wrung

I'm sitting outside, I've had a fresh cup of coffee, the sun is shining and I'm even wearing a jacket. I should be able to put some good and fun words on paper about something I love, either the Dallas Stars and Rich Peverley or The Great British Bake-Off, but instead, I can't. Every sentence that comes from my fingers is flat and insipid, and my head feels both fuzzy and empty, like a washcloth wrung out to dry and left to hang stiff.

It's been a difficult few months for yours truly - getting unexpectedly laid off, having false hope abound, losing money and time and friends. Supposedly, all this nonsense should have resulted in epic writings, book-length musings on the nature of stress, and whether or not we need to change ourselves, and not the slow diminishing of my ability to spell and write and move people with my words.

The sun plays across my eyelids as I stop typing and stare upward at the porch roof, and then bounce off onto one of the websites that counts as a distraction for me. I'm empty right now, a vessel used and poured out, and while in the movies, this is when I'd "go crazy! Spend the rest of my savings on a vacation and just get out of town for a while!" I can't do that, because this is real life, and real life means not knowing how much longer I'll have to rely on those savings to pay my rent, or how long I'll need to keep eating meals at my parents' house to not buy as many groceries, and we don't always get what we want.

I mean, sometimes we do, but we don't know that we don't want it. I wanted out of my previous job, which was a bad fit in all directions and was actively making me sick from a different kind of stress, but then I knew I had a paycheck coming in every two weeks, could save money and occasionally spend it, and didn't have to obsess over what came next. In the long run, sure, it's great that I'm out of there, even if being laid off three months ago means that every day that goes by I worry about whether or not I'm unhireable for one reason or another.

"You're 25!" you say, not unreasonably, but then you go on. "You should be taking risks! You should be living! Move somewhere! Go out to bars!" But what am I supposed to do when I sign an 11-month lease assuming that I'll be here for another 11 months and then have everything fall apart in my hands, like when a child tries to pick up a sandcastle? Where's my trust fund buying me a new car so I can drive across the country like "living my best life?" Where's the fairy godmother (or godfather, I don't discriminate) making it so I can pursue my dreams instead of sadly accepting the status quo while still ranting about it?

I'm a pragmatist, so sue me, but I've always been one with a creative's soul, and that creative soul is drying up like the lakes of California. It turns out that that nothing lasts forever, you know?

An Open Letter to the Baylor Class of 2020

Dear the Baylor Freshmen of the class of 2020,

By now, you are a few months into your career at what I previously thought was one of the best universities in the state of Texas, if not the United States. You’re fresh-faced and ready to take on the world, if you’re anything like I was, full of belief and passion and maybe a little indecision and uncertainty.

For your sakes, I hope you have the college experience I did. I hope nothing worse crosses your path than a semester on three hours of sleep, or one episode of drunk cat-calling by frat boys at 2:00 AM the day before DIA.

You should know, though, that the university does not love you back. Your professors might, your mentors might, your librarians and bosses and support staff might, but the university, as personified by the Board of Regents and those who haunt the hallowed halls of power, does not love you back. Approach all you do with this understanding.

If you are a collegiate woman, you have a 27% chance of being touched or violated sexually without your consent, most likely by someone you know. If you are Baylor student (and so many other universities, but I did not attend those universities, and my heart is not breaking at their failure to comply with the law) then you will not be helped by your university, even now. You may find a sympathetic ear in the counseling center, you may have a professor you can confide in, you may tell no one and hope it all goes away. If you go to the university, though, they will not help you.

I had an incredible experience at Baylor University. I learned so much more than what was taught in the classrooms - things like critical thinking, and sisterly bonds, and how to walk on my own two feet without needing to fear failure. These lessons I learned, from my incredible professors and my family of friends, are why I am so absolutely furious to continually learn about another University failing at every single step. I had such a special Baylor experience that it ruins me to know that there are people out there, most of them young women just like me, who had that brutally ripped away from them under the same bell tower that I studied.

“To err is human, only God is divine!” You might reply, if you’re a firm believer the the power of sunshine and giggles, with no human authority questioning instinct at all. We all err, yes. We all sin, yes. To continue to definitely err in the face of such allegations, though, is more than we should be able to bear as a society, much less as a supposedly God-fearing university.

I wish I could tell you, Baylor Freshmen, to buy in. I wish I could tell you to buy in to what you’re reading in emails, what you’re being told in Chapel, what the University wants you to believe.

Don’t, though. Resist the clarion call to sit and do nothing. It’s clear now that nothing with change without full-on shoving, so shove away. You are freshmen, I know, and you feel you are both limitless and ever-so-limited. Work within those limits. You are the change.

Know that I am out here rooting for you to be the beginning of something better.

As long as stars shall shine,

A 2013 graduate.