In which I win awards for my vagina.

This year has been characterised so far mainly by an impending sense of doom about Beginning the Rest of My Life After My Degree. Oh! I’m sorry. Didn’t you want another graduation story? Tough shit.

I won an award from my university as I finished, for my contributions to the student magazine. As these contributions have mainly centred on my vagina, and thus I have been awarded for writing about my vagina, of course by extension I think this qualifies me to write on my CV, “Award-Winning Vagina.”

And yet despite this, I have still had some angst about What Comes Next. Perhaps it is because I fear that now the old va-jay-jay has been an accolade there is nothing left to achieve. Because let’s face it, what else is there?

During these past four months, my standard response to any question not directly pertaining to designing a 2,000 word process analysis on my third-year journey as a student of the craft of writing; what time the library opens; or whether or not I fancy a friendly poke; has been, “ASK ME AFTER THE 13^TH OF MAY,” as even with my pussy’s credentials I am horrifically afraid of becoming a Failure of Life.

(Side note: I was discussing with a friend yesterday how the top rating-fear of a large proportion of Americans is public speaking. Really? Give me an audience, no matter what the situation, and I’m all jazz hands and funny voices. Speaking in public isn’t scary. Speaking in public feeds the ego like cake feeds a fat woman. Being found dead, alone in a pool of my own Krispy Kreme dribble with a vibrator in-hand and one of my twelve cats sat atop my head is my top-rating fear. Or worse, what if nobody even noticed? WHAT IF NOBODY CARED? WHAT IF MY VAGINA-AWARD DOESN’T REALLY COUNT FOR ANYTHING?)

And then the 13^th came, and the deadlines passed, and suddenly I had to sit down and decide What To Do Next. So in the hour I had free in my schedule that was highlighted as being designated for Life Planning I somehow interviewed for a job in Rome. And then said yes. Which, of course, the House of Pastelle found hilarious because who sets aside 60 minutes to get a job and then actually gets a job? IN ROME?

But then life got its own back because MOTHERFUCKER I got sicker then I have ever been in my life. First it was tonsillitis, then my insides went funny, and then I got a cold just as a glimmer of normality was in sight. I celebrated my 25^th birthday yesterday, with a friend I haven’t seen in two years. You know what I thought would be fun? To rock up so doped up on antibiotics that I couldn’t even take a sip of the selection of majorly impressive fine wines she had gotten in especially for me, and then spend the duration of her company with one finger up my nose as I smeared it with Vaseline to stop the drying, itching PAIN, and the other in the medicine cabinet searching for whatever was legal and most importantly free.

Yeah, I found your swings-and-roundabouts attitude to my life hilarious too, Universe.

So in short. I finished school. My vagina rocks. I’m older. I moved out of the House of Pastelle. I’m writing this from Italy. I just sneezed and an actual lump of green snot hit my hand.

And now you know.