10.21~ The gang goes to the bar

Yesterday was a strange but fantastic day and I feel like I lived three lifetimes in the span of 24 hours. I laughed so hard all day I'm surprised my abs aren't sore. We started the morning off with an "Individual Service Project" or ISP, which, as the name implies, is a project we have to plan on our own. We need 80 hours of ISP by the end of the year, on top of the 1700 regular service hours we have to do. So, we went to Camp Pollock and helped rake a bunch of mulch over some dirt and stained their front deck. It was a beautiful day, the ground at the camp was covered in leaves and the air had that crisp fall smell.

After the ISP, we went to a corn maze nearby. We wandered through the maze, ate some root beer snow cones, and eventually ubered back home. Grant and Ian made a humongous pot of mac and cheese and a pan of brownies and we all stuffed our faces. Grant accidentally poured half the container of pepper into his bowl of mac and cheese, and we blackmailed him into eating it anyway. Somehow this spiraled into a strange competition where we all started pressuring each other into eating as much as possible. Naturally, I over-did it and ended up with bad heartburn. Jasmine has all these videos on her phone of me double fisting a brownie and a forkful of mac and cheese just before the burn kicked in and I got all dramatic about it. Roy started yelling at me for eating too much and then everybody started yelling at Roy because there's apparently no such thing as eating too much, even if it makes you feel like you're getting stabbed in the heart.

Following our shining hour of gluttony, we played telephone pictionary which was hilarious as always. I went back to my room at around 9 to put on my PJs and grab some snacks, and when I returned to the common room I was notified by Wynn that we were all going clubbing as a team. I thought she was joking...she was not. We ended up at a place called Midtown Fly, but didn't get the memo that it was a Halloween costume party hosted by the most goth, death-obsessed group of people I've ever encountered. On one of the tables there was a flyer for a seance next week. Another flyer was advertising a meeting for a "Necromania" slam poetry session. People were wearing chains and gas masks, most of the men had on way more eyeliner than me. They hated us at first, I'm assuming because we didn't quite fit in with our light-colored crop tops, skinny jeans, and overall joyful dispositions. This one woman that looked like she was straight out of Coraline would not stop glaring at us in pure disdain. She was dancing like she was being electrocuted, and at one point she approached Cassandra and silently challenged her to a dance battle. Cassandra, a confident, bubbly blonde girl from Georgia, stood her ground and started dancing in the same convulsive way. I think this somehow won the respect of the Coraline lady because eventually she kind of just nodded with approval and walked away. Jon, who barely ever speaks a word or flashes a smile, was hilariously intoxicated and took on his own dance battle challenge. He fearlessly approached a very scary looking man with tattoos on his face and they broke it down while maintaining intense eye contact for what felt like a long time. At one point they were break dancing on the floor. Throughout this entire evening intense screamo music was blasting in the background. 

We left the bar at around 1 and all ubered back to McClellan. We joked about how thankful we were we didn't get stabbed at the bar and how the music grew on us as the night went on. When we got back, we all went to our special spot by the big wall and somehow got to talking about our pasts and all the deep stuff that holds us back. I enjoyed listening to what everyone had to say, we all have so much in common yet in such different ways. I couldn't bring myself to share much. Something always trips me up with opening up like that. For some reason I'm afraid that if I try to talk about my pain, it won't come out right. It could be because I haven't fully worked out my feelings on some things, so I'm not secure enough in them yet. It could be from all those years my feelings were invalidated and/or stomped upon. Now, I'm conditioned to hold back, which is something I've been trying to work on for years. Sometimes I hold back for so long that when I do reveal something, it feels like it comes out all jumbled up. My brain gets blocked up and I lose ability to organize my thoughts. I don't want the sloppy, unfinished, disorganized pieces of my experiences floating around in space for people to look at and judge. It's vulnerable, it's exposing. It's also raw and real, though. Maybe it's through sharing those dark, jumbled up pieces that you are able to connect with others. 

Anyway, the late night sharing session reminded me that I am very much a work in progress. Everybody has their own demons they are trying to work through. They can be quiet or loud, they can show up whenever and wherever, even when you think you've healed (maybe especially then). They remind you you're not done yet, you've got some work to do before you can either shut them up for good or make them your friends.

Someone once told me that as long as we're alive, things can always be fixed. I like to believe this is true.

~V