I thought I was running late, only too find out I've been early my entire life.

It's amazing what hours of being alone with no one but your chihuahua to give you funny looks when you talk will do for your perspective.

Well, that and Keira Knightley movies.

My blog began with a very specific mission: to serve as an outlet for all the frustrations and disappointments I keep finding in my life. It was a way to deal with everything going wrong, a way to make me laugh when shit hit the fan. After starting it, all the crappiness turned into stories to write, pieces of my life to share with friends and strangers, and a different way to view things: a new perspective so that I could remind myself that in 5, 10, 20, years, I'll look back on this time and laugh, cry, and hopefully, be thankful that it happened.

My first entry, I wrote about never having a plan for after college. And the blog has morphed a bit into the kinds of things that you have to face in the "real" world that college never prepared me for. College never prepared me for not using my degree. It didn't prepare me for feeling like I've failed every time I see someone I used to know at KMart and feeling like I have to explain the "I'm here to help you!" nametag on my chest. It didn't prepare me for having to force a smile on my face and pretend like I don't feel like the biggest loser of all time. Like it doesn't bother me that I can't find a real job.

College prepared me to succeed. Everyone I've ever known, as a friend or mentor, has told me that I can do anything I want. That if I just try hard enough, I'll be successful. But it doesn't really work that way, does it? I've always been prepared for success. No one sits you down and says, "Sometimes, you're going to try really hard, and you're going to want something more than you've ever wanted anything else in your life, and you're not going to get it. Sometimes, you're going to fail. You're going to fail in small ways, but you're also going to fail in great, big, embarrassingly, heart-breaking messy ways. And it's okay."

So, I love Keira Knightley. I think I could be gay for her. Honestly. She's my hero. And I'll watch almost anything that has her name attached to it. I've watched Pride and Prejudice a dozen times (and I don't even really LIKE that adaptation. But it's Keira Knightely), Pirates of the Carribean twice as many times as that. And The Duchess a handful of times. And there's this line in The Duchess, where Georgiana (Knightley's character) says, "I fear I've done some things in life too early and others too late."

That's how I feel right now. All my life I felt like I was middle-aged. I've always been so level-headed. Always determined to do what's "right," even though I've come to realize that "right" can be a relative term.

I grew up early, by complete choice. I spent my entire youth longing for adulthood. And now that I'm here, I am, quite simply, afraid that I did it too early. That I made adult decisions before I was really ready to make them. Decisions that I can't undo. And I'm wondering if now, when I'm twenty-five and just now spending this time pondering the nature of the universe and meaning of my life--I wonder if I'm doing it too late.


*Note*
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