1. guilt, for all the bad things I do at school that my darling mother has no inkling of, and
2. relief, for not being in high school anymore.
For the first part, it's not that bad. Like I'll be the first to admit that I make some questionable choices but for the most part I'm doing pretty well. Like my sins run more along the lines of ordering delivery five nights out of the week rather than selling myself for cocaine or something. I'm fairly certain that if you put a mountain of cocaine in front of me and then a styrofoam box of Enzo's wings, I'd be all over the latter. Unless I could convert the cocaine into cash with which I can buy wings. But I guess that would make me a drug dealer. And then I'd probably feel pretty guilty.
But my mother has got to be one of the best moms in the world. I mean we squabble now and then and she has this crazy idea that I have too many shoes, but for the most part she is the greatest (example: she was telling me she thinks I may have too many pairs of shoes today as she was buying me two new pairs). And this is an issue because she's always like "think about how much love and care your parents have invested in you, so don't throw yourself away on a boy who won't treat you as well as we do" and I'm like oh shoot. Like, I have enough trouble meeting a guy who doesn't drop a conversation the second he turns on his xbox, but to be actually treated with respect and affection? Let's not get crazy here.
Although I do want to add as a side note that when Mango puts his mind to it, he can be a pretty good best friend. Like, the other day I had an interview in downtown LA, which is a 1.5 hour bus ride from Westwood. It was also during Tuesday of finals week, and I was done on Monday but Mango had two more Thursday and Friday. Our conversation about the interview went something like this:
Me: I have an interview at City Hall on Tuesday.
Mango: That's in downtown? Like near the Staples Center?
Me: Yeah I think so.
Pause here as we both reflect back on the last time we took the bus to Staples Center (to go to the circus) and the show ended at 10 PM and we had to wait for an hour for the next (and last) bus and after strolling past closed stores for half an hour we made our way down two or three very dark city blocks to the bus stop, which turned out to be on a dimly lit corner next to an empty lot. I'm not kidding. Also we were the only two people on the bus until halfway through when a homeless person joined us. I was pretty glad to see Westwood that night.
Mango: I'll go with you.
Me: But you have finals! There's no way you'll be able to study on the bus.
Mango: There's no way I'll be able to study if I'm worried that you'll get raped in your interview clothes.
Me: I'm going in the daytime.
But yeah he ended up coming with me and it was actually pretty fun to hang out on the bus and walk a little around City Hall and to be perfectly honest I probably would've gotten lost if Mango hadn't been there.
So who needs nice boys when you have friends like this?
Anyway, it's not like I hated high school. I mean I didn't really thrive in it like some people do, but it wasn't like I knew any better. The summer before I left for college I was SO SCARED. I was like OMG MY LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. And I didn't realize that was a good thing. Like, high school me didn't realize that life could be better than having a curfew, six classes a day, a pothead boyfriend and a wardrobe comprising mostly of clothing from Hollister.
But now that I think about it, after (almost) four years of college I sleep before midnight every day, spend as much as or more(!) time on homework than I did in high school, still have an interest in pothead boys, and ... well, no more Hollister clothing. So I guess that's something. What progress I've made.
