A little personal introspection

I realized the other day that I have not been able to actually make myself sit down and listen to the tape I made of my final performance for my independent study. I hate listening to myself on tape. I'm not sure if it is because my voice sounds so strange to me or because of my own unwillingness to accept my true voice.
Up until last summer I wan't able to listen to my own voice at all (my internal voice) and it wasn't until Carol Birch (funny how the tiny ones are always the most firey) told me to Claim My Space that I realized that I wasn't. And now... Now I realize that in many ways I still do not claim my space. I do not proclaim my own voice. I do not recognize myself, and thus I sound foreign to myself.

I had this really wonderful two hour long talk with Loryn Longbrake (one of the other ST students, she's from California) about the process we have both been through in the last two years. She's lost an enormous amount of weight over the last two years and she really is a much differnt person. I have been thinking about how I might have changed over the last two years. I am much more confident and social than I used to be. I actually enjoy being in front of people now. I cry more- and less. I am looking toward such an uncertain future, with trepidation, but excitement- something I didn't used to be able to handle at all. My body has changed a lot. This is something I am exceedingly aware of, and I wish I weren't. I wish I could be more aware of the wonderful ways I have changed who I am, and not what I look like, but as Loryn said, "Because we are women, and we are encouraged to be 'pretty things,' who we are does change when what we look like changes."

I am not sure what all of this is about. I have had a strange, let-down kind of feeling over the last few weeks. You would think that graduating and finally being done would give me quite the opposite reaction. I am looking forward to summer- things being warm and alive again. I can go camping with Josh and in July (12th -17th ) I am going to the NSN conference as a "New Face" and I am presenting my research in a forum.
Why so much introspection now? I don't know.

Chara