Hook 'Em
Today is UT’s Birthday. It is 137 years old.
My time on the Forty Acres was such a period of growth. I crashed and burned almost daily. I wasn’t emotionally prepared or equipped to leave home and fend for myself. I missed my family and experienced what I later learned was a bout of clinical depression. I couldn’t identify what was wrong with me. I couldn’t eat, I slept all day, felt completely overwhelmed by the thought of doing anything except listening to my Sighs in Sapphire homemade cassette (very dramatic and sorrowful songs). I let a boy break my heart. I let that situation define how I handled everything. There are things in hindsight (of course) that make me cringe when I think about them. I mean, the woman I am now would never have allowed myself to be treated that way. The woman I am now would have taken HUGE advantage of all the amazing opportunities that were available on and off campus. I would have developed my talents and skills…I would have found room in my schedule for an art class or a dance class. My life would most certainly have been different if I had been then, the woman I am to day.
Of course, I wouldn’t BE the woman I am today without having passed through those valleys. I wouldn’t know what my non-negotiables are if those boundaries hadn’t been tested. The strength I have now came from years of being on the anvil and getting the emotional shit kicked out of me. I wouldn’t have married the man who gave me my kids. I wouldn’t live in the city I do now and do the job that I love so well.
The University gave me the beginnings of adulthood and independence. I have some lovely memories of teachers and classes…I have dear friends who are still part of my network of mutual support…I have some blanks…there was some incident or other involving the mustangs outside the law building and I violated my Four Symbols album in a projectile fashion after a football game…just another reason that Jack Daniels and I don’t speak…I think I proposed marriage to a guy that night, too. It makes me happy to go back to visit campus, especially when I am visiting former students who have made the same (albeit much more informed) decision to go to the place where what starts there changes the world. I am proud to be a Longhorn.
I like to think that even within me…what started there is changing the world.
