Sometime during Christmas break, our RAs decorated our hall. There are posters of all of the LSU sports teams, and banners about the national championship, and there are two flags on our door made out of purple and gold construction paper. Our names are written on them in the kind of print kindergarten teachers use to display the names of their students on bulletin boards or cubbies or artwork. I feel like I'm five again. Or ten, at cheerleading camp for the first time, with paper cutouts of footballs and megaphones decorating the new fifth graders' dorms that week. I wouldn't go back to middle school if I had the chance. I want to feel like I'm in college again.
I have a class in 4 hours, but I can't sleep. Anxiety? That may be it. But it has felt rather natural to settle back into Baton Rouge life. Elise and I barely saw each other over the break, and all day today we have been gossipping and sharing stories and laughing and having fun. She's asleep now, and won't wake up until her 12:30 German class. I'm jealous - I have 6 classes tomorrow, one of them being a 3-hour chemistry lab. I start at 8:30 and don't finish until 12 hours later, with very little free time in between.
On the bright side, this semester I have no Tuesday classes and only one night class on Thursdays. I need to go look for a job to fill this time. Maybe the PJs on Essen will take me; that would be all too convenient.
One of the positive aspects of being back at LSU is that I'm close to Chris again. After he and I met that night at the Caterie, we only saw each other a handful of times before I headed back to New Orleans. We called each other a lot over the break - he's good at talking on the phone, unlike many of the boys I've known. And now I can see if anything is actually going to come of this.
It has been too long since I've dated someone in the traditional sense of the word - I think the last time was Marc, in November of 2002, and even that didn't last long. Not that the opportunity hasn't presented itself since then, but I don't believe in dating someone simply for the sake of dating someone. I want to do it for the right reasons. So I've gone through a lot of odd phases with regard to the opposite gender - that period where I gave them up completely, that odd month or maybe more where Nick and I thought that something might be happening between us, sleeping around with close friends and not-so-close friends, all the while wondering in the back of my mind if there would ever come a time when a guy really meant something to me again. I watched a boy kiss his girlfriend goodbye in the quad once, and I saw the look on her face and wondered why kisses meant something to her and were just one of those inconsequential things to me.
I think I have a lot of issues with boys, and a lot of them are related to Aaron. But I've (mostly) come to terms with what happened with him, and I'm hoping for the best with Chris. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.
nicole: 19-year-old LSU sophomore. biochemistry, pre-med. native new orleanian. starbucks barista. borderline alcoholic. addicted to facebook, red bull and vodka, and college football. a little neurotic, extremely indecisive, and often irresponsible.
