undergraduate nostalgia wrapped in silver lining

fearfully looking back and finding my way forward.

I don’t know where I thought I would be as a person when it came time for me to graduate.

Some part of me imagined a lavish and expensive future—doing what… it didn’t matter, just that I would be appreciated for it, or well-paid by it, or well-respected while doing it. Another part of me—the more sincere aspect of self—desired a solid soul, one that was sure of its own morals and misgivings. I think I had imagined that four years of disconnection and reinvention, distant from home, would allow the puzzle to rescale, redraw, and reset itself—that I might find solace in a new identity, entirely stripped of any form of degradation or carried shame or uncertainty of self. That at this point, I would know who I am and be able to speak it openly and clearly without hesitation. I thought, in the most naïve of ways, that by now, I would be fully formed.

And yet, here I am.

I am not.

How silly.

And I still don’t honestly know where I am meant to go or who I am meant to be, which is quite unfortunate, being that I will be walking across the scuffed auditorium stage in my cap and gown to collect my degree in less than two months.

I don’t even know how I’m meant to feel.

I feel many things at many times. I don’t really like it, but I do. Over the last six months, I have unknowingly let my once-refined control (cultivated over years of self-flagellation in the name of societal decorum) be usurped by emotions of all kinds.

Confusion. Doubt. Disappointment. Disdain. Joy. Jealousy. More joy.

At first, it had been an exercise in reflection—necessary to begin preparing for the ceaseless master’s applications and personal statements, calling upon my innermost sanctum to regurgitate and re-mend my compressed struggles and stains into beautiful offerings at academia’s altar. Slowly, it became a substitution for grounding—a torrid resting place for moments to live in my own web of false promises and unmet expectations, where I found comfort in allowing myself to overflow—messy and unmodulated—with random and rampant senses of urgency to fix something—my life, usually—and to fix it well.

Of course—most of this occurred behind closed doors, but it was done in the name of advancement, and ultimately, it paid off in the oddest of ways. I did get into my master’s, and the personal statements did work out for the better—at a heavy emotional toll. However, what it really did was open my eyes to the sea of incertitude I had been sailing across so gallantly in my earlier years of undergrad without looking down into its rippling water and wondering—where should I be going, and why?

When I first applied for university, it felt as though I was signing up to be remodelled into another being. There had been a quiet and brewing excitement with the knowledge that I would not only be able to proclaim my independence as an adult, but also execute its powers beyond the confines of home—confines that had grown increasingly restrained due to the pandemic and the justifiable fears of my parents, whose cares were porous, yet kind.

I imagined frequently my gait, the breadth of my smile, and the tenor of my voice in the new body I was soon to be transported into by common travel. I would be myself—but different, better, more self-possessed, and entirely willing to act the part required to innovate the success I had so vaguely imagined in junior high. And in the beginning, the act was easy—it fit well, but not perfectly, and I could move within it without too much discomfort. I smiled when needed and made new friends of all different backgrounds. I was brash, but still calculating, and I allowed my world to grow a little more with each new experience I became exposed to.

I made my intentions clear by excavating the nodes nestled in me—built through virtuous upbringing and a staunch self-policing—to let myself go, something that I had heard was meant to happen to freshmen in a new place. But the distance I crossed was made only clear by an empty purpose.

With time, the spread of my walk ripped at the seams. My voice carried itself in mismatched melodies across the wind, and it became harder to sketch new lines upon an already etched canvas—a canvas that, for so long, had served me well, but had been hidden away from the naked eye, left to fester quietly in the darkness, left forlorn and unable to imagine itself as anything other than a pitched tarp.

And soon, it got to a point where I no longer knew the point of anything I was doing. Or the people I was meeting and choosing to commune with, or the places I chose to go. I just moved listlessly through my life, allowing the whispers and wiles of others to beckon my spirit and, most importantly, my fragile and emaciated sense of self into a corner. A corner that no one held me to except myself, because I had no other stability besides the two walls intersecting with each other—rendering my foundation, even the parts that hurt, into oblivion.

Thankfully, this didn’t last as long as I had expected it to, or as I know others have had to deal with.

By my third year of university, the act had yellowed and peeled away from me, leaving spotted fragments of the young girl whose mind had conjured a legacy for her before she could even conceptualize the framework.

And it is only today, as I type, that I outwardly recognize the wonder of my continuity and the nebulousness of my future now that I have arrived at another long stop toward an untraceable destination.

I still imagine tomorrow through the gait of my walk, and the breadth of my smile, and the sound of my voice in a room of friendly strangers and strange friends—but I no longer hold the same burning desire to decipher the ripples in the water or ignore the spray of their waves.

I am where I am, and I am learning to accept the gift that I am able to be an “I am.”

That, with all my poor decisions and writhing internalization, there is a part of me that has learned to recolour the beautiful etches that I carry as my own—with pride, and with welcomed uncertainty.