Lise, this is for you.

I'm listening to Placebo ("Every me and every you," the SneakerPimps remix) and contemplating graduation. Which for me means returning to the scene of the accident, as it were. I'm going back to GA. I got Ashley's super authentic-looking graduation announcement in the mail yesterday (congratulations! For your graduation present, I'm giving you our apartment!) and it made me realize that I am extremely ambivalent about my own upcoming graduation.

On the one hand, I'm moving forward. I have a plan and a career goal. And I'm taking all the wonderful bits of life that I've collected thus far with me into that hopeful future. I've got William. I finally believe that I can be happy, with the understanding that happiness involves the constant adjustment of expectations to match circumstances. Happiness is not a static, unwavering ideal. In the last few years I've gained enough perspective to realize that this isn't such a sad pronouncement after all.

It occurs to me that I can now begin to look back and evaluate my predictions. I didn't really know what to expect from the fabled "college experience," except that I would be changed. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn't become the person that I had hoped I would turn out to be when I made my first visit to CU. There is not one aspect of my life today that I could have imagined then. There are things about my persona and lifestyle now that I actively rejected when I was 18. Which only makes me wonder how much farther off-course I'll be when I'm 26.

When I'm 26 I'll probably have a baby. That's about all I can guess at this point. I know what I'd like to be doing, career-wise, but I don't have any idea what city I'll be living in or what that future life will feel like.

Both W and I want to move back to Portland after I'm finished with nursing school (the next big hurdle is getting in, heh), but lately the talk has turned to housing and Indianapolis and the possibility of investigating homesteads a bit father removed from comfort. Places where the foreclosure rate is 10%. So, actually, Detroit. Wherever we live, we will necessarily be separated from one set of parents by thousands of miles. This will only get more depressing as time passes.

On the other hand, I'm going back to GA and I always told myself that I would never go back. It makes economic sense to hang out in Gainesville and approach nursing school from that southeasterly angle, but when I think about it too much I start to get angry. The fact of the matter is that my parents should move. MA. I hate that fucking state, I have hated it since I was a kid, and since I left it appears to have only gotten worse. Now they're trying to annex the Tennessee River, for chrissakes. I'm proud to be "from the South," but I think that were all things equal I'd prefer to just leave it at that.

I am scared to leave Portland.

I can yak up a storm about all the rationales and reasons and give myself little pep-talks about how nice it'll be to live near my Mom for a while, have people over for cookouts, upgrade our dog, etc. But I'm afraid that I'll get stuck. GA is an incredibly sticky place for me. My family's dysfunction acts like a strip of fucking fly-tape. I can't go anywhere near it without getting caught up, and the whole ordeal is exhausting.

Of course, that's a complete cop-out. My family is a fucking mess, but that isn't really the problem. We'll be in Gainesville, they'll be in Alpharetta. I need to learn to set boundaries with that bunch anyway, if I'm ever going to feel like a normal adult. The thing that so frightens me is the sense that the lovely little life I've built for myself is fragile and deeply rooted in this town. This is where W and I became a family and I cannot imagine myself in GA with this life. Happy. I know that he isn't going to vanish on the drive down, up in a puff of smoke when we cross the Mason-Dixon Line, but that's what it feels like and even though I can intellectualize it I'm still terrified.

I don't want things to change. I want to stick my head in the sand. I want to get into nursing school. I want to know for certain, right now, tonight, that I won't end up spending my life in GA.

I suppose that all of this anxiety indicates that moving to GA and sticking it out for a few years may be a necessary stage in my development. GA is something that I need to deal with. I got out before with nary a backward glance, and I can do it again.

Eh. Anyway.

In other news, W and I have made some progress in teaching the dog not to lick his paws. It's been difficult, since this is his primary (only) method for relieving anxiety and as a blind lapdog with no reliable sense of self he has a lot of anxiety. We've gotten him to the point where he'll only lick them in secret. He starts out licking his little puffy puglips, and slowly his tongue sneaks out and...slurrrrp...he gets only one paw at a time and its slow going, but he seems satisfied. This is no good. I want to get an air horn. That'll show him we're serious, and also probably give him a seizure. We mean business, Beauretard. Shape up.

Mom called yesterday to let me know that Hailey is in the hospital, having some tests done. They don't know what the problem is yet, but my father suspects internal bleeding because her blood pressure was so low when she arrived and improved so quickly once they got her on IV fluids. I hope that she's okay--I think that she is, but we'll know in a few days. Worst case scenario would be that they don't figure out what's wrong and send her home, only to have her wind up back in the ER with the same symptoms later.

W and I just got our tickets to Liz & Ian's wedding! Lizzie, if you're reading this, the reply card(-ish) is on it's way! Also, what the hell should we wear? (Keeping in mind of course that for W this question is purely academic, as he will be wearing his wedding suit because it is the only suit-or-even suit-like thing that he owns.)

I graduate on June 15th. Since it's only undergrad and my family would have to fly up to see me, and since we're driving down in July anyway, I will not be attending the ceremony. I am pleased about this--once in the hat and robe get-up was enough. When I graduate from nursing school I plan to paint myself gold and streak across the stage. The real sense of accomplishment is yet to come, is what I'm saying.

Lisa, email me and let me know what's going on with you. Tell me your dreams, share with me your anxieties. Have your after-graduation plans changed? How long do you think you will live in China? What law schools did you apply to? Have you heard back? How are things with you and John? How is your family doing? What are your thoughts on life in general? Does the impending oil crisis/democratic primary concern you? I have many questions--you have answers.

If you're going to be around at all this coming summer or anytime next year (or the year after that, depending on how my nursing school apps. go), we should meet up.

I'll be in Gainesville, dealing with it ;)