School Woman

So I'm a school girl again.  This time I'm an actual real adult, last couple times I wasn't like fully developed or something when I was in school.  I'm different now.  I don't usually pull all-nighters.  I'm not day dreaming about some boy in class.

The other day I went and visited Ann Arbor, the first college I went to was University of Michigan.  I went to this thing they call Top of the Park where they play movies outside, in the fresh air.  They were playing Top Gun.  And there was just something about the mix of stale popcorn with cotton candy that tasted like detergent, and Tom Cruise whizzing away on his motorcycle and the wind in an outdoor movie theater that for a moment just made me love my life.

I mean things are not perfect over here.  I'm thirty five and and I'm not in a relationship or married and I don't have any kids.  I'm not saying this defines me, but sometimes it bothers me.  I'm not in a stable career yet, and this also does not always bother me, I chose to be a starving artist, I knew what I was getting into.

Yet when I was sitting in that outdoor theater, with the wind in my hair, I just kept thinking about how free I am.  I don't have to answer to anyone, no kids, no husband.  And that may be sad sometimes.  But sometimes its really great.  So just as I was lusting after the younger Tom Cruise I thought that this may never happen again.  I may never truly be free again.

I mean if I don't entrap some unsuspecting chap to take my hand in marriage, I'll literally force the hell out of some unreasonably commitment phobic dude into at least sharing the rent with me.  And if I don't one day drop beautiful frolicky children from my womb, I'll adopt some unsuspecting child and bring him or her into my weird world.

I really am determined that these things will happen.

So as I have it now, I spend time with my friends and family at my own whim.  I am as free as I was in college, when the only thing I had to worry about was exams and like the freshman fifteen pounds.  Now, I really do have worries that go beyond that...but generally I'm free fallin'.

The question is, what am I falling into?

Am I falling into a free but lonely old age?  I have friends who worry about getting married because it means having to share a bathroom and having to clean up after someone.  As much as I say that those things won't matter to me, I'm also becoming like older.

I worry about things a lot more, I guess like my parents do.  I like to say I'm free to do whatever I want whenever I want, but I'm bound, bound by the constraints of life.

Maybe I'm not a school girl anymore, I'm a school woman.  I come to the class with more insight, more baggage, a little less fear than I had when I was a girl.

I used to think life was a school. And every time I got stuck, stuck on a problem I couldn't solve, I thought it was because I wasn't smart enough or didn't work hard enough.  Now I don't think of life as lessons as much as I think of life as full of experiences.  We are here to live.  We are here to feel the wind in our hair and dream of a young Tom Cruise who isn't tainted by Scientology yet. We are here to feel.

I felt something that night, like a giddy school girl eating ice-cream and popcorn and cotton candy watching the first kiss of a man and woman and thinking that I will miss this.  But don't miss this now.  Be here.

nina