PB&J and Gumballs.

Meh.


I'm not really feeling it today, kiddos.


Just to bring things up to speed, I signed up for the GRE last night. I feel real heavy today.




I'd like to say something along the lines of "I need a Xanax," but since I've never actually had one, I don't really know if that would make me feel any better whatsoever. But, judging from the way everyone raves about prescription drugs, I'm thinking that's a bandwagon I may want to hitch a ride on for a while. Until shit gets expensive, because I don't have any money at present time.


SIGH.


I'm bad at being poor. I mean, I was good at it in college, but all I really had to do was pay rent and pay to get myself drunk on the weekends. Better times. I guess I'm really not even that poor, I do make well above a 'living wage,' whatever that means. But, I have needs. I get hungry now and I want to eat something other than gumballs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.


Which for about four months in colllege, I did subsist on PB&J and gumballs.


Sophomore year, I was living with the laziest girl I've ever met and the damaged girl who let her coke dealer move in with us. She kicked him out on weekends when her boyfriend from home would come up. There wasn't a whole lot of dialogue going on between us. Lazy roomate ended up getting her masters as Stanford in Molecular Genetics. Damaged roomate dropped out and went back home to her mother. I haven't spoken to either since we lived together. So much for forging last bonds, eh?


We had a cute little apartment right off campus with a screened-in porch, that was its best feature. People could come and get bamboozled with me on the porch without disturbing the two shut-ins. It was a total slum and we overpaid dramatically for it, but I didn't care. I fucking loved that place because it was mine, I'd work forty hours a week and take twenty hours of class a term and not bother with sleep a lot of the time so I could still get drunk with my friends.


Hardcore, eh?




Anyway, around spring, I think it was April, I finally broke up with the boyfriend I had had virtually since I got to college for the last time and it was a little rough. As in, he had paid for all of my food and booze for almost two years and now I was fucked. Something had to give, and I obviously still had to get drunk, it was college.


I'd eat two PB&J's twice a day. Once a week I'd treat myself to Subway. I've never looked better. I was always hungry, but I got better grades that term than I ever had before and ever did again. I was a total shit-show. All the sudden I had time to spend with my girlfriends and we'd do stupid crazy shit like busting every liqour/wine bottle from the year on the mantle in the middle of the street while screaming. I was underage and reckless and when the cops came I fled while the officer tried to get my friend Courtney's number as she swept the glass off the street by the dim glow of his squad car's headlights. I'd walk home alone at night at four in the morning drunk as a skunk, skipping, daring the gangbangers I shared the sidewalk with to 'Fucking try and start something with me."


I was in bad shape.


Jordan, ex-college-boyfriend had, near the end of our relationship, bought me a HUGE box of over 1000 gumballs at Sam's Club in an attempt to make me happy. He knew me well, I adore gumballs, but it didn't work. For months after our breakup I'd scatter candy dishes of green and yellow gumballs around the apartment in a feeble attempt at hospitality. I hate green and yellow gumballs.


All good things must come to an end. In June I left for New Hampshire, where I taught little JAP's to kayak. It was a good summer. I spent six hours a day on the water and ate at a buffet three meals a day. I got paid to sing at campfires and preach girl power. I didn't drink, didn't need to. I snapped out of my crazed lifestyle for a while. It was kind of nice.

I still got crazy when I went back to school in the fall, but never like I did that spring.
I can't buy a huge box of gumballs and then live on a loaf of bread/jar of jelly/can of peanut butter each week anymore, but at least once, I could. And I did.




Something about living that way is okay when you're in college that's not okay when you're three years out, use more of your paycheck to pay bills than to play, and stop drinking heavily on weeknights.


I think...... this may be... nah....... well, maybe....... growing up?




Sometimes I miss that me.

XO Sare