My Prison Cell

My room here at my parents' house is very small. It is about 9x9, with 9-foot ceilings. It's literally a box. As I lay here on my twin-sized bed, on a mattress that is so saggy there is a nice divot I enjoy sleeping in, I stare around my strange box of a room and feel oddly like a prisoner. I know I'm not, in fact at any time I can get up, open my door, and leave.

However, laying here, staring at my boxes of possessions I've yet to unpack and my furniture that doesn't really fit in here, looking at my faux wood blinds in my windows that are ever so slightly different measurements from one another, and piles and piles of shoes, I can't help but feel trapped. Not by my parents or anything like that, but by me. I feel lost and trapped within myself. I've begun to feel like I don't know who I am anymore, and laying here in this cube with beige walls and white fixtures, I feel...disappointed in myself.

I was always one of those decisive girls. I always knew who I was. What I wanted. Where I was going. Now I find myself, two weeks from turning 22, and my whole life feels like it means nothing. All my years of working and trying to become something in my life has been all for naught.

I have a lot of pondering to do in my tiny cell.

Keep it real readers.

The Adjustment

Well chitlins, I'm rounding out the end of my second week of being home from SUU, and my room still looks like a pile of rubble usually only seen after a great natural disaster...or perhaps an atomic blast. Hopefully I'll use my long weekend to fix that.

The week after I came home I went back to my old job at LB, only to be promoted to management, thus giving me power, prestige, a raise, and about three times the hours I was working as an associate. Wild. I haven't slept deeper in months.

Financially, I'll be pulling in some wicked bank, however, I am in dire need of paying off some debts this summer, and to add to the stress, I have to pay for housing on my own next year.

Frustration ensues.

Worse yet, I'm still in that "I don't know what to do with my life" phase.

That's right kids. I, Karen Faith Curl, daughter of a scholastic with three bachelor's degrees and a former partier, sister of an aspiring lawyer and future luthier (one who manufactures guitars), am in the throws of the dreaded quarterlife crisis. Words do not begin to describe my utter embarrassment.

So, in an effort to not fritter away the government's, and more importantly my money, I have decided to take some time off of school to do some soul searching. Perhaps I will travel and see some family. Maybe I'll spend my days job shadowing others who have figured things out. Or maybe I'll meet a rich, handsome man and never have to figure out another thing for myself ever again.

If only....

Maybe I should hire a life coach.

Wish me luck readers.

In the meantime keep it real.

Obsessions, Life, and Death

As long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with two things: Sex and death.

I could go on and on about sex, but I think today I'm going to stick with the latter.

I spend a lot of time thinking about death. A weirdly large amount for someone as generally content and vibrant as myself. I don't think about killing myself, or even dying. Just that moment where I go from being alive to being dead. That moment of death.

What do you suppose it feels like? Is it painful, like when you get punched in the chest or you fall on your face? Or is it pleasant, like the rush of air conditioning as you walk through an entrance to a store on a hot day?

Maybe it's barely a feeling at all. Like a soap bubble popping. Barely leaving any residue or evidence behind.

Sometimes I think of it as when you come up for air when you've been under water for a long time. Everything is clearer. Your vision, your hearing, everything.

I like to think of life as kind of like being asleep. Before we were born we could hear it all, understand it all, but now we're sort of unconscious. Things tend to not make sense, sometimes they transition weird, some times are more vibrant than others, like dreams. Maybe we're all living these weirdly long dreams, and when we die it's like we're waking up from these dreams we're in.

Just something I was thinking about while I was brushing my teeth...

Keep it real readers.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig.

That was a phrase my mom used to say when we would get home from a long trip when my brothers and I were just kids. I find the phrase rather fitting, due to the nature of this post.

Well readers, I'm home from SUU for the summer.

I am coming at you from my slowly-turning-back-into-a-semi-normal-dwelling room, which over the course of the past few days has gone from bags, boxes, and ridiculous amounts of meandering junk, to a place where I can get dressed, sleep, and get ready for the day in, with about 45% of my floor space still covered in boxes and bags. Bear in mind my room is about 11 x 12. I like to describe it to onlookers as "cozy."

I'm looking forward to starting my summer job, going on a few radical adventures with some friends, attending a summer class or two...or four...and just enjoying the boiling summer sun of St. George.

Maybe I'll get a tan for a change. Freak everyone out when they realize that I am not, in fact, a vampire. I realize my love of nighttime and my utter blood lust can throw people off, and perhaps my canines are a little sharper than most, but I assure you, I am not acquainted with that particular lifestyle. At least not first hand. haha.

I'm happy to be home, despite being trapped in boy jail. I lived in it the first 21 years of my life, what harm can three months do?

Weird side note: I finished a journal today. I wrote my last entry in it earlier this evening, and I realized I'd been writing in that journal for nine years and three months. I slacked off quite a bit with that one. At any rate, I found another one that I received as a gift from a Sunday school teacher I had when I was a teenager, and I'm excited to start a new chapter in my life in it.

Anyway, that's all for now readers.

Keep it real.