bridges.

i'm going to be twenty three on sunday. twenty three. (and no, it's not old. and yes, i understand that there is nothing exciting about this birthday other than its existence.) but twenty three. i remember being sixteen and my cousin, my absolute idol, was twenty three. a college graduate. a member of the work force. an adult. how she feels about the subject, i can't say. but i do know that she was a grown up in my eyes. self assured. taking control.

and now, i'm the twenty three year old. and it's strange. oh so strange. because here i am. roughly a fourth through my life. and i'm still in school. so in a way, my certainty seems so apparent to others. oh, she's in law school; she's going to be a lawyer. point a to point b. but it's not. first, i have to actually get through law school, which will be a feat. then i have to secure internships and positions along the way. and decide what i want to do. and pray to God that sometime between now and may 2012, our beloved capitalist economy has found a way to right itself again so that i can justify going into $100,000 worth of debt. (that justification will be in the form of a fat paycheck in the bank and the ability to actually start my life.)

because now, right now, i feel like bull pushing against his cage. my life, it's here. it's right here. but i can't have it. not yet. more school. less sleep. more this and that and the other. in the meantime, i worry that my life - this life i have waiting for me (a love and a family and a house and a car and three dogs and two point five kids and baseball games and the perfect business suits and all of those things) will get away from me. because it's way patiently right now, but it might get tired of being on hold.

yes. law school is a step to that life. but it is more than one step. it is an old, rickety bridge strung between two sides of a canyon that can kick up winds over one hundred miles per hour. so, the process is slow and tiring, and at the very best of times, a precarious negotiation between the desire to get to the other side and the fear of falling off altogether.


all of this is to say that what's waiting, at least for now, makes all of this worth it. but there's a nagging fear that the life i put on hold will run off without me.

for now, though. i wake up in the morning and trudge to my fortress and build a shelter out of thousand pages books. sometimes - in fact, more often than not - i like it here.