Thursday, September 29, 2011

surface.

So, I spend a lot of time thinking about deep, meaningful things.
I am so kidding about that.
Mostly, I daydream about food, sleeping, and sleeping some more. When I'm sitting in a dull class and not thinking about one of those three things, I spend my time glancing around the room at my peers. I think about what kind of things lie just beneath their surface. I wonder what they've done in their lives. I think about the people who probably think the world of the person sitting right next to me, who I hardly know. I wonder what kinds of things they love to do, what foods they hate, what they consider the worst moment of their lives, and what moment they consider the best so far.

So, even if I can't run around and ask everyone to share their life stories with me, I wanted to make a list of things I find important about myself that nobody can really see from the surface. Lots of people don't know these things about me, but when I think of myself, these are the things I use to define who I am. Kind of cool, huh?

*I am the oldest child in my family, out of two. I have a younger brother by five years, named Ethan Blane. He's the best. I used to hate his guts most of the time, but now that we're older, I really wish I could be around him more often, and watch him grow up. He's such a talented, smart kid. I think the world of him, and wouldn't give him up for anything (even though I wanted a sister.)

*I was six weeks premature when I was born, and spent ten days in incubation. I wore the sweet stunna shades, and I still have a bear from the hospital that sat with me in the incubator, who now wears the shades, my identification band, and my tiny blood pressure cuff. He doesn't have a name.

*My dad's side of the family is Russian, and my mom's side is German, so I am purely fifty-fifty, from what I can tell. My dad's side is also predominantly Jewish. I grew up Catholic, but we celebrated Jewish holidays growing up, and I really love attending synagogue with my dad. I like to think that that integration of the two faiths in my life has really given me a tolerance and respect for other beliefs, and I like to take the best of every culture and religion I encounter, and use those things to enrich my own life.

*I am minoring in music, and my primary is the trumpet, but I consider my most proficient instrument to be the piano. I've played since I was eight. I used to be way better than I am now. In fourth grade I was a winner in the MMTA Piano Competition, and got to play at Northrup Auditorium at the U of M for the Centennial Celebration Honors Concert. The winners from my age group got on stage all at once and played a duet, two on each piano, with twenty plus pianos on stage. There were about forty of us; it was incredible. Even though I was really young, I still think that will forever be one of the best moments of my life.

*I was engaged to be married for about two years, from the age of sixteen to eighteen. Long story short, I jumped into a lot of life-changing decisions because I felt I had no other choice, and it ended up falling apart when we got to college. Two weeks after we broke up, he committed suicide. Many factors influenced this, including severe manic depression, but I am still convinced that situations leading up to his death, including our break up, were what ultimately influenced his decision. It changed my life completely, but it didn't change ME completely. The worst thing ever is when I explain the situation to friends who didn't know me before college, and they pity me or act differently around me sometimes. I'm actually more myself now than I ever was in high school, and no matter what his decision was, I know that ending our unhealthy relationship was the best option for me.

*I had bacterial meningitis in the right hemisphere of my brain in the spring of my junior year of high school. I was misdiagnosed by the emergency room doctors in my hometown, and by the Grace of God somehow managed to go almost forty-eight hours without treatment, when some people die within twelve hours or less. I was transferred to Abbott-Northwestern in St. Paul, and there I had a brain biopsy, where they drilled a hole into the right frontal lobe of my brain to collect some of the fluid that had been building up between the meninges of my brain.Treatment involved having a PICC line catheter inserted into the inside of my right upper arm, which ran from the arm into my inferior vena cava, to administer antibiotics straight into my system. I had the PICC line in for a few weeks after surgery and diagnosis, and I even had it in during my junior prom! I go into so much detail, because while it was a scary and very painful experience, I also learned so much, and found my procedures and treatments to be so interesting! The brain has always fascinated me, and to be able to see my own brain and heart on the screen during and after procedures was so cool. I sent my surgeon my prom picture, and he asked for a picture from my college graduation, to remind him of a "job well done." I don't plan to disappoint him. (:

*I've wanted to be a teacher since I was six. I think I always knew that's where I belonged, and I can't see myself doing anything else. I'm glad I changed my major to English education. I will never regret it. As difficult as I know it will be, I can't think of a better thing to spend my life doing.

*I wanted to play trumpet so badly in band when I was in elementary school, because of E.B. White's "The Trumpet of the Swan." I ended up playing French horn, because I was the only person to try out for it, and I was actually pretty good. I switched to trumpet in high school, anyway, and though I still play the horn pretty well, I play trumpet in all of SDSU's major ensembles. I still really love that book. I will read it to my kids someday, just like my mom used to read it to me over and over again.

*Speaking of reading, I give my parents complete credit for my reading ability. They fostered a love of reading in my brother and I from before we could speak, and every night my mom would stack up a pile of books we picked out on one side of the rocking chair. She would read through all of them (usually four or five on a typical night,) and as she finished each one it would go on the opposite side of the chair. To this day, I love that nightly ritual, and will use it with each of my kids in the future.

*When I was a baby, I looked like my dad when he was a baby. It was probably the crazy curly hair we both have on our heads.

*The first CD I bought with my own money was an album of Scott Joplin rags. I was in fourth grade. (The first CD I ever owned was Backstreet Boys - Millennium.) Ragtime is my absolute favorite thing to play, hands down.

*When I picture how I look in my head, I'm about a foot taller than I actually am. I don't think of myself as small until someone points it out.

I can't figure out how to rotate this, so, enjoy a sideways picture of me swinging from a maple tree.

2 comments:

  1. self definition like wikipedia...always changing...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like how you think about things in class. Now I have a new in class hobby. =)

    ReplyDelete