gender and stuff

I was raised to believe that with God I could accomplish anything.  I was raised to believe that I was important and talented, that God had big plans for my life.  I watched my religious and even conservative parents interact with one another, and I had no reason to believe that they were somehow unequal.  My mom didn't work much outside the home, but she worked as hard as my dad.  My house wasn't a dictatorship - my parents worked together, and very harmoniously.  I was told to go to college, and although marriage was always an inevitability for me, my parents wanted me to find a career, even if children caused me to voluntarily leave it all behind.

At some point, though, I became radically conservative in my beliefs about gender.  I waited for my husband to rescue me from a career that I wasn't really passionate about, from a real life I was terrified of.  I didn't know how to live in the world, and I looked for a man to solve that problem for me.  The problem is, I am not very good at attracting a mate, apparently, 'cuz I'm still single.  I had friends with radically conservative outlooks on life, who ended up married and in situations in which their only dream was having and raising children.

That wasn't me, though.  The older I got, the more I began to dream about the things I could do if I wasn't married or with children.  I began to realize that I loved history, and that I wanted to make a career out of it.  I found jobs that required me to take a leadership role.  I moved across the country away from all the people I knew and found my own feet to stand on.  I gained knowledge, and I gained confidence in my equality to the men in my life.

As I studied history, lots of things became denaturalized for me.   Many assumptions I had, much of my "common sense" assumptions were called into question.  Some of those assumptions had to do with the role of godly women.

It's a scary thing to change, but I have changed.  My options have expanded, I no longer view myself as destined for marriage and a life as a homemaker.  Maybe that'll happen, but never because I'm a woman and that's what I'm supposed to do to please God.  If I marry, it will not be to a man who views it as his "responsibility" to "protect" me and make all my decisions for me.  If I marry, I will marry my best friend.  We will be partners.  That's all there is to it.

faint whirring noise

I feel as if I am stuck in a room with a fan turned on "low."  I can't really hear much with any clarity, and anything beyond the room is blotted out.  It's white noise, but noise nonetheless.

I'm so ready to be out of school.  German becomes more odious with each passing day, and I'm just so done with homework and grading.  I am so excited to have a job.  A full time, decently paying job.  I'm excited to think again.  To breathe again.  To go to a new place and make it my own.  To reach out, to make friends, and to learn what it means to be a south-easterner.

Bellingham is beautiful this May, and I'm so thankful.  I'll miss the mountains and the evergreen trees.  I'll miss the daily bus trips, and I'll even miss the hippies and the drug addicts.  There's a charm to this place that can't be replaced.

Sometimes I feel, though, as if life is passing me by.  I am getting older, and nothing much is happening, and it's a strange feeling.  It's strange to be in the transition between youth and adulthood, because I never woke up one morning an adult.  But slowly I leave my youth behind, or at least one version of youth.  And as I do, I am more and more cognizant of the fact that I'll never get it back.  Time marches on whether or not I'm ready for it.  It is kind in letting me forget in the mindless repetition of day-to-day life that time is actually moving quite quickly, but sometimes I wake up and realize that I'm almost twenty five years old, that a third of my life is gone, and that jars me awake a bit.  I'm almost twenty five, and my twenty five years have been so...out of the ordinary.  I've never been in a long term relationship or had a "real job."  I left my life behind to come out here, and I'm about to do it again.  I'm rootless, always moving, never content.

When the fan in my brain is turned off for a few minutes, I become faintly aware of warring ideologies.  If ideology rests at the level of common sense, what do I do when I have two "common senses?"  Because I do, and it confuses the crap out of me.

mirror, mirror

I started this blog a few years ago when I was working as a waitress at a truck stop in Beresford, SD, dreaming that one day I would be able to attend graduate school.  I remember the uncertainty involved in settling for a restaurant job when I had a bachelor's degree in history.  I remember the awkward moments when my customers thought I was in high school.  I remember telling people I'd known my whole life that I hoped to go to graduate school for history.  I remember the hope contained in that statement, the dreams of a future career.

I never dreamed I'd end up here, at the edge of the continent.  I supposed I would make it into graduate school somewhere, but when I started this blog, I thought that would be in the midwest somewhere, preferably Illinois.  My world was so small; to jump out of the box was to move to Illinois.  One by one, PhD program doors closed.  It was February.  I found myself desperately searching for masters' programs with deadlines late enough to still apply.  I applied to three.  Wondered if all my dreams were for naught.  I made tentative alternate plans to move to Chicago and work as a piano teacher.

And then the floodgates opened.  I was offered four assistantships at three schools (yeah, don't even ask how that happened, but it did).  I chose Washington with the hopes of moving out here with friends, because there is no way I would have done it myself.

One series of unfortunate events led to another, and I found myself headed to Washington by myself.  My other grad school bridges had been burned, and Washington was all I had left.  I took the leap, and it changed me forever.

I arrived in a brand new city in September of 2010.  It was beautiful, more beautiful than anything I had ever laid eyes on.  I walked through that first month with my mouth perpetually gaping.  I lived in a way I hadn't ever lived before.  I was happy.  I was doing what I had wanted so desperately to be given the chance to do those long mornings serving coffee and pancakes at the truck stop, and I was in the most beautiful place on earth.

Slowly, I began to meet people.  I was blown away by the kindness of strangers.  I made friends.  I experienced so many new things.  And I became my own person.  I learned who I was and what I was about beyond the protective circle of home.  I began to think of Bellingham as home.  As year one slid into year two, I found myself coming into my own in a way that I had not anticipated.  

And the world once more began to beckon.  Like Pa Ingalls, I began to realize that I wanted to see more of the world.

So I applied for national park jobs.  It seemed hopeless, but I did it anyway.  Not knowing how many people I was competing against, I found rejection after rejection.  

But one interview came.  And that interview yielded a job.  

I don't know why...all I know is that somehow I was chosen for this job out of who knows how many applicants on a nation-wide job search site.  So I'm moving to Georgia in a month.  I'm sad to leave Bellingham.  It's been so wonderful to me, and the people here have become dear friends.

I'm a'goin' to Georgia, though, and I'm so excited.

Maybe someday I'll be back, B-ham.  I do hope so...you are the fairest city of them all.

when the music just works

I was looking at google maps today, plotting my move to Georgia in June, the move that will take me irrevocably away from the place I've come to call home.  I was also listening to my LOTR pandora station.  A song from the Transformers sound track was playing, and the music was so epic, and as I scrolled over the Rocky Mountains I felt the intense pain of future geographical separation from this place.  It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I don't know what I will do without Bellingham.

Obviously I'll live.  Just as there was life after college, there too is life after Bellingham, I'm sure.

But, for now, it just plain hurts.

jump

I was offered a job in Georgia a few days ago.  Although I have not yet accepted, in all likelihood I will be doing so very soon.

People ask me if I'm afraid.

The answer is yes.

I'm not so afraid I won't be able to handle it, because I think I will be able to handle it.

I'm afraid because I know how alone I may very well be. I'm afraid because I'm leaving the relative security of a community I have come to call home for the unknown of a place I've never even visited.  I'm afraid because it's all happening so quickly.

And I want this job.  I think it would be an incredible opportunity, and it could lead to great things.

For now, though, I'm just scared.  Scared, and sad.