|4 minute read|
Another moment where my brain is everywhere and nowhere at once. I have much to say, but I'm neither here nor there. Living in my past and treading through the present. So perhaps they both can live here for now, residing among one another, mingling and trying to find more meaning. I’m thinking and rethinking, the ambiguities piled high. What do you make of what happens to you? Do you think of it once, or twice, or never again. The past can come back to haunt us, but aren’t we different when it comes to revisit?
I sat in a theater, the same theater I spent my last semester of college, only a year ago. The same backstage I ran around, the same stage I danced and ripped my feet on, and the same seats I slumped in after an 11 pm dress rehearsal. So full of relief and joy she was. Four years done, finally over, an accomplishment distinguished by a piece of paper. A piece of paper that I can’t remember where I placed. The bubbling of an exciting end and the eagerness of a new beginning. One only starts where they end. But we are all victims of naivety. And although the future rests in your hands, open palms, trembling fingertips, the future of failed expectations is disguised as autonomy. You cannot have one without the other.
So I sat in my seat in this theater, after passing my old school building, the hallways once a common scene, now a stranger to me. Looking up to the apartment that was once mine, now someone else’s occupied by an entirely different set of humans, of energy, of circumstances. As much as it all meant to me, I meant nothing to these places. Only a year ago and I was already past being forgotten. Because my energy, my circumstances, my belongings, was just a commodity. Another someone passing through. And I’m sitting down, sweat prickling my temples, my heart beating a little too hard, there were faces I was familiar with. But I didn’t really know them, not anymore. As if I read about them in a book and this was the movie adaptation, introduced to these characters after a long time away. Ghosts wandering around, surprising me when they looked me in my eyes, wondering how I could see them, wondering how they were looking at me. Zoo animals in an exhibit, or was it me behind the glass?
They sat in their seats, within a place that still was familiar with them, and they cried. Cried for reasons I’ll never know. But something tells me they don’t like unfamiliarity, yet that is the part that comes next for them. To be blindsided by everything they don’t know, after such a festive occasion. The whiplash of being real. Their tears are a commodity to this event, to this school. Because year after year everyone is so happy and so excited from the bottom of their heart, clapping and yelling as these students parade around with a smile that masks all the difficulties that came first. Obliviously gaping at the future that seems so easy to grasp, so easy to navigate. And year after year these students are dumped into the ‘real world’ thinking they are swimming with fishes but they are swimming with sharks, blind and in deep waters.
A year ago I sat in those seats and I thought I knew what to expect. Packing my things and transitioning away. To move to a city quickly after. To see all that I desired placed into my patient hands. But I was met with rejection, and questions, and a timeline that changed so fast and so often it wasn’t worth writing on a calendar. Miscommunication, frustration, and a day job, the opposite of what my eager mind saw for me when I sat in those seats. But it was all matched with the unexpected joys, little spontaneities, nights out, and new friends. And as fast as I outgrew this space, the faster I surrendered my expectations. The elation of a new tomorrow, turned fear, turned restlessness, turned back into eagerness. A year let me see it all for what it really was, what it all really will be. It’s silly to expect anything really.
But in this place I didn’t fit into anymore, clothing I grew out of, was my friend, among the criers and the book characters. And in her eyes was a glimpse of grit, they were her sharks that she has already swam with. A year ago she outgrew them, the criers and the book characters, no longer fitting into the mold and the nuances they weaponized against her. They all sat in the same space, familiar and unfamiliar, thinking where the time had gone. But time had been on her side, a year away from these spaces, these faces. Letting them grow unfamiliar to her, letting the space feel foreign, become a stranger. Because she outgrew it all before they could, away she ran to places that welcomed her better, treated her better, let her sit and breathe deep breaths without treading water.
In the night she didn’t cry, she talked about what is coming next for her, because she knows. She expects nothing and gets it all. Embracing the unfamiliarity, falling into the unknown, because even that was more warm than the criers and book characters. And I wanted to be by her side, to celebrate her outgrowing. Because a year ago I had the same growing pains. She and I understood each other, what it was like to swim with sharks, to be their zoo animals, something to taunt and gawk at. Because a year turns into two, turns into three, and reality seems more manageable. The illusion fades, and we’re all better for it. We turned away from the obscurities, this foreign place, dry eyes, arm in arm. And we’re better for it. To her new chapter and to all of our continuing ones. Nothing is ever that precious.
I hope I'll still see you in a year,
natalie <3
