What happens now? I ask myself. I’ve graduated college now, but I don’t think it has actually hit me yet. Honestly, it just feels like I’ve come home for the summer, steadily unpacking my things. I’m waiting out a month before I usually leave for camp around mid-June. This is usually what happens. I hang around the house listlessly in tie-dye shirts and sweatpants. I don’t really do anything besides eating, or watching Netflix. This is the time that I take for myself to be lazy and recharge after tirelessly working my body mentally and physically after a year. It feels familiar and like a welcome old habit.
Then, there’s that nagging voice in the back of my head and usually echoed by my mom. What are you going to do? What are your plans? And soon, I’ll end up at summer barbeques, or dinners with friends, where I’ll be asked the same question. I get that sweaty pool in the middle of my back every time. The anxiety will soon gnaw away at me. It feels weird to think that I have only been home for four days now. A week since this article is published. Forever. I find myself typing these words, but it really doesn’t hit me.
So, what does happen? For me, I’m still living day-by-day. I finally put away two suitcases. Which means I have my deodorant back in my cubby above my dresser. And all my clothing that I usually wear are all in my dresser. It’s different though, since we’re in the middle of changing our house a bit. My sister and I, who have shared a room for more than 15 years, are finally getting our own room and moving out my dad’s stuff to make room for our own that has accumulated over the years is a bit hectic. Our house feels cluttered and claustrophobic at times. One night, I couldn’t even shut the door to my room at night, because two suitcases were open-faced, one cabinet blocked my window, three boxes were shoved in and there was a drying rack right at my door. It feels weird to me that after 22 years, none of the stuff that I have has drowned me.
As I unpack, I think about how I can’t seem to let go of any of these clothes. Some of the dresses I have, I haven’t worn in a year. But does that mean that I need to get rid of them? Do these dresses represent this different version of myself that I no longer want a part of? As these existential questions run through my head, I scroll through Instagram to look at my friends still in Ithaca, enjoying post-grad festivities. They still haven’t let go of that physical space of Ithaca, even though we have to all at some point or another. I just did it earlier. The thing is, even though I’ve let go of the physical space, the emotional hold that my college years have on me is still something that I can and never will let go. I hope to never look back on it as the best years of my life, but I would like to look back on it as the time that I was forced to grow up, or made the best friends, or made the most reckless decisions.
These memories that run through my head now are almost keeping me from getting to that next step, which for me, seems like getting a job, earning a steady paycheck and paying off my student loans. Those seem like three steps, but essentially become a single bigger picture. It seems like I do know what my next step is. I do know what is supposed to happen next. But when is it the right time to stop looking back into my dream-like childhood and take the step forward into adulthood?
