What Do We Know

I am pretty exhausted.  It's been such a busy week, and I've been acting like a crazy woman.  I need to sleep for a while. 

We have a visitor coming up today to stay for the weekend; sometimes this place is like a hostel.  I'm excited for him to come, but right now I just feel completely drained. 

My mother has called a few times since Wednesday.  It feels so strange not telling her where I went (the icu).  I'm trying to keep everything about my career search secret.  I'm not telling them any options I'm considering, what I'm doing to get there, who I'm talking to - none of it.  I don't want them to influence me in any way.  They'll say they've never influenced me about careers, but that's absolutely wrong.  Some of the things I just grew up hearing make me feel it's already too ingrained in my mind to take back.  For example, they've never had anything nice to say about psychology.  So I never even took a psychology class in college.  If I ever wandered down that road they'd completely flip out, and I don't know if I could.

It would be great to find someone to untrain my mind.  In a Gilmore Girls episode a few weeks ago (yes, poor example), Lorelai said something about how in life she's always done things to go against the rules her very strict parents set up.  What if she really doesn't like any of those things?  What if she only likes them because her mother doesn't like them?  I've wondered that before myself.  How much is me and how much is the safety barrier I've set up?  What if I didn't have that instant aversion to what they support?

But it's not quite that simple for me.  I'm pulled in both directions, sometimes so much so that I can't really form an opinion on my own.  The best example here is politics.  My parents are pretty conservation.  My dad is more pragmatic, my mom is more, "blow them all up."  My boyfriend and his family are liberal city.  When I'm with my parents, I think they're insane and I side with the liberal half.  When I'm with my boyfriend's family, I feel that they go a little too far.  I can't decide which side to support on my own.  I've grown up hearing, "less government and lower taxes," and that information influences me so much that I have a hard time accepting anything.

To toss a cliche and a popular chain restaurant name in here - T G I F!