I don’t remember who said it, or who I heard it from telling me they told them. What I do remember is the actual sentence. I had never really dwelt upon it, not even as most of my friends graduated last year, but “senioritis” (hoping my attempt at spelling it isn’t treacherous) did not really cross my mind as something real, something that had force, and above all, something that pretty much shell shocks you as you see the end of the tunnel that has been life and academia. Therefore, when someone coined the phrase “Diego really is senioritis incarnate” as I ate my lunch in the dining hall, it just sort of sat there in my brain and slowly started to develop into quite the introspection.

I had always dealt with not really trusting myself. I say dealt because in some occasions it is just me and my thoughts I have to work with, but other times third parties get mixed in and the hurricane in my head goes from a category one to a five in seconds. When I was younger I think I learned to take self doubt and just put it away, far, far down and let it sit there while I played video games, watched ridiculous amounts of movies, and eat all the comfort food I wanted. I did not deal with it, and now that I have more time to myself and have found better things to spend my time on, I feel the fear brewing inside me once again.

I have been at college for three and a half years now. Three and a half years have gone by and one thing is for certain: The only reason yesterday was not Freshman Year Move In Day is because this morning I awoke to a blizzard closing down my school and putting a dent in my attempts to hit the gym as daily as possible instead of it being about 90 and sunny out, as it was once in my Freshman Year moving into my first dorm I had ever lived in. But in those three years I think I was too busy enjoying life and finally being able to be as much of Diego as I could be, rather than hunker down and suck up as much knowledge as possible before being thrown out into the fray that is adulthood.

To be completely honest with you, I am shitting myself everyday thinking how graduation comes closer and closer with each sunset and sunrise, and I cannot help but feel unprepared. I am not where I thought I would be when it comes to my major and my comfort with it. I feel like I know nothing. I know I have taken classes, and the grades are set in stone as proof that I did, but the knowledge is not there as I thought it would be. I am a marksman with no rifle. A hunter with no bow. I could talk all day about sailing and reading the current, and knowing where fish are out at sea. But I land a fish on my line, I would not know what to do once it’s on deck, flopping around like crazy as I try to grab the slippery bastard.

My fears before where much more simple and much more personal. I used to be afraid of what people thought of me, of how I looked physically. I used to be afraid of never finding someone that liked me enough to utter “I love you”,or even find people that thought I was cool to hang with instead of being the guy that just tagged along. I used to be afraid of never leaving home and staying in a country that I had felt like I had lived in too long. I was afraid of not graduating High school with good enough grades so my parents wouldn’t go ballistic on my ass. I feared talking to girls, or sharing my thoughts because of how weird they would sound to people. Even to this day I fear I might not finish my thesis and get as good grades in college as I was supposed to. I fear losing contact with friends that I thought to be as close to blood relatives of my own as an only child could ever get. But now, apart from all these simple fears, heavier more complex ones have been stacked on.

I can’t tell if it makes me a coward, or a quitter or just straight up submissive, but I fear I am not good enough to excel. I feel it in my gut, how I am destined to fail and end up in life somewhere unhappy, settled in to a routine to get by only to make it to the next numbing drink I can get at a bar as I bitch about my job, my family and my life. I fear adult depression. I fear graduating and going up to a company and having to sell myself to someone who is looking to make a good addition to their enterprise.

I don’t know if I am depressed or not. I do not know if I am being a downer or not. I sit at night, and think about how proactive I have to be the next day and list all the things I have to do. I wake, go to the gym, eat, and when I sit down to try an do work, doubt floods my system, and this Noah has no Arc of his own. It is hard being around people that have their shit together to the point that you know they will be perfectly fine finding a job, a place to live, and actually start to blossom as an individual that has something to look forward to everyday. I fear I will settle for the job that ends up paying more than what I used to make, and settle for a dull routine that takes down everyone around me as I go through life dragging my feet because my dreams are long gone and the drinks are closer. Where the beauty emanating from art, music and people is no longer seen.

But most of all, above all of this selfish shit that clutters my mind; I am horrified about the thought of hurting the people I love the most. I do not want to disappoint, and I do not want to cause harm. I do not want to be the ship everyone goes down with. I do not want to fail them, let alone myself. These past three and a half years have been the most I have ever come to know and love myself, and now that the endgame is near, I feel like I haven’t gotten to where I am supposed to be so I land on my feet. All of these thoughts sprouting out like weeds all across my head without me even noticing, suddenly coming on like waves with no place in between to take a breath. Hell, maybe this senioritis thing is real… ~ad astra ultraque