Accepting What Cannot Be

For as much as I complain about the heat and the humidity (oh God, the humidity) in the South, I believe I secretly love it. Summer really is a beautiful season in the South - the full greenery, vibrant flowers, homegrown tomatoes, and the buzz of locusts in the evening. I love wandering through the farmers' market on the weekend and eating Ripley, TN grown tomatoes and sighing with relief when the Georgia peaches finally come in. These are the things I will miss when I move.

I had pictured myself at law school at one of the fine institutions of the Southeastern Conference learning Constitutional law and civil procedure from seersucker suit-clad professors. I saw myself clerking in the summer at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Birmingham or working on a political campaign. I wanted to learn a new school, to singing Hotty Toddy or Glory, Glory to Ole Georgia at football games, to proudly display my Tennessee Alumni status when they took on the Volunteers. I wanted to settle myself down for three years and in that time gain a career and maybe a partner to share life with.

I'm learning it's harder to accept what isn't or can't be (well, yet at any rate) than it is what is. I know realistically that I could come home and enter law school and become a Rebel or a Bulldawg. With law school there would have been certainty. I would have known what my career would be and have an idea of where I was heading following graduation. Because I'm a planner, this appealed to me immensely. What I'm about to do, leaves me a year from now with no plan. I will have a degree, from a prestigious university, but not clue about what to do with it. What am I doing? Every once in a while, about once a week, I wonder what the hell I'm doing. Do I really want to do this? Am I doing it to cross something off on my bucket list? Well, yes and no. I want to go. I want to do this to learn about myself and what I'm capable of but I know a part of me will be wanting to be sitting outside listening to the locusts studying torts and sweating in the humidity.