A few nights ago my parents and I had a college discussion. My mom told me that it was okay if I didn't know what I wanted to do right out of high school, that lots of kids didn't know and that it was okay if I took a year off and worked before I went on to college. I took all of this information in. And then, last night, as I was talking to Clauida, The Master Plan of the Universe was born.

It starts like this. Basically for this whole year I am going to spend my time involved with school meanwhile trying to have a social life. If I wind up alone every Friday night, I don't care, because now I have a car, and it doesn't matter. Anyway, I'm going to start reading lots of books, and basically trying to make myself smarter. Once I graduate, I'm going to take a year off and work my ass off trying to get as much money as possible. Then I am going to move down to Myrtle Beach, where my friend Claudia is moving, and we are going to share an apartment together and go to college down at the beach. It's a really great plan. It's only in the prelimanary stages, but it serves me well for many reasons. First off, I get a year to get enough money and to think about what I really want to do with my life. And since I"m already young for my grade anyway, by the time I enter college a year later, I will have caught up with everyone else. I also get to move away from my parents because I always knew that I could not live here while being in college. I'd move down to the shore, which is where I've always wanted to be. I'd be going to school with my best friend, so I wouldn't be completely alone. Plus, we could live together and not have to pay room and board, and our rent would be split in half. Also, I would enter as an in-state student so my tuition would be lower. I mean, this plan really works. But still, I decided to keep it under wraps because I knew the second my mother got wind of it, she would criticize it and call me an idiot for wanting to go through with it. So, I decided to keep it on the down-low.

That was of course, till this morning. I was getting ready to go to the dentist with my mother and sister, and of course my mother has to offer her usual positive input. "Can't you look nice for a change? You look so nice when you dress up. Why don't you get your hair out of that ponytail?" Why don't you shut the fuck up, mother? I mean all I was wearing was jeans and nice shirt, from Abercrombie and Fitch may I add, it's not like I was walking around in a potato sack. But no, going to the dentist is somewhat like going to the prom, so how could I have forgotten to put on my formal dress? So we exchange a few words, and then this argument now turns into a college argument, and like the dumb shit that I am, I spill it. The Master Plan was now out in the open. I just blurted it out, and then once I did i could see the look on her evil chubby face as she searched for exactly the right words to say to make me feel like the largest piece of shit she possibly could.

She went on to say that I had no direction in life and that if I hung out with people who actually knew what they wanted to do that I would know, too. That ever since I'd been hanging out with Claudia, I hadn't made any other friends and that I had been doing worse in school. That Claudia was the only person who would ever accept me and that everyone in this town had rejected me. Why couldn't I go to college like everyone else? What was wrong with going to school in New Jersey? Why do I have to follow Claudia around? She also went on to say that she could see the road I was taking. The road of failure and poverty and drug rehabilitation centers. I'm serious, she said that. That I had no morals and no direction and I was going to end up just like her uncle, who lived at home until he was 40.

Let's not forget that I got a 1250 on my SAT, compared to the 1030 I had gotten earlier in the fall on the PSAT. Let's also not forget my 3.6 GPA or the fact that I was chosen for Who's Who Among American High School Students, which is some thing that only %5 of high school students get recognized for. What about the fact that I was nominated for leadership camp, or the fact that I got accepted into a prestigious acting program during the summer which I paid for with the money I got from the job that I have been working at for a year and have been saving my paychecks. Oh yea, mom. What a failure I turned out to be. You know, she's just scared. She knows that I'm not going to spend a second more here than I have to, that there's 49 other states out there with colleges just as good as the ones in New Jersey, and she knows that I can live on my own and not die because I did it in the city, which is probably a lot more challenging than Myrtle Beach. Her dreams of me going to a quaint little college and becoming a dental assistant and then buying a cute little house a few towns over and then raising the perfect nuclear family and coming over for holiday dinner are over. Fuck that. I'm getting out of here, there's nothing she can do to stop me, and she knows it. What's she gonna do when I'm 18? Tell me no? I can start a bank account, my siganture is legal, and I no longer need her to provide for me. And it scares her that she can't control like she used to. She can't tell me what to wear and who I can hang out with and how late I can stay out. I'm so glad I'm not one of those whiny clingy daughters that have to tell their mothers everything and if someone happens in their life the first person they call is their mother. What a bunch of pussies. My mother has never given me any advice that I consider good advice and whenever I had a problem I was better off coming and writing it on here than I was talking to her about it because the only things she could say were negative. She never supported me in anything I wanted to do, and instead she always gave me her opinion on it and I should do what she wants because I am a clone of her and I have no free will. I'm sick and tired of her shoving careers down my throat and telling me to look at colleges I don't want to go to and telling me that I should live at home and commute to school and that I'll never find any work with writing. I'm fucking sick of it. If she thinks that I am gonna go to school, come home at 2 in the morning, and have her tell me it's bed time and that I've been staying out to late then she's a fucking moron. And who is she to tell me that I'm a failure? That I have to fit in and be accepted by people here in Ramsey? She's the one who's always telling me that I shouldn't care what people think, and now she's all preaching to me about being accepted? And having no morals? For someone who has a failed marriage and who sits at home all day and watched the Laci Peterson murder trial for hours at a time on court TV, I really don't think she should talk. But it's ok. I know what I wanna do now, I have something to work for, and I am gonna do it whether or not she likes it.

I have to get ready to go to Dairy Queen soon. I hate that job, but it's really helped me out. And if I can manage school, tennis after school, work, and memorizing my lines for a school play, then I think I can handle working two jobs. It's only gonna be a for a year, and then I am getting the fuck out of here and not looking back. I can honestly say I know what it's like to live on my own, because I've done it. And it was fucking great. And I am not gonna let someone who sits around the house all day and calls the refrigerator the ice box tell me I can't do things in life.

So long story short, the Master Plan of the Universe still holds water. Time for Dairy Queen.