LJ Idol Week One: Stuck in the In-Between

Once upon a time when I was young and innocent and watching as all the black caps flew into chaos at my high school graduation, I thought to myself: "This is it. This is when my life really begins."

Two years later and most of the excitement of college had faded, I no longer obsessively bought supplies for my classes and organized my notes and binders into anything I could easily access. Two years after we both left home and went to college I was back at home with my boyfriend for the weekend. Three and a half years in and things weren't going well, but I'd put so much time and effort into being with him that I didn't know how to stop. On Friday he was looking at engagement rings. On Sunday we were over. This was not the rest of my life, and I wasn't going to let anyone choose for me anymore. I decided then and there (after some angry tears, large amounts of chocolate and an embarrassing wipe-out of a fall at Walmart) that this was it, this was when my life was going to start.

A college town in the summer in a largely abandoned dorm (one of the few other inhabitants being aforementioned ex) is, in short, not the best place to kick start your brand new life. For months, all my networking fell flat, I still only had a handful of friends and my roommate had been dating my ex's roommate for longer than even he and I had known each other. But I still kept that drive, that decision that this freedom was when my life was going to start, I was not going to let anything keep me down, I was going to meet people and go places and learn to be outgoing and fun. I was going to pick my world up from the ruins it had become and goddamnit, I was going to enjoy it.

Eventually, it worked. My last year of college was one of the best times of my life. I had friends, I had people who cared about me, I was doing well, I had a plan. I had my moments where things didn't work how I wanted them too, but they worked out better for my initial failures. I missed all the deadlines for the American universities I was interested in but I managed to apply to one European one, I got in. I was over the moon. This was it, this was definitely it, this was when life really started. With moving, by myself, to Ireland.

My plan didn't work out. Sure, I went to Ireland, I got my degree, it was another amazing time in my life because all my hard work had paid off, I really had become fun, outgoing and interesting to be around. I knew everyone, they knew me, I loved every second of the social aspect of my decision. The academic? Well, parts I loved, parts I found mind-numbing. And in the end, I didn't have the drive to get over the mind-numbing because it was numbing all the passion I had once had for my plan. This was clearly not where my life was starting.

I came home. I wrote my dissertation. I tried dating again. I got a job. I applied to another degree and was working my way into excitement again, all read for my life to start, finally, because it was time, damnit, it was time for it to be my time.

It wasn't.

Life, I've found, is nothing but a constant series of winding myself up, hoping for the best, and eventually watching it drift away. It's grabbing that wind-up key and pushing with all your might to keep trying and keep riding the roller coaster that is life with all its ups and downs, being the little wind-up toy marching along and hoping he's not about to fall off a desk.

But no one gets anywhere without marching forward and sometimes in the brief instant before you crash on the floor, you fly.