Episode 89 - Your New Graduate

More than a month has passed. Your middle school turned high school turned college student is now a graduate. A Bachelor of Arts. 

I wake up in the morning with not one real plan in my head for the day. 

There's a coming of age that happens in your teens, but the harshest one I've experienced is the one I'm going through now. All those beautiful memories that I can only make in one specific place, where everyone is at a similar pace in life, and events and dances happen often. Where I felt so safe. A town so quirky, so small, but with so much to look at and do. There, I'd wake up in my college dorm with plans. Probably already exhausted thinking about them, but I had them nevertheless.

Now I wake up with few to none. Sometimes in the middle of the day, I have flashbacks of my graduation day. That's when it hurts most. Specifically when it was my turn to walk the stage. When the crowd roared and I didn't hear it. 

"They roared," Yen said, "and I don't recall. But they probably did." 

I made a little heart to the camera in my hands. A small "thanks and yes, I'm in love with you and this moment". My friends and my family who flew in to be with me. Everybody. Everyone I loved in one space. I wore the same sandals that I had paraded all over during my DC internship, all over Singapore when I studied abroad, the same one that saw all my late-night weekend dancing. The very same. 

I walked across the stage. At the end of the walk, I squeezed a girl. One of my greatest, kindest, loveliest friends: Miss Ivanna. I squeezed. Just as I had squeezed the many before my walk. And the many after it. 

Hellos and hellos and hellos to everybody as an hour before, we had lined up in the biggest line ever, and on the walk towards my seat, I swear I probably saw everyone I ever loved at Smith. I passed and waved and cried and put my little hands together into a heart for them. 

"Because I love you!" 

Because I still do.

Nothing is truer in this moment as I write this. 

I was the happiest I ever was at Smith. In college. Studying and stressed and obsessed. I had vague plans about my life that I didn't have to answer to yet. I had friends and plans every day. I would be caught in the middle of a big sandwich bite by a classmate. I was in the gym seeing the same good friends do their thing, cheering each other across the room. I was in class, having silly conversations, ones that Prof could hear. I was at dinner, making a friend cackle at another honest accident of mine. I was somewhere. 

I was. Happier.

And I hate saying this. I hate saying this. 

I wish it wasn't true. 

But nothing feels truer. 

I am at home now, with family. I have some plans perhaps, but all of them are almost alone. In cafes applying to jobs. In libraries picking up my book holds. On couches as I try to finish that very book. At tables playing League, sometimes catching a friend or two. All over the house wiping down every surface, tidying up every little thing. 

I do travel. I have traveled. And that's when I'm happiest. When I'm going to places. It makes me feel even a small semblance of the past me, of over a month ago. The possibility of invisible strings bringing me to you all along. I had it so good, and I knew it. 

How could I not then? 

I had it good. I had it good. I never blew it. It was too perfect.

My time at Smith taught me so many things.

1) An education rooted at a traditionally all-women's college showed me what an ideal world and classroom should feel like. Inclusive. Everyone is heard and given an equal chance to speak. 

2) The beauty of a place, as beautiful as Smith is in its autumns and springs, does motivate a little girl to go outside and picnic outside. My first picnics were here. On that lawn.

3) I crossed paths with one of my favorite authors of all time at Smith's Paradise Pond. I screamed about it for days.

4) Every study session. I mean, every. Someone's a fool and doesn't study. And so we end up not. :P

5) Drag bingo is a fantastic Friday night idea.

6) I am so complete, so whole on my own. I am so capable of creating beautiful moments with others, friends or strangers. I am so incredible for that, for making folks laugh with my timed wording or awkwardness. 

7) I dressed my absolute best to every class. Every day, I showed up. I have never felt more spiritually connected and in love with my body than in college.

8) I peaked. 

9) Smith flew me home when I was homesick. Paid ticket and everything. Gosh.

10) I love so well. And I deserve love.

Your new graduate deserves the world. She wants to serve the world.

I want to serve. 

I just... am quite at a new end to all this. A new whatever-this-is where I'm at home most if not all the time. 

When I'm not a student or employee or intern, I'm a daughter. It's a pretty answer on paper. It's not so pretty in real life. 

My time is everyone else's first. 

And then I remember a time when it wasn't. When it was mine. 

I remember when.

But the upside is I've never been more free in my life. I'm the most lonely right now, the most plan-less, yet the most free. 

And I have never been more scared in my life.