Firsts and Lasts

Moving day is coming up very quickly. Chelsea and I went to Lake Powell recently, and during the trip someone mentioned that we were leaving in two weeks and it kind of floored me; I honestly didn't realize it was so close. We are now in the midst of having our last get-togethers with friends and family.

Saying goodbye to the young ones of the family is always the hardest part. I will miss the adult members of my family, too, of course, but I guess in those cases I know what I am missing. I have nieces and nephews ranging from eleven to two. For them, interests are beginning to form and solidify. Personalities are either beginning to shine through or are really starting to mature. I will miss a lot of their growing up these next three years.

I recently wrote a couple of paragraphs that are going to allow me to finally finish a story I have been working on for a while (and makes it so I have to change the tense of every single verb). They talk about the importance of firsts in life. Basically, they explore Gordie's assertion in Stand By Me that nobody has friends like the friends they had when they were twelve. You can meet all the people you can in your adult life, and tell them all the stories you want about the experiences that made you you, but no matter how well you tell it, they didn't experience it with you. Your new friends can never be there the first time.

When I say goodbye to the young ones I think about all the firsts I will miss, then I think about all the firsts I have already missed because maybe I wasn't trying to hard enough while I was still here, and so I vow to do better, and then I get angry because now I can't make good on my vow for another three years, and that makes saying goodbye that much harder.

Alumni

I graduated today (May 6^th). I have been so stressed lately with work and moving that I was having a hard time being excited or relieved about finishing my degree. There is something in me that doesn’t let me do excited. I show more emotion about having time to watch a game or go to a movie than I do about something like graduating from college. I was very happy today, although you couldn’t tell from looking at me. I am not sure what that is. The lack of outward emotion about something I accomplished probably comes from my stunted self-esteem which makes it difficult for me to give any credit to myself. Whatever I have done there is always someone that has done something cooler and better than I. This constant stream of thought is a real problem, and I have discussed it here before.

My family was very excited for today. Seeing their excitement was helpful because I could be happy that they were happy, but I still couldn’t share it, so I decided to leave early for campus, park at our now former apartment and walk up through campus for the last time alone. I put my headphones in and walked the path I had so many times before and my emotions started to arrive.

I walked by the patch of grass where I finished reading The God of Small Things and remembered how I had to hold back the tears while standing in line to pay for my lunch directly after because the book was so beautiful and so sad.

I walked through OSH one last time where most of my classes were held. As I walked through the unevenly air conditioned halls the difficulty of this accomplishment finally hit me. So much frustration and happiness occurred in that ugly building. I thought about the lectures and subjects that went over my head, the fight to understand, and then the attempts to write intelligently about them.

I laughed while thinking about the emails to my professor concerning my first ever twenty page paper. The paper seemed to be going nowhere and my professor compared my writing process to the Nine Circles of Hell. The paper was on Sydney’s Defense of Poesy and Astrophil and Stella. The grade for that class relied solely on that paper and I got an A. After that paper I finally began to feel that my education was coming together and that I actually sort of knew what I was doing.

I walked up the stairs and by the little store where I would stop and get breakfast every morning before my African American Lit class. I would usually end up in line next to my professor, and standing in line with him became a sort of pre-class ritual.

I walked by were I studied The Simpsons and then by the classroom where I wrote another twenty pages about Lord Byron’s Don Juan using Simpsons’ satire.

It finally hit me. I felt good about myself. I missed my college years and this stupid building that couldn’t decide if it wanted to sweat us out or freeze us numb and would spit steam at you if you dared mess with the thermostat. That’s not to say that I wanted to jump into another degree, because I didn’t, and don’t. I think it is healthy to be able to miss something without having the desire to go back, which is not always the case with me, and I enjoyed the feeling.