status

This is the first summer since high school that I am not at camp working as a summer camp counselor. Although it has been such an amazing experience at River Way and Sandy Hill camp, like everything in our lives there comes a time we have to move on and embark on new adventures. It's like high school, its what you make it. High school was great, but when I graduated, I moved on.

For the past 22 years of my life my life has generally been pretty structured. I went to school from September-June and camp in the summer. Of course there are always some bumps in the road that threw off my structure but I always had a schedule. Generally Tuesdays and Thursdays I had class from 1-8pm, I worked Mondays and Fridays, went snowboarding on Wednesdays and Sundays and out to the bars on Saturdays. I always took my finals early in June and off to camp I went until September and repeated the schedule. For the first time I'm not living off loan money or the comfort of Sandy Hill cabins and cafeteria food. I'm working a real job and living off my own money. I sound sheltered yea? I don't think so. There really isn't many people my age that pays for EVERYTHING by themselves. Sure I worked plenty of jobs and paid for my share of bills, but I have never been truly on my own. paying rent, food, gas etc all with my own money while trying to save for traveling. It's definitely scary, but liberating.

My point of this ramble isn't for you to give me a pat on the back for being an adult and working full time job to make the money necessary for sustaining my life and earning the money necessary for my desires. My point is that I am able to sit back and understand my place. Structure molds our minds into a type of narrow mind. I had my time to study for school and the people I did that with. People I snowboarded with on those Sundays and Wednesdays. People I went to the bars with on those Saturdays and of course camp and the life that came with it. I'm not down playing the amazing experiences I have had doing all these things, but realizing that there is so much more.

I can't even begin to cover every aspect of what I have learned about people in my life, but the word to some it up well is status. I thought by leaving my hometown of orange county and living in Oregon, home of the hippies and artsy liberal goo rues that I was escaping status. wrong. There's the pro snowboarders of mt. hood, the aspiring cinematographers of the Art Institute, the graphic designers of some artsy company, the PSU athletes and the list continues. I myself am guilty of status as well. My status at school and who I knew, my status on the mountain and who I knew and my status at camp and who I knew. I am only realizing this now when I have taken myself out of it. I feel a bit dirty to be honest, that something so surface snaked its way in my life without me knowing, how rude. Luckily I'm doing my best to shed out of it.

Funny thing happened a few months ago that changed my status...

Well, I dumped the snowboarder. Why? He got caught up in that status and with others who cared about the status. Girls who wanted to be in his life because the letters I and M was on his hat. "Friends" who only used each other for rides and a posse to show up to party's with. The long weekends to countless competitions with all the right people and sponsors. Can you guess what happened when we broke up? My status dropped :). The people who were more caught up in that nasty status dropped me like its hott. I was a bataleon riders girlfriend. So of course ms.Maui fever needed to be my friend and so did the friends girlfriends, even the 17 year olds. As soon as I wasn't the girlfriend, I was useless. I wasn't an in to that world anymore. Sad for those people who see it that way. I'm grateful I was slapped in the face of what type of people I attracted but it disgusts me at the same time to know those people exist. So many people were my "friend" because of who I was dating and who I knew because of that. They care so much of what people think about them they have to do, think and say what everyone else does, because god forbid sacrificing their status.

*I'm never dating a professional anything ever again.