A BLOG POST ABOUT THINGS

So I’m on a plane from JFK to SLC right now. I want to write this blog post because writing End of the School Year posts is ritualistic for me at this point. I don’t really know what exactly I want to say this year, though, because for every year before it’s been like, “I’m moving from grade 10 to grade 11” or whatever. This year it’s like, “I got a new life.” I got a new life. 

A couple nights ago, it was about 3 am and I was on the phone with Tris gossiping and crying and understanding the whole world and I started to think about this life I’ve created over the course of this year. It’s strange to think back over the course of it because it’s so complete now. I know exactly what happens when I wake up every day. I have people, a weird family that even fills family roles in its own way, mother, father, sister, brother, brother-in-law. I even have that old uncle who uses his socks as a way of having controlled fun. We eat dinner together.

I think the weirdest thing about this school year is the way that school and life just blended together into one life, and in my mind it was just going to continue on into infinity just like this. As the school year’s come to a close I’ve been being the most pretentious ever and I’m constantly like, “Ugh, there’s this T.S. Elliot poem that ends ‘This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper,’ and that’s how I feel about ending of this school year.” Because it’s true. College is weird. I’m so used to K-12 at the end of the year how there’s always cupcakes and water balloons. In college, you just get to panic about your miserable life and how you really should’ve paid better attention in math class all semester long and then you don’t sleep for a week and everyone just has this insane mutual panic – and then it’s over. Not with a bang, but a whimper because you probably failed something and now there’s nothing you can do about it.

So I tried to create my own cupcakes and water balloons – but, like, metaphorically, because I can’t cook and also I don’t like getting wet. I tried SoulCycle for the first time and even though my butt is still sore, it was completely the best workout ever and I can’t wait to do it again as soon as I’m back in the fall. (Also if any of you want to get me their gear for my birthday, you should. You can buy it all online. They have the best tanks.) Last night at midnight, the gang went to French Roast and we sat around and ate hummus and reminisced and wrote an opera and talked about how we’re going to come back in ten years and be like, “Aw, remember when?” We’ll all be rich by then, also.

I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a part of me that feels like my life’s ending. Back in January, I wrote about how sometimes having two homes makes me feel like half a person, but that I also realized that I can have 100% of a life in New York and 100% of a life in Utah, which actually worked out great for me, except now it feels like 100% of me is dying. Having a life stretched across 2,000 miles, as much as I would love to say it it's so, to say I’ve got it all figured out just isn’t even possible. But I realize also that I’m coming home to another 100% life and I get to do my yoga training and see the few friends I have left and sleep in a bed that is actually the size for a real human and spend time with my family, and that’s going to be the best thing ever. I also realize that the best way to love New York is to leave it. But I’m really over the “not with a bang, but a whimper” analogy, because yesterday, last night, this morning, it all felt like a bang. Not even exaggerating, I think I cried fifteen different times yesterday, and every time it was something different. One minute I was sobbing because I didn’t want to leave and the next it was because I couldn’t wait to be home and the next it was because I was stressed about my French final and the next it was just because I still think New York is the most beautiful place in the entire world. I just love everyone and everything and everywhere so desperately, and, like, it hit me really hard. I think I freaked everyone out.

I also get really nostalgic before I leave a place. Everything feels important. It’s all like, “Aw, last time I’ll sleep in this bed, and last time I’ll eat Siagon Shack for three months, and last time I’ll have this stupid monkey shower curtain sticking to me while I try to shave my legs.” It’s sort of silly because I’m only leaving for three months, but I think that’s also part of the reason that the best way to love New York is to leave it. I start to love everything about it again, even the sticky heat and the weird smells and the way the water drips off the air conditioners outside buildings and for a second it’s like you’re getting rained on but with the grossest water ever but it’s great because everyone hates it together.

When I sat down to write this blog post I thought I’d write something like, “Oh, look what I’ve learned! Look how I’ve grown! I’m an adult!” But, like, as far as actual adulthood goes, I might have actually moved backward. I can’t drive, I can’t cook, I can’t take my high school friends seriously when they get engaged. There’s a huge part of me that wants to say, “New York changed me. My first year of college changed me.” And I definitely think a lot of people want me to feel that or be that or have that be a real thing, but when I think about the person I was this time last year, I’m really still the same. I have a higher caffeine tolerance, I wear more black, I am entirely disenchanted with Times Square. But I’m really still the same person at my core. I believe the same things. I want the same things. And I think that’s because I was always going to end up in New York. It’s always where I belonged, and it wasn’t going to sweep me off my feet and shape me into its image when that’s what I already was.

I have learned, though. How to be a person. How to navigate a city. How to be sad and still love everything in the world. A year ago, if you’d told me what I’d be today, I don’t know if I would’ve believed you. A part of me thinks I’d have wanted to know I had changed so much more, but a part of me, a bigger part, probably, knows I would’ve just been like, “Yeah. Of course."

So that’s my new life. And now I’m finishing this blog post on the floor of my bedroom in Utah and there are four suitcases and like fifteen boxes and I’ve been driving so much, even though I hate driving more than anything, but also I did yoga and I was safe and Hayley is coming to help me unpack boxes and Morgan is here and Tanner is here, and this isn’t my old life, and it isn’t a new new life, it’s just an extension of the new life, and I feel like that sentence made no sense at all, but here I am, and things are going to be good.

I’m finishing this blog post after four days of being home and I guess all I want to say now is that if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t do anything different. Which is probably the coolest feeling in the entire world.

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." -John Steinbeck
Foreva,
Addy

How To Fall In Love On Accident and Also On Purpose

All I think about are skyscrapers. I think this is the aftermath of reading The Fountainhead. You read about buildings for 800 pages and then you think about buildings for the rest of forever.

I mean that very literally, though. I think about mid-town Manhattan and how everything is up and up and up into the clouds.

There is a part of me that left high school a long time ago. A part of me that’s ready to take the graduation gown, not even ironed, and run, burn it down, take only my proof of graduation and set out into the world.

And then there’s a part of me that’s falling in love. Not just with boys, but with the way my calculus class is more about what it’s like to have a baby inside of you than integrals and derivatives. I’m in love with the way J teaches so much more than Shakespeare and tap dancing, how I leave his classroom every day and I feel like I’m somewhat more prepared for the world, but I never want to go out in it because I want to listen to him say things like, “We have to remember that human connections are the reason we’re doing this. This whole life thing.” And I want to talk to Kira, who is smart, who I will never be able to call “Mrs. Ludwig-Shelton,” who is just as scared as I am. Mr. Beeson, who made me a lot of what I am.

I’m falling in love with the way my high school has its own weird music scene and I’m falling in love with the people in it and I’m falling in love with the boys in my physics class and the way we haven’t actually paid attention to physics for the entire term. I'm falling in love with the way I can't seem to keep my headphones in because there are so many people to talk to and hug in the hallways, which is wonderful even if it took me three years to feel that way. I love seminary and prayers and friends and lunch times and Sterling Scholars (be a sterling scholar, you guys) and I never meant to love all that stuff.

I’m falling in love with long-limbed boys every evening, getting locked inside, sitting outside, having dinner, holding hands. I’m falling in love with French and Madame and the way Madame teaches French and the moments when I’m suddenly just speaking it. I’m falling in love with these things and these people and this is where my heart is.

It's like high school was never something I was good at until now. I never meant to like this place. I never meant to be here or give any part of my heart to the people that fill up these hallways. God has a sense of humor.

One morning, you’ll wake up and realize that your soul is in one city and your heart is in another and that’s a really conflicting moment.

But change happens and here is comes and there is goes and you can’t stop it or shift it or change it. It just is.

But then there is New York. It is just out there, waiting for me. Maybe that's narcissistic; New York isn't a city that waits for anyone, let alone Addy Sue Baird from somewhere in Utah. But I feel like that's a true thing. I feel like all those buildings are reaching for the sky and just waiting for me to join them in doing so. I feel like the lights will wait.

I think sometimes about the mornings when I will wake up on the lower east side. The edge of Washington Square Park. The thought of it almost reduces me to tears of excitement and sheer shock that I'm actually going to do that. Wake up there, I mean. Have a life there. I will ride the subway. I will read books in the park. I think of Madi Bass of Fort Worth, TX, studying sports management in Robert Preston Tisch, who is Mormon, who I'm planning on being exact best friends with, so I hope she's planning on the same thing. I think of Alex from Philly, studying acting in Tisch, who was so nice, who I can't wait to find again. I think of Deena from just outside either Chicago or Detroit (I don't remember which), studying anthropology in CAS (which is where I'll be, too) and how I'm secretly praying she'll be my roommate.

I think about New York-y things like trains and buildings and alleyways and Joey Tolboe once getting hit by a taxi and saying, "Hey! I'm walkin' here!" and all the other people in the crosswalk going, "Yeeah! He's walkin' he-a!" and how I literally almost started weeping when he told me that story because I love that city so much. I say stupid things like, "That's my borough!" and I just agree with people when they're like, "omg i no xactly wat college will b lyke 4 u bcuz i watched gossip gurl" and I think about how I thought the mission age change wasn't going to affect me, but here I am, praying in French, feeling a little bit okay about setting out into the world because so is everyone else that I love.

I think about Hailey and Harvard and how I promise I will see her at least once a month no matter what.

And this whole thing is waxing poetic. For that I apologize. Basically, I just wanted to say that I love you, and I will think of you all often when I head out.

Seventeen years old and bossy, I never meant to fall in love.

"I am half agony, half hope." -Jane Austen

Sincerest,

Addy SB