Graduation Series
10/28 – flight back home from Canada
I was going to start this with a title – but decided not to for two main reasons. One reason being that I am not too sure what the rest of this will be about but two being that I would be limited. Ironically, this has not traditionally been a concern for me—limitation. I have not traditionally thought about limitations to the degree that I have since May—since graduation but so much has happened since that I have had no other option than to explore the limitations that exist—that I have set myself up to believe in and those that I have perpetuated.I like writing and have had a blog on and off and recently thought came across a wild idea. I don’t think this is the time to explore that idea although that idea required me to encourage others that “now “ is always a good time. Contradictory. I know. But I have been in the most conflicted phase of my life and my main objective --- I think intentionally—is to find peace in the contradiction.
Since graduation, I have learned a few things. Probably more things than I learned in my four years of my Carolina experience so I will try to jot down some of my “semi” conclusions – in hopes of being able to continue to delve deeper into this place of discovery as I continue to live as much as I can—day by day.
Independence is underrated. I am the oldest of seven children so by nature of the situation, I had to play big sister (and sometimes mom) for the majority of my life. I think this was the greatest contributing factor to my false sense of independence. As I grew up, and began learning more about myself—I knew that I loved to laugh and I loved to make those around me laugh. This is probably the main contributing factor to my false sense of completion. Being alone, as important as I now know it is, was never something I ever had to face. I was always in one way or another, with people and that always made me feel “complete. I didn’t realize that the desire to be surrounded crippled me from realizing my actual fear of being alone. In May, I graduated—and with graduation, I had to move away from my best friends, my line sisters, my classmates and in a sense, my comfort zone. The day after graduation, my boyfriend and I of three (+) years broke up---- and I entered into what I can now realize was a dark, lonely stage of my life. I felt as if I was literally, and in every sense of the word, separated from everything that made me happy ….. and in these months, I had to learn that I was enough—and that I could stand on my own two feet and be complete in the woman that God made me. That I could wake up each morning, regardless of how hard it was to fall asleep with an optimism to make it through another day. This (being right now) is also where I am learning the difference between being alone and being lonely. Discovering that these two thing are very different has been extremely liberating – however, discovering the difference does not make the blurred line that sometime occurs between the two any easier to navigate. And that has been the biggest challenge for me. But—like I said, I find it ironic how I was conditioned to be in spaces that would force independence—but only truly began to discover independence once I was forced outside of those spaces.
Life doesn’t care about what you expected. Live anyways. I wouldn’t say that I have lived the most predictable life but I have usually always worked/prayed hard for what I wanted and that has followed a semi consistent result/output. Certainly this hasn’t always been the case, I don’t believe that it is for anyone, but I personally could not predict the first few months out of college to pan out the way they did. As a matter of fact, if someone told me that I would be where I am now, I would not (literally would not) have believed them. I was on a certain path, I knew who was in my life, I had a semi gathered idea of what things would look like – and I was absolutely and ridiculously wrong. Like wow. I can laugh at the contrast between that picture of what I thought and what is. BUT the challenge has been finding peace with the picture that is instead of constantly questioning why the picture didn’t look like what I envisioned.