Content in it just being "so"

I’ve been an intense person as long as I can remember. And I’m a perfectionist to the point of it almost paralyzing me. I began compiling my school notes on a typewriter when I was in the fourth grade. For some reason, my notes seemed more orderly that way. Twelve years later, with the advantage of being able to key over 90 words a minute, my inclination to type persists--and just misses being absurd. I’m a hopeless romantic who probably belongs in a different era. Politics, for me, is irresistible, and it’s a sort of love affair that began at the age of eight, when I wrote a letter to George H.W. Bush to tell him how sorry I was that he’d lost re-election. My family and friends, politics and French, classical music and some contemporary art--these are the things I love most in life.

Since I was young, I’ve had a tremendous respect for journalism. It’s a field I’ll most likely part ways with after I graduate, but it’s one that’s nonetheless taught me to be a thinker and a writer. I came to the Missouri School of Journalism because it’s the oldest and the best. I never doubted my decision once I got here. My father, who hates the New York Times and will read only the Wall Street Journal, was convinced that, invariably, I’d be wronged because of the school’s “liberal leanings.” At one point, he advised me to keep notes--perhaps even recordings--of my classes, thinking I’d somehow catch those “liberals” in the act. Later, he said, I could file a lawsuit against the school--after going to law school, of course. I laughed. And I think sometimes even he doesn’t believe the things he says.

My family is made up of conservatives. There’s not a single liberal-leaning member of my family. My maternal grandfather, who passed away years ago, was a Democrat, but he was a Democrat because he loved Jimmy Carter so much. He was a family doctor in my hometown, Warrensburg, a farmer and a larger-than-life figure in my life that still lingers longingly, even though it’s been 16 years since his death.

I’m very close to my maternal grandmother, my only living grandparent, who has a wry sense of humor and is more Republican than anyone I know. She clips articles out of newspapers for me about upcoming political campaigns. She is a classy, clever, competent woman who has an opinion on just about everything, including MU basketball.

I got my love for politics from my father, who has made me think that I can do anything in the world. Since I was young, I felt pressure from him to be political and to share his desire to better the world through politics. When he got out of college, he moved to Washington, D.C., and spent time working out there for the FBI. I’m moving to Washington when I graduate in May, and as easy as it’d be to say it’s because of my dad, I feel like it’s the right move for me, too. Perhaps more important, though, my father showed me that people are inherently good and kind--and they help us get through life. He has what I believe to be the best qualities in a person: honesty, humility and a good work ethic. He speaks of his father as if he were a gregarious figure to whom he could never compare. Strangely, I’m left feeling the same about my own father.

My mother, who’s infinitely more difficult to describe, is softer, more fragile. She’s always been a friend first, and she isn’t one to settle in to talk for hours about what it means to be alive. She’d much prefer driving around town together, listening to her old faithful: music from the early 1990s. She has a gentleness and sense of ease with her life that goes unnoticed by people busily passing by. I wish I were more like her.

My older sister, Gina, is unyielding in so many ways. She has looked out for me since I was young. She is passionate without going overboard, unhurried without missing out on her life, which is full of what she loves most: her promising career, good food and good-looking men.
Each of my family members brings pieces to my life, inextricably linked, though we’re no longer exactly intact. I am guilty of romanticizing the idea of the perfect family. And, for so long, I thought I had one. And then my parents separated my sophomore year in college. Now, almost two years later, I am wondering where their marriage went wrong and why they stayed together for so long.

I’m not a zealot or offensive. I’m actually kind of soft spoken and spacey at times, and if I get going on politics, I’ll morph into a different person. But I’m still an Olympia-Snowe-type Republican. I love it. Makes me feel like a renegade. I’m also somewhat of a bleeding heart. And gullible.

Sometimes I think I’m my worst enemy. With every bone in my body, I want to be a lobbyist, but I wonder how well I’ll fare, swimming in a sea of severe people when my disposition is softer. I also have a way of muddling my own high hopes and aspirations by thinking that because I’m a woman and a conservative, perhaps it’d be best if I were to just stay out of politics. I know it’s not that way, but in many ways, I have difficulty reconciling my intensity for politics and my wanting to have a family. I’m afraid I’ll retreat and never really pursue my love for lobbying and politics because I’ll have met someone who feels the same way--and then get on to having a family. Interestingly, my mother and father have never shared my thoughts or concerns on the subject, always thinking that because of their work, they are the better for it. Maybe I’ll settle into the same ideas. And maybe I wont. Regardless, I want to get in there for the time being.

For a couple of years in college, I was defined by a guy I was seeing. I was drawn to his political nature, his gregariousness and his charm. But I parted ways with him when I realized I was just as smart as he was--and maybe smarter. And I had grown tired of his saying that I’d be the “perfect political wife.” So, after a while, I got used to college, gained more confidence and dropped him for good. And then I focused on my sorority. I later became the president of a sorority that I was at first hesitant to join. And it stole all my time. I loved it.

A lesser-known point about me--and one I’ve made known to few of my college friends--is that I had an eating disorder in middle school and my early high school years. It’s almost embarrassing to bring it up--seems so predictable coming from someone who’s such a perfectionist. But I never wore the disorder as a badge, and I do not say these things with nostalgia for my glory days because they were not, as I recall, very glorious days for me. I was cold to the bone, and I’d settled into a dreary life. Since then, I’ve wanted to reach out and somehow connect with people who were struggling with similar issues, but for some reason I never did. It seemed cliché, and I didn’t want that part of my life to define the person I was going to become.

My family, with its loose ends and variations, can’t be confined to boxes and bows--and neither can my position on politics. And yet, however complicated, I am inseparable from all these things.

In sum, I’m a romantic about life. I like to view it from rose-colored glasses. I tend to think things are better than perhaps they really are. And if I were a character in a book, I’d be Voltaire’s Pangloss, thinking that all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

It might not be true, but I’m content in thinking it’s so.