seated.

In crowded stores, and particularly during the holidays, I still retain my deer in the headlights and/or dead opossum capabilities, as I stop, breathe, and try to main composure while adjusting to the discomfort of watching masses of insane people scrounging for goods they could probably live without. I only really shop, in the browsing sense of shopping, if a store is dead, or if it has dead spots I can hide in. My boyfriend thinks that my doing this means I am completely normal. All of that, those people, that is not normal, he says.

This entire whirlwind of an experience is heading towards exactly 20 years ago to the month when I graduate. This makes my graduation a 20 year struggle of never fully giving up. 20 years of crying and hoping and wishing and waiting and doing and failing and doing again�This means that when I walk at graduation, I not only walk for my AA and certificate, I walk to represent my attempt at really living my life - my attempt to prove doctors wrong � not proving my illness wrong, clearly I have issues with functioning in a modern society, but it is proving that what they said is wrong about my never being able to achieve my lifelong dreams. It�s just 10,000 times more complicated, it�s not impossible. I can still try. And it hasn�t been easy, and I�m scared as hell that they will choose me to be the commencement speaker, so even though I am already planning my speech (only because I do have things I want to say, just not to a room of 500+ people), I really hope they don�t choose me.

One of these colleges I am looking into is Smith. A $55,000 per year college, for which I will be guaranteed all of $6,000 a year non-loan federal funding. Smith is actually my first choice on my overly-ambitious list for numerous reasons. Sylvia Plath has little to do with those reasons. But being a writer-person you know that tickles my ambitious little toe, though I can say the same of other universities worldwide where my favorite authors went.

Among the reasons Smith is on my list is that it has the exact degree choices I would choose � English AND Theatre. It has housing options, with single rooms in houses, not crappy dorms. It has opportunities to explore, it has transportation, and it has dining halls that offer world and vegetarian food. The curriculum seems to allow for self-exploration and expression. And it is mostly all women. If I think of it for any length, I become in awe of the thought of going there. But I am not rich, have no family let alone rich family. So�while I likely will apply, I cannot go if it is not fully funded. I will struggle enough to keep up with the 8 semester limit they have in place. And I would have to drag my boyfriend there at first, if not each time to make it home in between semesters. It is very far away. I do not come equipped with ability to travel independently�not even to the grocery store.

So, I could continue on that, but I have to write of other things on my mind. This Smith desire helped me uncover some of my boyfriend�s past. My bf has an ex gf who works at Smith. He never ever talks of his exes by name, and they rarely ever come up in conversation, except for his ex-wife, who I know. He told me the name of another girlfriend. I assume she is the one for which he decided to not become a full monk in order to be with her. I googled her name after he told me. I asked him with each link if it is her. He said yes to everything. She looks a little like me, she is a writer, like me, she likes taking photographs, like me, and she has my warped sense of humor. She does an admin assistance job, which is exactly what I am great at. She seems to really appreciate taking photos of bathroom pipes and drain systems. That is where she loses me. Though I suppose some of what I take photos of is similar enough to be the same wtf style.

So my bf said that if I really want to go there, and think I can handle the trip and living months away from him, he is willing to contact her to have her help me through the process�and he paused and said, �even though it will be really awkward.�

I have no idea under what circumstances they broke up. I have no idea what number she was, or what number I am. I have no idea how many girlfriends he has had, when he had his first girlfriend, or who she was. I only know he said �not that many�. I believe him. I assume five at most. But sometimes, and especially as I stare at the photo of this Smith ex enjoying a muffin at a caf� table on a warm afternoon in Mass., wearing clothes I would wear�I wonder. And then I wonder if it will even matter in the end?

In each of her mini-bios for her published work, none of which is online to read, it merely states �lives with her boyfriend��and goes on to describe the current living area and any unique characteristics it happens to have. Unlike the apartment, the boyfriend is non-descript. He is without an identity in her life. And it makes me wonder if it is the same boyfriend in each description over time, or if he changes from time to time without mention beyond that he is present, as she resides with him.

It makes me want to think more of it and really write. I have a week to do so�and then chaos of school.

My trip to Cali was�a really good reason to go to Smith, to be honest, or anywhere far away.

I can sum it up in a line and say that to have ones non-familial status repeatedly be shoved into ones face does not feel very good. I don�t feel that from his mother, and I feel his Cali grandmother seems to really like me (good lord almighty, as she is really hard to like in return). But the rest seem to look at me and talk at me as if they are saying �he has not married you�you are not family�. Everyone who is married is aunty and uncle, my bf us uncle�they have no idea what to refer to me as. So they just state my name.

So I noted it all in my mind. I processed little comments and actions from various family members, including the grandmother here, right before we left. I added them to my lifelong grief box, and remembered things I had forgotten � mainly feelings of being a little girl desperate to be family that I tried to be perfect, not just good, so that people would love me and treat me like family. And I cried a lot while I was in Cali. I cried even more when my bf became furious with me our last Friday there over being undecided where to eat one morning, as his Cali grandmother does not use her stove and neither could we because it has been so unused that it doesn�t light. We hadn�t planned anything for the day, so I slept in. His grandma made it up to go get lunch at 10:30 am together. I was not ready fast enough, nor could I think of where to eat. He became pissed. At one point he looked at me as if I was the biggest piece if shit he has ever laid eyes on. So I cried another two hours. I don�t think I ate at all that day.

And it was those experiences, so far away from home, crying on the bed, and thought to myself how easy it would be to jump in front of a semi-truck on the freeway that runs beside his Cali grandma�s house, and then I thought of how easy it would also be to disappear forever in a sea of people and insanity in Los Angeles. And I became really okay with breaking up, or being separated for long periods of time, should that ever have to happen, because I am not really family, and I never will be. Not even if he married me, which he never will. And I am sure that a few of my dreams died in that week in California. Because I don�t feel the same as I did before. Malibu was really beautiful, and I was sad when we had to go. And I left California this time knowing I might never see it again.

~e