The Looking Glass

All around the country, teenagers are settling into new lives in college. Among them are some of my favorite people. Nonetheless, I find myself "hiding" them on Facebook. There's something about what they post that I don't want to know. This is their time to do and say and become what they are becoming. I don't need to be privy to the ins-and-outs of it all. Most of it doesn't apply to me and some of it, frankly, just annoys me.

Perhaps it's what they remind me of that bother me the most - like the mirror is too close, too familiar. It is 13 years since I began my own college experience. That's the life-span of some of the people who refer to me as "Ms. Firestone" today. (Where did the time go?). And yet, the memories and feelings are as fresh as they were still happening.

I opened a treasure chest today. A time capsule of my younger self. A file on a disk burned from my old computer that I used in college to write my papers and some of my inner-most thoughts. I had been wanting to read these words for a long time, suspecting they contained something for me of a memory and way of being that somehow I feel ready to return to. What I discovered was a collection much more expansive and revealing than I had expected, and became Kristin 13-years-younger again, sitting alone in my darkened apartment on a Friday afternoon. Has that little changed? And while the shame of the familiarity of some of those thoughts and feelings discouraged me, telling me I hadn't really grown all that much at all, I felt reassured that while I haven't lost my old spirit, I certainly have gained a lot of peace and wisdom since those days. Knowing this, I have decided to share these writings for the first time.

Had there been blogs and Facebook when I was in college, I'd've probably shared these writings freely. But, since that wasn't the case back then, I kept them to myself, mostly, only sharing bits and pieces with people I trusted. Maybe I would've been too shy, or nervous, to put them out there. Whatever the case, I am now gifted with the distance and perspective to know that they are just thoughts and feelings. They are still precious to me, but they've lost some of their urgency. And so, I can share them freely.

So, I'm going to do a blog series, sharing one of these compositions in each post. I am doing this for 18-19-20-year-old Me, who in the darkness of her dorm rooms, sometimes in joy and often in desperation, would sit down at her desk and share these words with an unknown audience. I do this for her liberation.

I will call this series "The Looking Glass" since this was the name of the newsletter I edited as a freshman in college for the Sociology department, and also because it captures the sense of wonder I am having as I look in the mirror at this young girl who is so very much still me today. "Impromptu" is the name I gave the folder in which I saved these files.

Before I share, a little disclaimer: I don't always know what college-Kristin meant by a lot of this. I like that her style was very poetic and rather elusive, at times. I was tempted to post these with a modern-day reflection by me, interpreting what she said. But I've decided that out of respect for her voice, I'll allow these pieces to stand on their own, as she would've posted them back then, with all their young rawness, vulnerability, confusion, enlightenment and honesty.

I hope you enjoy.
~Kristin


"Monica" (12/20/99)

You can't change people.
You can help them learn to change.
Only God is the final universal power
and is the power that actually transforms us.
We can be examples of change to one another.
God changes us through each other.
God changes me through you.

(Monica was my suite-mate freshman year.)