Today I went through Facebook and found the first ever blog i had posted on there, five years ago. Reading it now, I sound so lost and dumb. I wrote it right before I was graduating from college, and it definitely reflects my priorities at the time….studying, working, partying, dancing.

I post here to show my progress in thinking. And because Facebook has been getting a little creepy and I’m considering letting it go. But I don’t want to lose the online journal I documented the mistakes and triumphs of my semi-charmed life in.

When I wrote this….I think I thought my life was over. Today I feel like it hasn’t even really begun. What will I think five years from now looking back at the posts I write? I wonder I wonder…

Im graduating. Im graduating in five and a little bit of weeks. Im graduating. This means im leaving. I am packing all my things, giving away my furniture to the people who pick it up on the corners and pulling down my picture frames and fitting everything just so into cardboard boxes and labeling them and wondering which family member will let me store them all at their house.

Im leaving im saying goodbye. I don’t remember what exactly life was like before I came here, ive either forgotten or gotten too used to this or simply drank those memories away but this is my life now. And all my friends all my FRIENDS! I don’t know where or when I will see you again and if myspace and facebook didn’t exist id be a lot more depressed about it than I am now but as it is im still devastated. I wont be able to walk to your house anymore I wont be able to randomly run into you on the beach or at dogshit playing sloshball or at the hall or at freebirds or on the bike path to school or in the ucen buying another ucsb sweatshirt or at the corner store buying candy or at mac’s buying a keg or on the fourth floor “studying.”

And I don’t know what im doing after this, where to forward my magazine subscriptions, if I should keep my phone number, if I should apply to jobs or just camp on a beach somewhere, if I should keep my bed and furniture.

And at what point do I need to deactivate my myspace and facebook and start talking to people on the phone instead of aim. And what if we talk on the phone and find we have nothing to say. And at what point is it no longer acceptable to drunk dial a friend because you heard “our” song. What is the absolute latest point I can reach until I really need to have a career and not just a job.

My last midterm is on Tuesday. I paid my last rent check last week.

And I know there will be things I absolutely wont miss. I wont miss the stress. I wont miss certain roommates or friends’ roommates or running into old hookups or people you lost touch with and having those awkward five second conversations. I wont miss the rich snobby santa barbara vegetarians with their freaky requests at work who tip three cents for a meal so intricate it takes thirty minutes to prepare. I wont miss biking to school in the rain. I wont miss comparing myself to every blonde 5’8” 120 pound model of perfection in her halter top and mini skirt and ugg boots and oversized sunglasses and purse. I wont miss trying to do everything all the time and going one hundred miles a minute.

But all that is ugly fades into the everything else that is my life here, and becomes so small its hard to pick it out, and I can only see the bright beautiful bubble of happiness ive been floating inside of for four years. And before maybe I was too proud and “different” to admit that I didn’t know what I was doing, where I wanted to be in five years, that I didn’t have a gameplan, that I didn’t know all the secrets of my heart yet. But now the rest of my life is staring me in the face and for the first time in a long time i am scared. i am vulnerable. i am wandering. and i dont want to grow up. i dont want to leave. i dont i cant because ill miss you too much.