smile like you mean it

last may, as mom and i drove out of the parking lot of my dorm at iu to move me home, i cried. actually i sobbed, and would have been sobbing harder if it weren't for my pride. i'm not an emotional person and definitely didn't like to cry in front of people, even my mom. tears well up in my eyes even thinking of the things i was feeling as i walked out of the side door of briscoe-gucker for the last time of my life. okay i have tears streaming down my face right now...geez, why? i don't know...even at the time, i did and didn't know why i was crying. i didn't cry when i said bye to my friends, even to my roommate whom i loved. even though i'm not an emotional person, i tend to be very sentimental. and that i was. do you ever think about things in your past and have this emotion arise that you can't even begin to explain? i do, so i won't bother to try and explain.

a lot of things lately have caused me to think back to my iu days. especially the odd feeling that a year ago i was still there and it seems like much more than a year has passed. but then again, it feels like yesterday i was walking to the food court with torey to meet megan and courtney for our standard dinner together. it hit me even more tonight as we were running a bible to a dorm here on campus. the dorm life. the ultimate college freshman experience (in my opinion, and an experience you just don't understand unless you've been there). as much as i love purdue, i guarantee the dorm experience here isn't as good as iu's, in fact, (warning: bold statement coming) things are just cooler in bloomington (hence the reason i had to move back up here, i just couldn't compete down there:)

sometimes i'm surprised that i actually branched out of my comfort zone and moved away and left my friends behind. when i started tossing around the iu idea, it was really just to get a rise out of my parents, even when i went to visit my senior year, i wasn't all that serious about going there. i'm so glad i did. everyone had a different opinion about me going there, and honestly, those opinions are probably still the same. mom thought it was a bad idea, and now probably shakes her head at why i needed to waste a year of my life down there. betsy encouraged me in it from the start, and she would probably agree with me that it was a good move. for that year of my life i think she was one of the few people who actually understood me.

i regret a lot of things about my freshman year of college, but i don't regret where i spent it. plus i at least have some unique experiences that my other siblings can't claim. to be honest, it all feels like a big dream. maybe because i wasn't sober for a lot of it. but part of me wouldn't be surprised if someone looked at me like i was crazy and told me i never went there. okay so if you are waiting for some huge climax in this rambling, you've wasted your time. i just needed to get some of these thoughts out. last year when i needed to get some thoughts out, i would take the elevator down 8 floors with my ipod and a camel light and sit outside the back door of briscoe and think, mainly about a boy-ugh, lame. i guess i've developed a healthier way to ponder my life. i'm thinking about driving down to bloomington before the end of the school year just to have a look...i haven't had a good cry in awhile anyways.

**fun fact: when mom and dad arrived in btown to move me home, i had finished finals a couple days earlier, but had to stay and finish up my community service. i would love to tell you i was serving the community because i'm just a good citizen, but...

i took this sidewalk every single day across campus. one plus to purdue...shorter walks to class!