There are so many things I didn’t do, should have done, could have done. It is now the end. Licenses will expire, there are papers to sign, dues to pay. Out I go, through the door and on my way into the big blue world to everything and nothingness. This period of blue has painted my insides crazy hues and left me wide eyed and a bit scared. How can I swim if I’ve only ever learned the theory of flotation? Tried treading water for short periods of time? How do they expect me to keep my head up, so soon? I enter the world of work, one I have studied, participated in, awaited for so long.
I remember my sophomore year, while working the grueling hours of my first internship, being asked over and over again: so when do you graduate? The question was repeated countless times through the years. Along with the other common introductory phrases and questions. It was like receiving the same present for your birthday from multiple people: you could prep your response and acting was key. And now it is here. Finally. But also, for the first time, it,the long awaited it, is really here. It’s frightening to have it so near, to be so real. To be quite honest, I am afraid. And these crazy swirling colors inside me are making me nauseous.
The structure of school is being torn away. The ladder I’ve so easily climbed since youth will be yanked away. How should I be expected climb? The thing is, I know that I can do it, but the prospect, what I have been working and coming towards is so much grander as it looms, as it nears.
And that’s just how time works. Tricky bastard, making fools out of us all. Rather easily of me. I’ve come to love my life, settled; I’ve found my fit. Even so, I am anxious and need to move. Either way, the permanence of the upcoming year has added to my anxiety. Lease signed, job confirmed: why am I complaining? But to hear my own voice? I am genuinely nervous. My routines, my schedules, my security of familiarity will disappear. Time keeps moving on. I will face this fear, this newness as I have faced it in other forms, times before.
Gabriella Gini 