all i can say is this:

But I've known you for 22 years. I can see right through you. And I know that statement is a lie. I know that what I think really means everything to you. What I can see is that something's got a hold of you. I don't know what it is, but it has been eating you away from the inside out for the latter half of my life. It's taking over your actions, your words, your emotions, your entire being. Whatever it is has been slowly tearing you away from me, to the point where you need to stop at the liquor store to find something to numb the pain before you can even set foot in the house after work. This thing has you thinking that it's not as worth being there for me as it is worth being there for the people in your office or for the benefit of a few lab results at the doctor's. As a 12 year old, I spent almost a month being terrified to speak to you because I knew that whatever I said, the conversation would always end with you yelling at me for being a bad student.

"My vision is going," I sigh into the phone. "And my hearing. And all my joints are starting to hurt. And I get tired more easily. And when Maria is the same age as I am right now, I will be 32 and maybe even hanging out with MY KIDS. And now mom is giving me dirty looks." My father laughs at me on the other end of the line. "That's because you don't even know the half of it. Wait another 30 years til you're 52 or 53 like us. Then come talk to me about it. Where you are right now is the best part of your life." As of 9:35 this morning, I have been living on this earth for 22 years. Eight thousand and thirty days. I've blown out 253 candles and grown 67 inches. I've completed 16 years of school. I've come a long way from the 7 lb. 6 oz. 20-something inch pink bundle that I was 22 years ago. Sometimes we all go through periods of time that just really....well, really suck. I won't get into details, but I would not be lying to

I sit in my seat next to the left-side door, looking down most of the time, being careful not to make eye contact with anyone around me so as not to have an awkward moment. At each stop, the car fills up a little more: a man with rap music blaring from the earbuds stuffed in his ear at Stonybrook, a woman talking loudly on the phone in Cantonese at Jackson Square, a group of college girls from Northeastern at Ruggles. Each new person to walk on keeps to himself or to the group he came with. Nobody interacts with each other except for an occasional "excuse me." Like it or not, we have been trained in this day and age to think that a friendly "Hello" is a thing of a Pleasantville past. We are told from a young age to mind our own business, to be wary of strangers, to keep a tight hold of our possessions, to not let our guard down and be 110% sure of our surroundings at all times in an effort to prevent an unwanted hand from invading our personal bubble and wreaking

Maybe it was the stress of graduation, but my brand-new Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology leaves me more likely to believe that the real reason is because my genetic blueprint has me set to start showing this sign of growing up somewhere in my early twenties. I'll be 22 in a little over a month. All week, Nicki and I have been texting non-stop. I was the first to get a "big girl job" offer for a teaching position; she was the first to actually start a "big girl job" as a long-term sub. "i got drooled on so much today...but got tater tots. why is this job so 50/50" "i feel like 50/50 is the theme of the real world" "life at leitrims was just so much easier." Meanwhile, Kim has started "big girl apartment"-hunting for her year in graduate school, looking to live in a place where the main decor on the living room walls is not a wrap-around of side panels from cases and 6-packs of beer, but maybe something a bit class

Dear Front Gate, Today I drove by you, pulled off of campus and took a left onto Salisbury St. for the last time of my Assumption College career--no longer a student, but a brand-new alumna. Here's our story as I know it: One rainy late August day in 2006, a gray minivan packed to capacity with the items necessary for spending a year in a 3-person freshman dorm room drove up Salisbury St. and was waved onto campus because sitting behind parents and between siblings was a quiet 18-year-old girl who needed to begin writing words on the blank pages of the next chapter of her life. A few months before, she had sent in a $500 acceptance deposit to Assumption College--her mother's alma mater, one of only two schools she applied to in her home state, a place she never really gave much thought to during the chaos of college application processes but simply kept on her list of potential options in case she decided at the last minute that a big university in the middle of Philadelp

A month ago, you wouldn't have caught me dead at a bar on a Tuesday night unless it was a friend or roommate's birthday. But nowadays, my attitude is shifting. It's not apathy or losing sight of responsibility. Instead, I'm finally figuring out that I have a pretty good handle on this whole school thing. Five years from now, I'm most likely not going to remember how arthropods begin their molting process or how many million years ago the first "fishapod" walked the earth. I'll probably forget the list of exactly which third world countries sided with the US and which sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. With less than 25 days left, maybe the most important thing is not staying in and striving for a solid 8 hours of sleep. Maybe the most important thing is savoring the moments destined to transform into beautiful memories that actually will still hold meaning five, ten, or fifty years from now. Moments that make me want to press the pause b

It's a trick I learned while sitting on the floor of a Brighton funeral home on a cold, snowy mid-April day during my junior year of high school. I don't remember the name of the girl who taught me. I don't remember her face or if she even went to school with me. Five years later, the only thing I can really remember is the sharp contrast of her calm instructions against the heart-wrenching sounds of another girl sobbing in a back room. "Now unfold that piece and pull it up... then pull these two to puff out the body. That's all." The room was full of kids looking down, quietly folding. I tossed my crane into the large pile that had begun to form in the middle of the room. One more out of ten thousand folded tributes to a life ended too soon. In any jumbled, messy story of growing up, there are events that stand alone and apart from the chaos as significant milestones. Often times, these moments are not recognized as being so important and life-changing

INGREDIENTS: 1/2 tub Smart Balance butter spread 2 eggs 1 lb ricotta cheese you need to get rid of ASAP 1 3/4 cups white sugar approx 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 tsp salt 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 1 container Activia vanilla yogurt 4 c flour chocolate jimmies some alcoholic beverages Preheat oven to 350. Take a sip of beverage. Beat eggs and butter using a la rge serving spoon and a small teaspoon. Add ricotta and white sugar. After realizing you do not have all 2 cups of white sugar needed, throw brown sugar into mix until you think you've made up for the missing 1/4 cup. Take another sip and repeatedly ignore your roommate's suggestion to scrape the pink sugar off a package of Peeps. With your drink in hand, do a Google search for effective baking powder substitutes. Assume one container of Activia = 1/2 cup of yogurt. Add yogurt & baking soda; eyeball salt. Slowly add in about 3 2/3 cups of flour. Sprinkle the remaining 1/3 cup onto the table, the floor, th

In the fog of waitlists, rejections, massively large traffic tickets, incomplete applications and 4% downsizing that has dominated the last few weeks of my life, the one shining beacon of hope that has kept me sane is a home-turned-college administrative building on Old English Road that backs up to the edge of campus: the Student Development & Counseling Center, a.k.a. The AC Center for Seniors Who Can't Write a Resume Good and Want to Learn How to Do Other Stuff Good Too. For the past month or so, I have been in almost constant contact with David K. at the SDCC, trying to form a plan to up my chances of getting into a graduate program off the waitlist and changing my resume to fit a job application instead of a school application. It didn't hit me that my post-graduation plan has actually changed, however, until I opened a short email last week: Jenn: Are you considering applying to Siemens/Bayer? If so, you need to change your objective line. Other than that, looks great

Have you seen him around? The last time I saw him was on the water-logged softball field across from my apartment a week ago. I had tossed my brown Northface to the side and stood in the comfort of his rays for ten precious minutes before leaving to spend my afternoon in the back corner of a grocery store tucked away in the back corner of a small town next door to the back corner of Connecticut. "Sun, I love you," I told him. "I lovelovelovelove you. You make me so happy. Thank you for being in my life. You are the only Valentine I'll ever need." That's right. The sun is my perfect Valentine. He knows exactly how to put a smile on my face when I'm having a bad day. He can light up a room just by looking through the window to say hello. He's always ready with a hug and he never makes me cry. Whenever he says goodbye for the night, I know he'll come back soon. While he could never surprise me with chocolate or flowers, he brings out the best in me

Congratulations. You did it. You are now one-quarter of the way through the second semester of your senior year in college. Take a minute to let that statement sink in. Four years ago, did you ever think this day would come? Now that it's finally here, how do you feel? Are you upset, or are you relieved? Are you excited, or are you nervous? Are you counting down the hours and minutes between now and the moment you'll walk across the stage? Or are you in denial, hoping that one of these mornings you'll wake up back in the warm days of August and September, when the end was only just beginning? This isn't a dream. This is the real thing. Every second turns into another minute, every minute turns into another hour, every hour turns into another day closer to May 15, 2010. It's coming, whether we want it to or not. Are you ready? Of course you're ready. We're all ready. We wouldn't have made it this far if we weren't. All those hours spent in class, ever

she says from her place on the wood-and-fabric two-seater. "Seriously though, how cool would it be if we could get together and do this again next year? Here's the thing, though--we can't EVER do this again after THIS year. We won't be together anymore." It's snowing. The college closed at 3 PM. The four of us are all wearing our oversized Living the Hound Life t-shirts over black spandex leggings. One is drinking Wachusett Blueberry, one is drinking Bud Light, one is drinking white wine and one is drinking Smirnoff in some kind of fruit juice. The only thing missing is the fifth roommate; the overachieving real-life example of what all of humanity should be like, who graduated early so she could volunteer at an orphanage in Peru. Show-off. We have ten weekends left, including this one. Only ten weekends left before the real world swallows us up. Ten weekends left to be completely immature and completely grown up at the same time. And so here we are on a Wedne

Those are the four tools God gave me to diffuse my emotions. The writing is a tough one because there aren't enough hours in the day; this blog spends more time gathering dust in a remote corner of cyberspace than it does being used for its original purpose. I won't sing by myself if I think someone is watching, and a cappella rehearsals only happen twice a week. As for driving, gas is expensive, and there are only so many times I can drive up and down Routes 1, 9, 109 and 95 before they get so repetitive that they stress me out. When God caught wind of these problems more than two years ago, back when I was still thinking He didn't really give a crap about what went on down here, He took one look at the awkward, quiet, brown-haired mess of life in the glasses and said to himself, "This kid is in big trouble." So He stopped by the HR office one day and began sifting through files and folders, looking for a job application submitted by Jennifer A. Gallant who prefe