So, after a particularly upsetting time of trying to find people I recognized and failing every time, I went to the park alone last night where the school's makeshift carnival was being held. And when I say carnival, I mean the two booths that didn't leave after the first half hour: a quite popular shirt-making stand and a tarot reading table. I wandered into the park area partly due to curiosity, and partly for lack of a better thing to do (there was an 80's dance going on, but that was highly unappealing). So I went to the table where a half a dozen others or so were casually hanging out in that area. They'd all been hanging around--some for hours--to have their fortune told by this woman, Diana Ross. So I sat down on a chair and waited. And there wasn't anything other to do while waiting than think and recount the day's happenings.

Earlier, I'd been stressing out about money. Was I going to get enough financial aid to cover the costs of being this far away from home? And then my parents called, having received the bill for the entire term--6100--and called me with all sorts of accusations such as lying to them about the cost of it, and how in the world they were going to pay for it by the upcoming deadline in just a matter of weeks. And while I tried not to let it get me down, I realized it already had. Thoughts flew in--what if I have to go home? And once that little sentence made it's way into my brain, the panic started. Suddenly, I was imagining all kinds of 'what if' scenarios that not only involved having to move back home, but never being able to back to school, leeching off my parents until I finally got that job opportunity at McDonalds.

To be blunt, I was jumping to conclusions and hyperbolizing my situation to the fullest extent.

So sitting under the tree last night, I was silently panicking while people got their fortunes told. Time passed fairly quickly, I made a few conversations with the people that came and went. They all told me the same thing: you'll enjoy this so much! Being skeptical about most anything, I wasn't so sure. But soon it was 10:30, and there was no one else except me, the fortune teller, and destiny.

But the things she told me weren't earth-shattering or moving me to tears. They were things I knew all along, but just didn't admit. The first thing she told me was to not worry about my financial status; that the money was going to be there and to not fret. I smiled at this, and wondered if she really could read the future, or was figuring that since I'm a college kid, this was most likely going to be a worry of mine. She also told me that I knew what it was like to be alone, a hermit. That experience gives me a lot of strength for the present, and it will cause me to end up to my goal: a deep thinker and contemplator. Her saying this was very much true, and made me more optimistic about the whole thing. And then she came to the conclusion: you can do anything, and have every right to do so. Yes, it's not the most original thing in the entire world. We've been ingrained with the American dream about doing anything we want and having full freedom to do anything to achieve that. But something about her saying that made it more true somehow. And sitting there, 11:00 at night, in a city that I hadn't been living in even a week, far from any friends or family--I believed her. I'd been so lost in my own thoughts and despair about life, but all it took was a late-night psychic looking at me straight in the eyes and telling me I can do this to make me honestly believe it.

So my admission for this blog: I can do this.