I Can Has Moar Story Time?

I'm sitting here in my dark house with the rain pounding on the window, and I felt the urge to write. I don't have any fitness updates for you, since I haven't worked out in three days now**, and the only food worth talking about are the black bean & avocado brownies that I just made for one of my friends who is going gluten-free.

What better time, then, to start telling you Part 1 of Part 2 of the Story I Haven't Finished Telling You Yet. (The title changed, since we're on the prequel now.)

This story begins in New York City. The summer of 2006 is just beginning, and I have just received a letter from North Broward Preparatory School--the high school from which I graduated, and from which I received what was supposed to be a $50,000 scholarship to be paid out in $25,000 after the first year of college (assuming a 3.5 GPA or higher) and $25,000 after graduating (again, with a 3.5 or above). The letter informs me that I'm receiving $14,000, even though I have a 3.9 after my first year at Columbia University because now, somehow, the scholarship takes into account whether or not we're receiving student aid. Which I am, only it's so nominal that the scholarship wouldn't even begin to help cover the total costs even at its full promised amount.

So basically I'm fucked, is what they're telling me.

I make a decision: I'm going to work all summer, and maybe I will have enough money to stay.

At the same time, I'm also shooting past the "Freshman 15" and into the "Freshman 25" with amazing speed. Even though I'm not drinking like my friends are, I'm no longer running cross country, and my schedule is so crazy, between 20 page theses on the death of feminism as heralded by the "third wave" and rehearsals for 5 different theatre pieces (some full length, some not), that I'm eating whatever I can whenever I can--which does not make for healthy eating at all.

Doing German abstract theatre  on the steps of Low Library for my friend's final project.

Compound that with the fact that the boy who I've convinced myself I'm in love with has just made out with me &--literally--the next day gotten himself a girlfriend, and you have one very depressed, confused Kaila. (Or Kay, since that's the name I was going by throughout college.)

I spent the summer getting steadily bigger as I worked for Watson Adventures, an amazing scavenger hunt company down in NoHo; Jazz Improv Magazine, where my aunt was the advertising manager at the time; and Testtakers SAT Prep, which was my first experience teaching high school.

When I went home to visit my mother about halfway through the summer, I was wearing a size 8-10 in jeans (when I was previously a 2-4), and feeling terrible about myself. I decided to start working out at the gym when I got back up to NY, although I had no idea what I was doing. At the time, my mother & my aunt were doing a cleanse called "Isagenix." My mom ordered some for me, and I spent the next two weeks utterly miserable.

With friends in Central Park

The cleanse: drink a smoothie in the morning, drink 4 oz of this vile cleanse liquid for a snack, eat a salad for lunch, drink more cleanse liquid, and then drink a smoothie for dinner. If you get hungry enough to pass out, 6 almonds or 1/2 an apple are acceptable.

Needless to say, I didn't lose any weight, and all that happened was I felt tired and irritable for two weeks. I did it again two weeks later. Still no change.

I started the next semester angry and fat, and I was still poor. Which meant that this was going to be my last semester at Columbia. I would be leaving my dream school--and the Ivy League--for a Florida school, which my prep school had conditioned me to believe was far inferior. I was just starting my sophomore year of college, and I felt like I had already failed at life.

(To be continued...)



**PS the aircast was an epic fail. The doctor suggested crutches for when I'm at work or on my feet for extended periods of time. So...FML.