just alyssa

I have come to the realization that I just don’t give a $#!%…. I remember being 19 and looking at the world like it was my playground; as if I was going to run and be free and save everyone. I focused on this hard in college. My objective was to pursue a career in Psychology and in school I focused on children and minored in juvenile delinquency. Finally after years of working 3 jobs and struggling with my coursework, I graduated with my Bachelors in Psychology and a minor in Juvenile Delinquency. I was finally on a track to where I could begin saving the world. Except, I wasn’t actually on that track. Instead, I sat, depressed in my house for months. The family I had nannied for moved away, I could no longer work in the SIU Child Development Lab, as I was no longer a student, and the families I babysat for didn’t need me that semester. I was unemployed, bills were stacking up, and my future was crumbling. I went from working 3 jobs 7 days a week and taking 6 classes, to sitt...

I don’t know what it is about me [other than the fact that I have all the parts that make me female] that somehow says “You have permission to say whatever you want to me”. It’s like all women have this giant stamp on our foreheads saying “access granted”. As if being female gives men the right to say whatever they damn well please. Newsflash: IT DOESN’T. A couple weeks ago I stayed after class to talk to my professor and, thanks to the time change, it was quite dark by the time I finally started to walk across campus back to my car. It’s a decent enough walk as long as the weather is good and only takes about 15 minutes or so to get to my car. Because it was after 7, it was a pretty dark walk with only the dim lighting from lamps strategically placed across campus. During my walk I kept checking over my shoulder, careful not to cut corners or drift off too close to bushes or other parts of campus where a person could snatch me. Wait. Snatch me? Why was I even thinking about t...

We all have a story. Some novels are obviously more exciting or dramatic than others. I live a very un-extraordinary life with a story that is barely worthy of pages in a journal.  I am not likely to win a Nobel Prize or cure cancer or marry a prince or become a world famous writer. I probably won’t lose my limbs in a shark accident or go blind due to chemicals in a face wash. I will continue to be the Alyssa I have always been. The girl who worries an unhealthy amount about everything and is constantly paranoid about someone breaking into the house. The girl who will scream all day about sexism and women’s rights, but let people trample on her feelings to avoid confrontation. Even with as flawed and as messy as being that “Alyssa” can be…I wouldn’t know how to change… I’m stubborn and pessimistic and my moods fly like a car on a roller coaster. Even when I know I’m being the most irrational creature on the planet….I still act the same way… I’ll always dis...