Nostalgia, much?

Yes, it's 3:05 in the morning. Yes, I need to move into Basil's between noon and 2pm tomorrow. No, I am not finished packing yet. Yes, I am blogging instead. Eh, I have 9 hours.... that's plenty of time.

I swore that I would only blog when I had happy things to say, or at least, not depressing things to say. Hence, I haven't had much to say the rest of my spring semester. That's not to say there weren't incredibly exhilarating, life fulfilling, amazing moments. It's just that I am a cynic and I tend to focus on the bad things. Plus I have just been really busy and had no time to blog.

Great things that have happened since my last post:
- BERLIN. VIENNA. Everything that the trip was to me.
- I turned 21 in style. :)
- I finished my Honors Project.
- I got hired as a Day ONE host!
- Things like Formal and Kiss the Wall, during which I was introduced to the best cheesesteak in Philly.
- I broke my "I don't wanna be in love" resolution, and I am oh so glad I did.
- Nobody in my family died.

That last one wasn't sarcastic. (Okay, only slightly.) Recently, that last one was thrown into Jeopardy in various ways. Luckily, everything is stable and happy and healthy, at least at the moment.

Brief synopsis for those who didn't know: My mom was diagnosed with pleomorphic liposarcoma on March 27th. A very crazy story, a very very rare cancer, with a very low survival rate. The good news is the cancer, which grows in the muscle, hasn't travelled to any other parts of her body or internal organs. With a little more surgery, on May 7th, my mom's oncologist is optimistic that he can get all of the cancer out!

When I got the bad news, before the good news came, I didn't handle it well. Normally, my reaction to sadness is to drown my sorrows in alcohol or bad choices. When I called my father the day after we found out about the cancer, he told me that my mom was worried I would be drinking too much. He made me promise not to drink to make myself feel better. For my mom's sake, and because of people who were close to me, I did my best to process feelings in a normal way and not destroy myself when I was sad. Trust me, it was new. I ended up becoming extremely depressed. I just kind of shut down in a variety of ways. For most of April I was completely miserable, stressed, and finding myself unable to function. Once my mom had more tests and her appointments yielded positive results, I found myself trying to catch up with all the work that I put off while I was incredibly sad.

I have a lot of regrets about not feeling ok for a month. I feel like I missed out a lot on most of the fun stuff of spring semester because I was so self-focused and worried about my mom. I felt Rip Van Winkle-ish; like I woke up suddenly after sleeping through half the semester. Oh well, I have one more spring left. Maybe. Jury's still out on that one.

I am incredibly grateful for the amazing friends for supporting me during my "dark" period. I am definitely looking forward to living in Philly over the summer. I have a lot of fun stuff planned, and so many of my friends are going to be here! Or, relatively close to here! So it's good times ahead.

I'm naturally a very sentimental person, so looking back on this year is really really hard right now. I feel like I've changed so much. So many things feel different and turned out way different than I expected at the beginning of the fall. I'm getting a similar "not ready to let go" feeling that I got at the end of the fall. The difference is that I missed the ebb and flow of the year. Being in my bubble of sad for a month made me miss the rise and fall of the spring. I feel like the semester was just going full force and then dropped off suddenly without warning - everything was going strong and then this morning I woke up and there was a mass exodus from the townhouses.

Here's to you 07-08. Goodbye junior year.

Cheers.