I think I have talked about how little I want to go to my ten-year high school reunion. Now that I am home, and there seems to be an influx of former classmates who are in town to attend, I want to go even less. Seeing these people, even though I refuse to talk to them, is like being confronted with the past version of myself that I thought I had walked away from. Needless to say, I don’t like it.
For some reason, though, it makes me feel like I need to document the last ten years of my life in some way. I wanted to do a nice, contained, chronological list but my memory won’t let me.
In the last ten years, I have officially majored in: Dental Hygiene, Mass Communications (photography emphasis), English, Ecology, Anthropology, English and International Relations. My degree will be in English with a Russian minor. I have worked as a telephone customer service agent, a telephone sales person (for a day), a hotel housekeeper, a bowling center cook and server, a gas station cashier, a brewery bartender, a waitress in a Greek restaurant, a library assistant, and a writing tutor. I am currently working with an NGO as the project coordinator, a freelance columnist and copy editor, and a jewelry smith. In my many careers, I have gained certain special skills, including how to properly floss teeth, how to pour the perfect beer, and how to make Greek flaming cheese. I have been in love three times. I was married for four years and a day, but I was only in love for six months or so. I still make scenes when I see him, if I’ve had any liquor. I stopped drinking liquor in Lithuania, after the night of Mindaugas and the 999s. I’ve struggled with alcohol, and I have given it up several times, but now I am happy with just drinking a beer or a glass of wine, usually. I have taken five different kinds of birth control. I have gained 80 pounds, lost fifty, and then gained it back. I think the previous two things might be related. I have PCOS, which makes it awesomely hard to lose weight and keep it off. Thanks, ovaries! I have owned two cars, two bicycles, and a 1965 Vespa VNB. I sold my last car five years ago Christmas. I have been vegetarian and vegan, but mostly I have been an omnivore because I tend to make poor food choices, and limiting my options just makes the tendency worse. I have lived nine of ten years in Pocatello, and one of them in Lithuania. I have made many, many poor financial decisions, and I am trying to dig out from under them now. I have learned hundreds of folk songs, and how to sing them in public. I’ve had conversations in five languages, on two continents. I suck at four out of the five languages. I’ve learned my way around a toolbox and an engine, only to be told that I should let men fix things for me so that they can feel useful.
It’s hard to fit ten years into a paragraph, even a poorly written list of a paragraph. I don’t feel like I have gotten much older, but I have done so much stuff. I didn’t manage to get the husband and the babies, but I think I am successful for all that. If anything, I am really good at changing my mind. Really, really good at changing my mind.
