I’ve mentioned, many times, that my street is photogenic. And so it is! If you swing a left at the last lantern at the end, you’re at my apartment. Walk through the heavy wooden door, up four dirty, sketchy, dark flights of stairs, y voila! Mi casa! This picture was Saturday night (er, Sunday morning…) after a loud, rowdy dinner to celebrate a couple of birthdays. Good times. Yep, we’re all holding beers. It’s Spain, dude. I’m pretty sure it’s legal to walk around with open drinks at 3:30 in the morning, but even if it weren’t, well… it’s not really the kind of thing your average bored cop is going to care about. (As near as I can tell, law enforcement here mostly hangs out on street corners and waits for an excuse to hassle the punk kids who are generally loitering about. And until that happens, like I said, they mostly just look bored, and vaguely threatening. But not so threatening that they would take away my beer. Mostly just threatening to the punks who are loitering, I think.) Oh, and of course, these are my “hermanos” here, Christian on the left, Guille on the right. And if you’ll allow me to wax metaphoric (or dare I say downright cheesy) for a moment, I must say, this picture perfectly represents what they’ve been doing for me lately–that is to say, holding me up. Oh, and feeding me beers, of course. The thing is, ever since I got back from Christmas, I’ve been in varying states of FREAKING out. Any time anything touches the “what am I going to do with my life, what do I want my future to look like” nerve, I pretty much panic and freeze up and, yeah, generally freak out. Which pretty much means that, at the moment, just about everything freaks me out, because everything about being here is about my future. No exaggeration. What internship to look for, how my classes are going this term, how my classes went last term, the fact that one of my favorite people in the program got kicked out, how we’re having technical difficulties with the ski trip (too many people signed up–a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless), that I’ve been unmotivated and distracted, and, yeah, mostly just freaked the eff out–dude, even being freaked out freaks me out. It’s an awkward way to live, and people are starting to notice that I haven’t really been myself. Which makes me feel extra lucky for having such good friends, both here and across the pond (hurray, Skype!! hurray internet in my house! hurray good friends commenting on my blog!). Interestingly, I was commenting to a friend a few nights ago that, while my social life is pretty awesome, everything else is stressing me out. He shook his head and said, no, it’s impossible to have one part of life be good and everything else be terrible, because it’s all one. He explained that he sees life like a sudoku puzzle–you know, move one 4 in one of the squares, and it messes up the whole puzzle. It’s not enough to just finish one of the small squares, they all have to fit together. Good metaphor, right? And I’ve been thinking about what he said, and yeah, I have to say, I totally agree. I know that my panic will pass, but it sure sucks to be in such an uncomfortable place right now, and it sucks that even an overactive social life can’t compensate for everything else being out of place. I’ve even managed, in true Crystal form, to get myself totally twisted up romantically, too–but that seems to already be passing (not necessarily my choice, ahem, but probably all for the better anyway). Given that, as I’ve said, EVERYTHING freaks me out right now, it’s probably not the best time to start dating anyway, eh? Luckily, it’s almost weekend, and this weekend? Thankfully, there are no birthdays, and my homework load isn’t too much, so hopefully I’ll be able to just take it easy, apply for some internships, sleep a lot, and attempt to calm myself down. And, for the love of buddha, try NOT to freak out.
