The End of Another Era

Today, I graduate.  After 5.5 grueling years (well, really 4, but 1.5 of those years were spent in grief and, even though I wasn't working on my thesis, I still had to maintain my status as a student by paying tuition), I graduate.  I graduate with my master's in History (focus: European History).  I graduate a member of Phi Beta Phi honor society.  I graduate with a 4.0.  I graduate with an 86-page thesis.

This has definitely been one of the most grueling things I've ever done.  The first two years were easy - classes, lectures, papers.  I made an A in all.  But my thesis.  Oh, my thesis.  I made a poor choice in a thesis advisor - one who would hold my chapters and chapter revisions for 5 weeks at a time without looking at them, causing me to run out of time TWO different semesters and not graduate; one who was inconsistent with his criticisms and notes; one who was terrible with communication; one who changed my thesis prose to make it sound better while changing my timeline and changing facts.  I spent hours fixing what he did, looking up words he added/replaced my word, scratching at the hives that came out, cursing the situation.  And then the university ignored my pleas, despite a professor and a dean at other universities telling me that he was performing his duties as a thesis advisor to the best of his ability.  Even my other reader questioned his decisions.

But it's over.  I am done.  It's the past.  I have conquered and I will grow.  This has been one of the most challenging experiences I've gone through - up there with the death of my parents and the Marine Corps Marathon.  This one, however, endured.

But it's over.

Time for a new goal.  Perhaps I shall go back to writing.

Ciao!

An Afternoon in a Nail Salon

I'm getting a pedicure today - the first in many months. I usually bring a book to read or play with my phone as the nail lady chats in Vietnamese with the other ladies. Sometimes we chat, but mostly not.

Today, however, I decided to people watch.

One lady gets up from the pedicure side and a nail lady helps her to the manicure station. The woman starts dancing loudly and spinning the nail lady, who looks uncomfortable.  The woman is older, very loud, and is odd. Everyone stares until her friend tells those of us nearby her story - she watched her father get killed in a motorcycle accident 6 months ago and is currently heavily medicated for depression.  Her medication makes her act crazy, but it's better than the depression.  Except when she left, she started screaming at strangers and caused quite a scene. I hope her friend takes care of her.

Two chairs over, a heavily tattooed man helps his pregnant girlfriend (or wife) into a chair. He looks quite respectable - but the tattoos on his neck and arm show a story. Gang or previous gang activity?  Or perhaps he is an artist himself. I want to ask him - I'm always curious about people's tattoos. I don't though.

On the television, a show about fried chicken comes on.  I don't have many regrets, but I do wish I asked my mom to teach me how to fry chicken.  I could easily figure out myself, but my mother probably used my grandmother's recipe.  I'm glad she showed me how to make gumbo, but I do miss her fried chicken. She didn't make much as she grew older - she mostly made it for my boyfriends.  It was her way of welcoming them, for frying chicken took time. I gave her a new pan for frying chicken for her last Christmas (she asked for it), but she grew sick right after. She never used the frying pan.  I have it now. Maybe soon I'll make fried chicken in her honor in that pan.  It'll have to be someone else's recipe, though. That makes me sad.

Everyone has a story.

Finding Silver Linings

Sometimes finding silver linings can be difficult, especially in the wake of tragedy and unhappiness.  Sometimes we as people are blind to the silver linings as we devote our energy and emotions to dwelling.

I hate dwelling.  You'd never think it by reading my entries the past couple of years, but I hate dwelling.   I avoid.  I pretend I'm not bothered.  I superficially move on.  Eventually, that superficiality because reality and I have moved on.  But I wonder if it takes me longer to do so.  Also, I have things lingering over my head that prevents me from always seeing them.  Grad school, for example, is a pain in my ass.  I struggle with my thesis advisor - I should have already been finished and have graduated, but my thesis advisor is a procrastinator.  Sometimes I can be also, so we're not mixing well right now.

I have some silver linings coming up.  

Silver lining #1: The summer.  I get to take my work break (sort of - after I teach summer school).  I also get to devote my time to the last two chapters of my thesis, hopefully finding that ability to mesh with my advisor and have it finished by the end of summer.  I also have some time to really work on my house and make it cozier than it is today.

Silver lining #2: My next European adventure.  I've already started working on my next trip - London and Paris 2015.  I'm excited because I didn't get to go anywhere this summer.  Next summer, I'll sojourn to London for the 5th time and Paris for the 3rd.  I so far have 12 travelers in my group, and might indeed have many more once I start advertising next school year.  My husband will even get to go with me this year.  Since we've been together, I've traveled to Europe 4 times - but without him each time.

Silver lining #3: Other travels.  One of my dearest friends is getting married in November - in Vegas!  I've never been to Vegas, so I'm a bit giddy.  Furthermore, the hubs is a groomsman in a wedding in New Jersey next May - and the area is a skip away from New York - I'm going back to NY!  I'm hoping that the day before the wedding will be filled of stuff he needs to do, allowing me to sneak off into Manhattan.

I like that idea that travel is, for the most part, my silver lining.  I feel alive when I travel, when I visit museums and disappear amongst natives.  Travel is my way of escaping.  My new running.

Sometimes a Sonnet...

Can express words that you can't come up with yourself.  And so, here's how I feel today.

Sonnet 30, by William Shakespeare.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
   But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
   All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

____________________

Sometimes I find myself extremely melancholy.  Not dangerously so - no, I have too many places to see before I die - but enough that makes me temporarily lose the smile on which that so many people compliment me.  Perhaps it's the loss of my family.  Perhaps it's the dissolution of toxic people.  Perhaps its looking at the future and questioning my present.  Perhaps it's the memories of what I wanted, yet did not get.

I miss certain people in my life.  I miss who I was 5 years ago.  Experiences change a person, and I don't like who I've become since the tragedy and heartbreak that I've faced in the past 5 years.  I used to be lively, used to laugh.  Lately, I seem to furrow my brows more, or get angry.  I used to rarely get angry, but now I find that anger and sorrow is a more constant companion than hope.  I tell my fiance that I wish he knew me 5 years ago.

I will be married soon.  I will have my master's degree soon.  I will travel once again to England soon.  I will travel once again to NY soon.  In theory, I have so much hope in front of me, but today I can't help but look back.