Heat sensitive material

I have this bowl at my house. It changes color when it’s heated: green when it’s room temperature, yellow when it’s hot. Someone got it as prize from a cereal box. I think I might be like the bowl. When it’s room temperature in my life, when I’m cool and under normal circumstances, I’m easy going, practical, moderate and tolerable, funny even. Can you imagine?

But crank up that heat, put me in tough situations and watch me change color. I was sick this week, really sick; lose-8-pounds-in-106-hours sick. And by the last day I was so tired and frustrated, I cried. I did the “will this ever be over” whine. That was only a few degrees change: 98.6 to a little over a 101. Hmmm, this is not, I hope, an indication of my normal reaction to heated situations.

I’m heaving a sigh, getting ready to start grad school in almost exactly 1 month. Heat. Yesterday, I signed my Master Promissory Note and went $20,500 into debt for the 1^st year alone. Heat. Speaking of, I need to go buy my stethoscope; let me just add that to my to-do list. Heat. One moment, please…

This will be, they promise, an intense regimen of study and skill and time management. Heat. The “time will fly, though” they say. And I wonder, will it fly for everyone else around me…the ones that will walk through this 3 year season with me…my family, my friends? Or will this be a season when they just put up with the busy, under pressure version of me? …the heated version of me?

I really like who I am right now. I’m not perfect, not even close. But I’m so me…I’ve never been so me…or at least not since I was 6. And, I’m having fun being me. BUT, I remember who I was, too, just a few years ago. The fear that creeps in is that when heated, I’ll revert. I hear my friend say, “Kara, you’re not who you were then.” …then, when I was under heat, I wonder? Am I like the color-changing bowl in the cupboard?

So, we’ll see, I suppose. Time and you will tell…how does Kara respond to heat?

~ by Kara Belcher on August 23, 2008.