It’s a chilly Sunday afternoon in Santa Clara, and I am sick. There are drunk people playing football in courtyard of Jimmy’s apartment building. They are loud and happy, and I am tired and a little blue, so I put on my headphones. I’m listening to a Pandora radio station I made called “Go Home.” It’s all folksy/country stuff that reminds me of the midwest.
I took the LSAT yesterday and I am not feeling very good about it. I don’t know why. I went into it knowing that I wouldn’t do well. I don’t need to do well. I don’t want to go to a school that requires a high score. I just needed to do well enough to get into the University of Montana. I guess the bad feelings are coming from a deeper place. I keep saying that I don’t know what to do with my life, but the truth is, there are all kinds of things that I want to do. I just don’t want to settle. I don’t want to pick one. I don’t want to settle in any way. I don’t want to decide on a career, I don’t want a long term relationship, I don’t even want to buy furniture.
I do, however, want a fulfilling way to earn money, I want companionship, and I want a comfortable place to sleep.
I don’t know what this means. Maybe I’m not quite grown up. There’s definitely a lot of fear there and I don’t think it’s entirely unfounded. I have been halfway out the door since I was 11. My family was moved around by the military. And then I moved away for college. The idea of living someplace indefinitely is so strange to me that I can’t even imagine how it’s done. What do you do? You just get a job and do it forever? You go to the same coffee shop and talk to the same people and eat the same things all the time? I guess everything I’ve ever done has had two implicit conditions: 1. I am a guest from another place and 2. I won’t be here forever.
It seems like not having those conditions would lead to stagnation and stagnation would lead to depression and depression is misery. Now, when I am unhappy, when things don’t seem to be working out, I know that in just a little while I will be leaving. But what if that wasn’t possible? What if I had a career and a home and someone depending on me to be there day in and day out? It would be wrong for me to leave. And I want to be able to leave whenever I feel like it’s time to go.
So that LSAT is one big step in the direction of settling down, and I am afraid. I am afraid that I did so poorly that I won’t get into law school and I’ll be a poor transient forever. But way more than that, I’m afraid that I did well enough and that I’ll be running off to law school next year only to find that I built a cage around myself.
