- The other side of waiting. All that … longing (years! months! days!) for a thing that’s over in a few hours, if even that. I’d like to say that it’s usually worth it. But it rarely ever is. Still, no matter the results, I’m glad I’m here at the other side. In fact, I kind of want to pinch myself. Because I can’t believe I’m now living a life wherein this has already happened. I was allowed to reach this point! I’m no longer waiting! Ha! Haaaaa! The hoped-for future becoming present—the imagined becoming reality—I stop to notice this transformation far too seldom than I would like, and I’m pleased that this isn’t one of those times. So maybe it wasn’t exactly what I had in my head … but oh, living through that was glorious.
- Mornings: Calculus. 3 hours. Aka: “Self, WHY did you want to study again?!” Much as I like Math, much as I can at least understand the concepts still, I really, really, really don’t enjoy Advanced Algebra. I don’t want to use the word despise, but it comes to mind.
- Afternoons: MySQL. Also 3 hours. Aka: “Self, THIS is why you studied again.” We’ve barely just scratched the surface, but I’d gladly fall headfirst into the hole, if ya know what I mean.
- And there it is, the effect of the divide between Before and After: I have become two different girls. At school, I’m (Ate) (cringe) Nenen of the CS present. People take me as I am now, and they don’t have an inkling of, nor do they particularly care about, who I was before. But when I meet up with the old college gang again, I become the me they know. Nenen of the MLS past. They remind me of what I was like before, and they don’t have an inkling of, nor do they particularly care about, what I’m like now. How absurd it is that I feel a difference. And yet I do, because I behave differently. Noticeably. I think, “Who they know is only a facet of me now.” I’m no longer merely changing—I am already changed. And now I understand why, last year, one of my professors warned me of the loneliness of this path: I can’t say I have any friends who were there with me to truly understand that I’m not just one of these two girls at any given time; I am both.
- (My family remains the exception. Luv u fam.)