Do I LOOK like I only got four hours of sleep last night?

Yeah, I think I do. My eyes are on the puffy side this bright and cheery morning. I was up until 1:30 studying for my biology exam, for which I've been studying my butt off all of the last week (with the exception of the weekend during which I spent most of my time studying for my chemistry exam). I feel good about it though. And when I feel good about it... if it's anything like my chemistry exam - 97%! - then I think I did well. Although I couldn't help but Google the two questions I wasn't sure about as soon as I got to the library and of course... I got them both wrong. And I always seem to get the stupidest, simplest, obvious questions wrong. Enough about that.

Every time I catch someone out of the corner of my eye who could resemble Matt (the only requirements are tall, lean and have dark hair), I just imagine it's him. Then I think about all the things we did on campus together... how he was in this very place. And now he's just... gone. It's so weird to me. I can look at the tables and chairs in the C building of the Pew campus and think, "He TOUCHED those." lol I'm crazy.

It's funny being back here. My biology tutor is six years younger than me. The other girl in my tutoring group is this cute little teenager who lives in the dorms. I'm probably closer in age to some of my professors than I am to my fellow students. There are teenagers smoking outside of dorms. Teenagers smoking? What? I overheard a girl ask a guy, "Do you remember Full House?" and he replies, "... kind of." Hilarious. I can talk to my professors about parenthood. I can start sentences with, "When I was getting my first bachelor's degree..." which actually makes me feel pretty cool and smart even though I definitely did not take college seriously the first time around. I've come to the conclusion that the traditional college path (right out of high school) results in one of two things: (1) You know what you want to do and you excel or (2) You change your major at least three times, and it might end up taking you longer than four years to get your degree and then maybe you're still not really sure you followed your heart because you just wanted to finish. I definitely fell into the latter...

By the time I was a senior, I was engaged. I just wanted to finish as quickly as I could in the easiest way possible so I could get married, have babies and live happily ever after doing whatever! I'm glad I did though. Everything happens for a reason. No matter what category you might fall into, eventually you will find yourself.

For the first time (besides when I went to talk to my bio prof), I shared the extremely short version of "my story". It happened Tuesday during my tutoring session. My tutor pointed at my ring and said, "So you're married?" I said, "My husband died in July. He was in a fatal car accident." It's like it just burst out and I was so happy that someone finally asked me something that allowed me to share. I feel like I'm walking around with this huge dark secret most of the time. But I also got to mention Matt Tuesday morning because I was talking to my biology professor about the kids... and he started talking about playing video games with his kids a lot... and then I got to say, "Oh, yes, that would have been Matt, too. He was the video game guy." Awesome. I love talking about him.