scared? maybe a little.

this week has been so very wonderful. i finally feel like things are beginning to smooth out. i mean...i haven't done anything groundbreaking or had some big beautiful epiphany or figured my life out, but things feel...better.

Lauren left for Wheaton today! Caroline and Bridget go Saturday, and then all my friends from home that I graduated with leave this weekend as well, so it's Goodbye Week 2K9. And I guess I should be sad or something, but I'm really not. God's really giving me a lot more peace with this whole Texas deal. One of the negatives on my pro/con list (don't judge me) is the whole deal where I would be shoved into independence...apartment, commuting to campus, going to school with 50,000 people, being 17 hours from home, etc. And Lauren is all the way in Chicago, so I mean, if she can do that as a freshman, surely I can. I was spending some time this week with a few girls that I graduated with, and one of them just got an apartment at Virginia Tech, and basically I've just been talking with a lot of people who are in some derivative of the situation I'd be in. Far from home, living off-campus, stuff like that. My friend Brittney just quit her pre-pharmacy program to come back home and do nursing because she wants to have a family and a life, and not be in school for 8 years and have a misery-inducing job. I was watching My Best Friend's wedding the other night, only half paying attention to it, and I looked at the tv for a minute and Julia Roberts said something along the lines of, "Well sometimes you just go to random places like College Station, TX!" and that's where A&M is. More or less, I've pretty much had all the signs and reassurance in the world that I'm not going to medical school.

The only real question for me at this point is whether or not I'll leave Wofford. I thought about not going back at all, but it's a little too late to pull a stunt like that. I'm pretty sure that it's going to be the hardest thing in the whole world to go back there without this decision finalized...I'm so so so so terrified that I'll talk myself out of all this, and that I'll stay in South Carolina out of fear. And I guess the fear is coming around because I've hit a plateau in the application process; everything's all filled out, I just can't mail my Wofford transcript into admissions until I physically go pick it up from the registrar. But I still...don't feel sure. i guess I feel like I might be making some big fabulous mistake, this is a pretty huge life change, everything about it feels pretty major. New state, new major, new life plan, new friends, summers in Colorado, only home at Christmas. This is all about might...it might hurt, it might not work out, it might be awful, i might hate it, i might love it, it might be great, it might be perfect, it might be everything...and I can't help but hear this little voice in my head go, "By the way Amanda, if you do this, if you leave, everything about your life is going to change completely; and if you don't do it, you're always going to wonder why you stayed." And honestly, I can't think of a good reason to stay. Maybe that's a pretty good reason to go.

I've also been told by a ton of people this week that I've gotten shy. Really close friends, like Bridget and Lauren, too. And that really worries me. I'm not shy...ever. I'm not quiet, I don't not talk about things, I'm loud and ridiculous and I'm not sure how my personality would work at all if it was subdued. Maybe it's from where I've been praying to be less dramatic. I guess that was a bigger issue than I realized.