I wonder as I Wander.

Today in English I learned a new phrase: repetition Compulsion.

English has probably been my best class this semester. My teacher is this hip lady whose brother is some photographer for Vogue, which means she has more coolness because she comes into class with new gadgets her brother sends her.

Any professor who has a MP3 player is automatically deemed cool on some level. I think as kids we get this idea of college professors being older men who wear brown suits, with ugly bow ties, who rant on about some topic or another.

So it's a little shocking when you get to college to see professors who are only a couple of years older than you, dressed in jeans and a shirt, listening to various things on there own iPod. I don't know about anyone else but it is certainly intriguing to me.

My professor is totally like that, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt she talks about smoking in bars discussing some book she is publishing, and in class she acts out scenes from various books as a one woman show. She looks almost like Andie Macdowell , but without the annoying ways. All in all she is pretty awesome, though by my participation in the class she would never know that.

Anyway from reading Shamela to Anna Karenina we have finally landed on the door of Gabriel Marquez's One Hundred years of Solitude to end the semester with. Personally I am completely perplexed reading this book. Everyone has the same name and some girl eats dirt in the book, pretty much after that part I stopped reading and went to spark notes.

But the kids in my class totally get this stuff(or just read the book instead of spark notes), ranting on about symbolism and yadda yadda yadda. There are the mod squad beside me, giggly girls who talk about books I never knew were written, who always have something to say even if it is about nothing. If they weren't so nice, I would totally resent them . There are only a couple of guys in my class, one smart guy named Nick who has a major crush on the girl next to me who just so happened to go to my highschool. It is kind of interesting to watch him drool over her from his seat, always saying something totally poetic in class to win her over. In a cheesy way it is totally sweet, but in a "I don't think you have a chance" way it's kind of sad.

The guy whose music I happened to have the pleasure of listening in my dorm, sits directly across from me a couple of seats down. From time to time we awkwardly glance at each other, but nothing has happened other than that. Not to totally get off the subject of the wicked phrase I just learned, I'm holding on to the fact that I intimidate guys. Perhaps it is the small erotomanic delusion(another phrase I learned) that I have or maybe it is just a fact that I scare them away. I am totally a approachable person, but he even avoids friendly eye contact. Whatever the case I try to stay clear away from him because I fear I make him uncomfortable, and I get uncomfortable with his uncomfortableness.

Anyway back to the phrase.

I mentioned that I have been having wicked dreams lately. The one last night was pretty much the same. Me having an affair with some married dude from a dream I haven't had since I was a teen. Don't ask. Long story.(Really good though, perhaps in a later post I will divulge info). Recently in my life I have noticed that things are occurring the same. I have fallen to same sort of situations(isolation and fear) or friendships(Katherine) or crushes that I don't act on( the list is too long).

I believe that everything we have or encompass are only mirrors of ourselves. And for long time I was wondering why I kept attracting or having friendships with people I feel I would have otherwise avoided. Or why I keep ending up miles away from where I want to be, with a solid group of friends, happiness, and yadda yadda. And of course at this moment I don't know why I have fallen into those same traps, but I think I may have a clue, all because of the phrase repetition compulsion which means:

Something that unsettled us in our lives, that caused an element of surprise because we were unprepared for it. It caused such a disturbance in ones life that there is a compulsion to return to the scene of the trauma in order to create another ending.

The lightbulb totally went off, especially seeing that I had that weird deja vu and train dream the past couple of nights. I seem to put myself in the same situations hoping beyond some hope that I can alter the ending. That things will work out differently. Perhaps I felt rejected by Nicholas(not the English class kid) because he abruptly ended our friendship and my crush with his coldness. So I attach myself to crushing on boys who give that off from the get go. Maybe I hope that they will take notice of me, and things won't end up so isolated as when Nicholas stopped talking to me

Or with friends. Dealing with crazy ex-best friend in High school who had more problems than a lifetime movie. After that ended I was made to feel like I had not supported her decision to be wild and crazy. So now I get friends who have a whole lot of problems hoping that this time I will be able to help out, that it will be apparent that I cared and gave an effort to make them better.

My professor said it's like when you are dating someone and you realized that you have already dated someone just like them. And you don't realize until things start occurring like they did in the past relationship that you have put yourself in this cycle. This cycle that you are hoping will turn out differently and that maybe you could alter.

But maybe the process stops with learning that cycles are never ending for a reason. They aren't suppose to stop flowing, the same scenario always ends up the same because its suppose to. Cycles are suppose to come around full circle. The strength in learning how to break them may just reside in realizing when to step out of one.

But what do I know. I get lost in cycles all the time.