When I Grow Up

I did an essay for English class. It's about my goals and dreams. I think I got a little bit off topic, but... I'm still kind of proud of it. :nerd:

When I Grow Up
By Carmen Aistrup
Period 3

Growing up is scary- at least it is for me. My friends can’t wait to have a job, own a car, and have a few kids, but I’m cowering anxiously in the bottom of the nest. Which isn’t to say I don’t have plans. I do. It’s just that as soon as I decide to do something, I get stressed out, and I start thinking in circles. Volunteer at the library? Get a job? Look at real estate? Talk to people? So then I burn out and do something meaningless until the urge to make something out of my life goes away. But life is like a roller coaster. (Whoops, that cliché just snuck out.) You may be terrified, have no idea what’s around the next turn, and swear that you’ll die of fright before it’s all over, but here’s the thing about roller coasters- you can’t get off until it’s over. So I’ll just make my demands and hope it's a good ride. I don’t need much. Just a job I don’t mind doing, a house I call my home, and people to share them with.

But here’s the main problem… a First Job. I do try. I go to the clothing stores and the fast food places, and all the weird little shops in between, bumming applications, and thinking, Well, it may work out this time! But then I sit down with the papers and realize that I’ve got nothing to write for the previous job experience section. I don’t even have any exemplary high school achievements or useful classes. So I turn in the applications full of empty space where other people have skills, and unsurprisingly, nobody has hired me yet. But someday I’ll get my First Job, and I’ll do it until I can’t take any more. At least then, when I find the used book store I really want to work for, I’ll have something more than an empty application to give them. There is honestly nothing I would love more than spending most of my day helping people sort through dusty paperbacks with a cup of coffee in my hand and a smile on my face- no joke! The low pay wouldn’t bother me at all. The only thing I need a lot of money for is a house.

Right, that’s my next topic. My home. Do you know the feeling when you move into a new place, and nothing is unpacked, it smells funny, and you can’t figure out how to start the stove? And then you start missing your old place, even though it was terrible and the landlords were tyrants? When I moved into my current house, I couldn’t shake that feeling for weeks. That’s why it’s important that I have one house (or apartment; I’m not picky) and stay in it for a long time. When I was ten, it was going to be in Alaska, and when I was thirteen, it had to be in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Right now I have my heart set on Grant’s Pass in Oregon, but I know things have a way of changing. Sometimes I can feel my house future home like we have a psychic connection. I imagine room with silence only accented by clocks ticking and canaries singing from the aviary in the back. I imagine a porch, bowed under the weight of a forest of catnip, which is smothered in the west by a blackberry thicket, which in turn is struggling against a dogwood vine. But things change. Even if I end up living in a sixth story apartment in Russia, I’ll be happy, as long as it’s the place I want to go at the end of the day.

I intend to fill my house with as much of me as possible, but I never want a home without other people. I want roommates who’ll cook, pretend to clean, and hog the TV. I want a montage of companions through my door. (and, occasionally, through the window) I even hope I get a couple of those guests who say they’re only staying for an hour and end up staying all day, and then the day turns into night, and then suddenly they’ve been sleeping on your couch for a month. But what I need, more than all the other people in the world, is The One Who Stays. The One Who Stays in not necessarily a husband or wife. They are the person who puts up with you, and whom you put up with in return. They are the one that leaves but always comes back. My best friend, whom I suspect may be my One Why Stays, says that they’re either called soul mates, soul twins, or soul siblings depending on what your relationship with them is. Actually, I think my name for it is better.

I’m tempted to send this to the North Pole next Christmas and see is Santa brings me a pre-packaged future. It would be a lot easier than struggling to make my own. All my plans seem so ideal and straightforward until I remember that it’s time to stop daydreaming, because I have key terms for Biology due Friday and then I have to do the dishes. And that even when I do have my perfect life, I will still have to wield a pair of hedge clippers now and then and ally with the blackberries in the fight against the dogwood, lest my backyard be taken over. But I suppose that’s okay. At the risk of mixing up my metaphors, life is also like Candyland. You know, the board game? Because even when you’re losing, and you’re stuck in molasses swamp, and you’ve drawn the yellow card three times in a row, there’s always a chance you’ll pull red in the next turn and be unstuck. In any case… at least you won’t starve.

The End.

Oh, well, and new art. New-ish. I haven't blogged in awhile. XD;

The line here is from a song called Mama by MCR.

This is Lydia and Betelgeuse from the Tim Burton movie, Beetlejuice. C: Lazy face melt kiss!

This girl is from an episode of the original Kimba the White Lion series.

There's more but I'm getting a bit tired of uploading them. ^_^; If you want to see all of my new artwork, you can go to my Deviantart page.

TTFN! c: