I will speak when I can.
Thursday 9 June 2016
I Graduated
I write this as I wait for Sandman to download on a nameless Thursday morning that followed a sleepless Thursday night, but I'm not tired. I'm hugging a gigantic mug of very shitty coffee in the pauses I take between the sentences, for this is something I need to do. This post is homework, more or less, only not as annoying, but just as hard. And it's been long in the making, I've had urges to sit down and write my heart out at times when I had to time-manage pooping and catching the bus, reworking proposals and creative briefs and getting a 2-hour dent in a three-day long workday. It's been an exhausting blur of a semester and I've finally graduated.
I've graduated.
The cap and gown is not until November or October, and the results are not for a couple of weeks still, but the anxiety won't take rain-checks.
How I feel about this hasn't been as clean-cut as Buzzfeed articles sell it out to be. I was breathless and euphoric when I went through my last slide, seeing my ad on big screen was possibly the closest I would ever experience to how a mother feels as she witnesses her child's first tumbly walk. I resolved to stay on campus until I wrap my head around the fact that I won't be coming back there anymore, at least not in the same way, not to attend classes and not to fight endlessly for basic understanding and courtesy. Closure didn't come, and although my lungs registered the fact by successive bursts of audible air, my mind didn't. I was mostly numb, save for fleeting smiles that crossed my face every once in a while, not staying long, not understanding why they were there in the first place, not remembering. It's not as melancholy as it's coming out, perhaps. What I'm trying to say is, throughout the buzz of emotions blurring by and barely making themselves comfortable before they're interrupted by commercial breaks of numbness, the one that kept coming back and overstaying its welcome was anxiety.
I would have thought it would wait a couple of months, or rather that I could make it wait for a couple of months. The effort is like going up against a brick wall with a liberal mindset, trying to talk it out of the impending onslaught of rocks coming its way and its silence making you rethink your rocks in the first place. The wall is winning. The wall doesn't care.
What next?
What now?
I never really learned to sit still you know. I don't know how to take a break, not one without a deadline anyway. How do people rest if naps aren't snatched? How do people have fun if time off isn't a prelude to...time-on?
The realization is too big to register in one go. How does one register that they've graduated? It's abstract.
The small revelations hit me every now and then, as I rummage for stuff in my purse or look for a missing link, as I brush my teeth or find out that I've run out of snacks for the next day, and in my sleep, in nightmares and odd situations that I don't understand for days. Small bites of ideas, like "This vacation ends when you say so" or "How are you gonna live alone if you're still scared of the dark?" or "What if you can't make rent one of those months?" or "What if you're stuck in the same job for ages and can't leave it because rent is on the line?"
Revelations like "How am I gonna pack all those books? Will I have to get rid of my books? How does one hire movers?" or "If I take that job I'll need a car. How will I afford a car?" or "How do people do taxes in here anyway?" or "I'll need to start a bank account to receive my paychecks now." or "It'll be full-time jobs from here on in, what are they like? Will I walk them off or take months to adjust? What happens if I don't adjust?"
Others like "I'll have to learn how to cook, I can't afford to eat out everyday."
And more frightening ones like "What if things go wrong?"
And the scariest of which perhaps are "What if things don't go at all?"
"What if I can't find a job that I like? What if I never end up in my field? What if I can't find a job?"
And the revelation that now it's called "unemployed", not "on summer break."
But what marks it are the things you can't have, because you're old enough to see priorities straight. And the things you can't have because you'll have to save up for and be your own support. Things that will have to wait. Things that you've been waiting for, for years. Things that have kept you going and got you out of bed for four years.
Only few days ago I had my life mapped out, knew what I wanted and had an idea about what I had to do to get there. But I was only a child.
4 days ago, I was only a child.
I've graduated.
The cap and gown is not until November or October, and the results are not for a couple of weeks still, but the anxiety won't take rain-checks.
How I feel about this hasn't been as clean-cut as Buzzfeed articles sell it out to be. I was breathless and euphoric when I went through my last slide, seeing my ad on big screen was possibly the closest I would ever experience to how a mother feels as she witnesses her child's first tumbly walk. I resolved to stay on campus until I wrap my head around the fact that I won't be coming back there anymore, at least not in the same way, not to attend classes and not to fight endlessly for basic understanding and courtesy. Closure didn't come, and although my lungs registered the fact by successive bursts of audible air, my mind didn't. I was mostly numb, save for fleeting smiles that crossed my face every once in a while, not staying long, not understanding why they were there in the first place, not remembering. It's not as melancholy as it's coming out, perhaps. What I'm trying to say is, throughout the buzz of emotions blurring by and barely making themselves comfortable before they're interrupted by commercial breaks of numbness, the one that kept coming back and overstaying its welcome was anxiety.
I would have thought it would wait a couple of months, or rather that I could make it wait for a couple of months. The effort is like going up against a brick wall with a liberal mindset, trying to talk it out of the impending onslaught of rocks coming its way and its silence making you rethink your rocks in the first place. The wall is winning. The wall doesn't care.
What next?
What now?
I never really learned to sit still you know. I don't know how to take a break, not one without a deadline anyway. How do people rest if naps aren't snatched? How do people have fun if time off isn't a prelude to...time-on?
The realization is too big to register in one go. How does one register that they've graduated? It's abstract.
The small revelations hit me every now and then, as I rummage for stuff in my purse or look for a missing link, as I brush my teeth or find out that I've run out of snacks for the next day, and in my sleep, in nightmares and odd situations that I don't understand for days. Small bites of ideas, like "This vacation ends when you say so" or "How are you gonna live alone if you're still scared of the dark?" or "What if you can't make rent one of those months?" or "What if you're stuck in the same job for ages and can't leave it because rent is on the line?"
Revelations like "How am I gonna pack all those books? Will I have to get rid of my books? How does one hire movers?" or "If I take that job I'll need a car. How will I afford a car?" or "How do people do taxes in here anyway?" or "I'll need to start a bank account to receive my paychecks now." or "It'll be full-time jobs from here on in, what are they like? Will I walk them off or take months to adjust? What happens if I don't adjust?"
Others like "I'll have to learn how to cook, I can't afford to eat out everyday."
And more frightening ones like "What if things go wrong?"
And the scariest of which perhaps are "What if things don't go at all?"
"What if I can't find a job that I like? What if I never end up in my field? What if I can't find a job?"
And the revelation that now it's called "unemployed", not "on summer break."
But what marks it are the things you can't have, because you're old enough to see priorities straight. And the things you can't have because you'll have to save up for and be your own support. Things that will have to wait. Things that you've been waiting for, for years. Things that have kept you going and got you out of bed for four years.
Only few days ago I had my life mapped out, knew what I wanted and had an idea about what I had to do to get there. But I was only a child.
4 days ago, I was only a child.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)