The Daily Durvy

Last Saturday I went to my sorority formal, which is just like Prom, only with more alcohol and less coke in the bathroom. We’re college students, we can no longer afford coke.

In addition to looking awkward because I have inadvertently gained 15 pounds, I also looked awkward because I did not really want to be there. While getting drunk is always fun, getting drunk in a formal dress and heels sucks.

I made my dress, partly for fun and mostly because I like the attention that the statement “I made my own dress” brings. I am an attention whore and I can admit it. People get so wrapped up in themselves, especially when they are in formal wear. The downside to this dress was the fact that the slit up the side was, well, homemade and therefore kept getting longer and longer. By the end of the night, I was showing 5 more inches of leg than I was at the beginning.

Also, there was the shoe Nazi. Very early in the evening, before my chicken dinner and before I began sobering up, a girl stepped on glass on the dace floor. As a result no one could take their shoes off. I was wearing 4 inch extremely cute pumps. I cannot walk now as result of my callouses from dancing in the cute pumps.

Damn pumps.

I haven’t been sleeping lately and I think it’s making me crazy.

I burst out into tears when I looked in the fridge only to discover that we were out of soy milk.

Since this lack of sleep has been going on long enough to make me freak out about soy milk, I went to see a therapist. She basically diagnosed me with stress, with manic-depressive tendencies. She told me to breathe and stretch and write down everything in my head before bed so I could deal with it in the morning and not while trying to sleep for more than 4 hours.

Last night, I took her advice and wrote down my racing thoughts before trying to get to sleep. Some highlights:

• What to do with my life?
• I hate it when people say “take it one step at a time.” If I could do that, I wouldn’t need to unload in a journal before bed.
• I want to model. I want someone to WANT to take my picture.
• I want to feel beautiful
• I need to clean my room.
• I want to be good at knitting.
• I need some excitement.

Excitement indeed.

What do you do to cope with stress?

When I was younger, and people would ask “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I would answer, “happy,” “in love,” or “the first female president of the US.” Cute at the time, a little tiring at age 20.

Now, I fear the phrase, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Aside from being condescending, I don’t know how to answer it. The problem complicates itself when I admit that I’m a Women Studies major. I’m not pre-Law, pre-Dental or an engineer. I’m not even an English major. So what then, do I do?

Did you know that the United States has a history of eugenics and forced sterilization campaigns? Did you know that the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 forced women to marry their abusive husbands to get food stamps? Did you know that the same act forced some women to print the names of ALL OF THEIR SEXUAL PARTNERS in the NEWSPAPER so that one who fathered her child could come forward for her to marry? Did you know that Roe vs. Wade is based on the 14th amendment right to privacy?

That is what I want to do with my life. I want to tell you all of those things. I want to be a teacher, I want to write, I want to make people aware of the secret history of the shiny social policies of the last 100 years. I want to blow what you think you know out of the damn water.

One day, I hope that people look back at the social policy of our time and are slightly disgusted. The racism and sexism and partisanship that taint our ideologies should be exposed and aired out, reworked and rethought and I want to help do that. What do I want to be when I grow up? I want to be part of the solution, the rethinking. I want to be part of the change.

I am 20 years old.

To most, that makes me a baby. It makes me unable to comprehend the complexities of everyday life.

But today I am a baby that has changed history. A baby that has had her day at the polls and was moved to tears by a man who just wants to change America; an honest, hardworking change for the better.

Today I am a baby who finally has something to believe in.