Early, by my standards, a few mornings ago, my aunt calls up and asks if my mother is here. When I tell her she's not, she talks to me, talking about how my cousin, Phil, has finally applied to NYU at the age of...twenty-eight, I think. She talks about how he's gotten all A's at his community college, how he talked to them years ago and they said the'd be interested in him if he did well at a community college, how it was likely he'd get a hefty scholarship.

"If he makes it...we'll be losing Phil, Linda."

I'm not concerned with my Aunt's inability to let go-- her eldest is, I don't know, thirty-two? He spent four years in the marines, during which he eloped with a woman who now has custody of their young son that my aunt almost never sees, and now he's come back, at long last, to the general area where almost the entirety of my mother's side of family resides, to resume his life of arguing with his mother at sunday dinners, being a drunken italian plumber, and otherwise enforcing italian stereotypes. My concern rests partially with the phone calls from my aunt-- Rosalie is her name-- my mother will have to endure at every stage of Phil's possible departure, and primarily with my jealousy of Phil's victory.

I don't think I've ever truthfully support any of my friend's victories since day one, not through and through. There's always some aspect of me that burns with bitterness and jealousy-- the same hatred for my life that outrages me when they leave for the the best colleges rejoices when they do nothing but bitch their freshmen year, then the anger returns by the time they've settled in sophomore year. My standard defense is to tell myself over and over again that one day I'll be greater, richer, more successful and well-loved than they are, but as days go by it gets harder to convince myself. So my mask becomes faker and faker, and every now and then, with people I trust love me despite my rotten apple interior. I rip it off altogether. "Oh, so-and-so, tell me more about your beautiful nympho girlfriend. No, I really *do* want to know about your name on the dean's list or that awesome college party you're attending. Let's throw a PARADE because of the goofy antics of your idiot roommate! WE'LL CALL IT THE 'YOU'RE CLEARLY BETTER THAN I AM' DAY PARADE! WE'LL HAVE FUCKING FLOATS, OKAY??? HUGE BALLOONS OF YOU RIPPING MY HEART OUT!!"

This is the kind of sincerity I offer.

Still, as my Aunt goes on, I offer her both my hopes that Phil will make it into NYU and my reassurance that he'll find time to visit family. And when I hang up, I realize something-- I think I meant it.

Sure, I would have loved to go to NYU-- had it even occured to me to aspire so high, it probably would have been my first-choice college. But I think more and more about it, Phil's not one of my "With Honors" friends, that went through the whole system doing exactly what they were told and got into a life of college-aged ease with none but the most obvious problems. Phil was, to me, the perfect example of what I shouldn't have become. Quit community college young and spent years breaking his back for the money that would afford him the oppurtunity to put an hour's worth of passion, here and there, into novels he never finished and short stories that he never sent anywhere.

And I think back to all the talks we had in the middle of the night when I would tell him he could turn it all around if he wanted to. I would tell him he was still young, he was still brilliant, he still had a chance to fix his mistakes and be exactly who he wanted to be. Frankly, I don't remember if I meant it-- but it's coming true for him. And for the first time, I don't think I mind.

Phil and I had a rocky and incredibly strange relationship, and there have been times where I've hated him for it, but when it comes right down to it, he's very much like me. He's a person who's done the best they knew how to at the time, and he's a living reminder that that's what I am too. And now he's a success. How cool is that?

I had a friend in massage school-- one of the many I should make a better attempt to keep in contact with-- who said that being college-aged and not in college was the most confusing time of life, and I loved her for that, really loved her. Someone who had some understanding of what it was like not to go with the crowd, to blaze your own trail and think, most of the time, how entirely lost you might be. But I was happy to see her finding her own way with massage school-- it wasn't my way, inconveniently enough, but it was a different way, and I could respect that. Now I find myself happy for someone else, despite everything, for maybe the second genuine time in my life. Because he knows what it is to try and fail, and he knows what it is to think so little of himself, and he knows what it is to look for consolation in the eyes of someone who might be able to understand-- he knows what it is not to be able to find anyone who did. And despite all this, he found his way, amazingly, incredibly, despite all logical reason.

And maybe I've hated him for his mistakes before, for the mistakes he's allowed me to make. But for tonight, he's living the dream we talked about, laying around together all those nights, living only on mutual belief and trying to get by on each other's admiration. For tonight, he's what reminds me that my life isn't quite over yet, either, for tonight, he'll be my hero. For tonight, I will love him, and try to love myself.

Congratulations, Phil, whether or not you make it in. You did good, kid.

On with it.