I have trouble transitioning - most evidently seen in my eloquent, refined and incredibly messy essays. The words "work on transitions" appear all-too often on my analytical essay attempts. I huff and I puff and I cringe because I know that transitions in my essays are not the only transitions I need to improve.
When I do something, I get invested in it. If I say I'm going to start running three miles every day, then I'll be damned if it's raining or snowing because I'm running that three miles. Taking a day off would mean it was the end and that the next time I ran would be the beginning - I don't know how to breach the in-between time. I hurt my ankle this summer and my doctor told me not to run on it for a week. I waited a week and started sprinting as soon as soon as I could. I hurt my ankle again. And I repeated the process of waiting and sprinting for three months. I was too uncomfortable with the in-between space that called for jogging and walking as suitable alternatives.
I am always unequivocally invested in my Friday evenings. The week is done, and I can stay up as late as I want doing whatever I want because tomorrow is very far away. Every Friday night I forget - just as I forgot every time I sprinted - that tomorrow isn't really that far away. In fact, it's only a few hours later, and my stomach's growling, and it wants either macaroni and cheese, pizza or French fries, or actually all three. After I've eaten, my head hurts and I simply do not know what to do. How does one transition from Friday night to Saturday night? Obviously my outfit will be different, but that's not really what I mean. I don't know what to do with Saturday. Knowing I can have two nights in a row that precede long empty days, I don't know how to balance the fun of darkness with the confusion of daylight. I can't handle the in-between day that calls for homework and football games and watching TV.
I don't have a lot of close friends because I don't have enough time to get caught up with more than a few people at a time. During high school, if I went to someone's house, that meant I really liked them. What happens when I'm not in high school anymore and I go to my friend's house and no matter how much I really like her, we've lost touch? Time and distance have come between us and I don't know how to breach the in-between that formed between when I last saw her and when I enter her front door now. She shouts "betch!" and I wonder if I still use that word. Do I still make fun of "fugos?" Are we capable of prank phone calling everyone she deems fit in my contact list - or was the transition from old to new too rough? Maybe because I ignored the existence of any such transition, I killed the possibility of having a normal relationship with someone I know I really like.
I get Bs on essays that lack decent transitions. Lying in bed, semi-comatose from food and a lack of proper sleep, Saturday Connelly would probably send up three cheers for a B. The more conscious parts of me realizes the value of transitions. How can you encounter anything new if you don't move away from anything old? And this moving thing can't just be a blind leap - you have to let yourself know where you're going.
So this past Saturday, I gritted my teeth and went to my friend's apartment. I pretended to do homework while playing loud rap music and chewing lots of gum. I wondered, of course, why I wasn't in bed, eyes closed to the strange day and awaiting the night I could handle. But I stayed there and transitioned from night to night in this bizarre thing called the weekend. It was painfully sunny and my head still hurt, but I looked around and saw other people doing it, too. I'm not keen on fast walking, and I still feel weird in my best friend's house, but I might just kind of start working harder on forming a middle ground between here and there.
Connelly's column runs weekly Thursdays. She can be reached at c.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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