yesterday i came across some old journals from cuba and freshman year. it was weired, because it was organized in such a way (or perhaps not organized at all) that i'd mixed notes from speakers at spelman, with random poems (i wrote poems? forgot about that) and diary entries. many of them dealt with my relationship with chris during the first several months. the beginning of my relationship with him was bullshit. we messed around, but rarely went on dates. i wasn't satisfied with our conversations. i wished that he was more ambitious and spontaneous. i thought about dating other people on a regular basis. even more interesting is that i was well aware of the transition in our relationship when it went from just being together to a genuine interest in him as my boyfriend. and, in many ways, things got a lot better from there. we matured as individuals and as a couple. but i don't know what is more painful when i look back at my freshman year - that my first love treated me less than i deserved out of selfishness, or that i allowed him to treat me less than i deserved because of my lack of self-worth.

school is out... i should be revising my thesis or working on the paper for the oprah anthology, but i've been working at the college forward office and being lazy during the evenings. not completely unproductive - i've become addicted to certain aspects of the process - searching for conferences, building my reading lists (how am i supposed to pick 50 books to cover latin america from the 1820s to the present?), and so forth. next month/next week will bring a new level of craziness to my life. i'm going on a road trip with my students tuesday through saturday. leaving for new york on the 13th. havana on the 18th. atlanta in july... anywhere but austin. i'm ready to start reading for my exams. ready to get to work on a new documentary. ready to embrace a new lifestyle of being uncertain... i'm twenty-three, soon to be twenty-four and i want to embrace being young and single and without spatial limits. i'm going to montreal in september and i'm excited. leaving for d.c. the week after that to celebrate another year with tina and my sister.