In less than a week, I will have graduated, and I will see many of my classmates for the last time. A few months later, many of my good friends will be leaving on two-year mission trips. Soon after, more will depart for college. Then I will be alone. Yes, I will have my girlfriend and a smattering of friends still in town for work or school, but my network will be gone. I will go to work, then go home and eat dinner with my parents, and then I will go to work again and come home and sit alone in my room until I shake myself and finally relent to sleep's susurration. Then I will do it over and over and over again, for half a year, until it is finally time for me to go to college. And there, I will be alone again. I will have one friend there, but that's not much. Maybe I'll make new friends, but I don't have much of a good track record with that sort of thing, and how can those compare to the storied friendships of my childhood companions?
I mean, sure, maybe things will turn out okay. But I'm usually right about this sort of thing. Maybe that makes me a self-fulfilling human prophecy, or maybe it makes me clairvoyant. It's true that I never really envisioned my present life; I never even thought I would make it to graduation. I did, however, predict that I would be feeling miserable, lonely, and terrified of the future, and I guess this post is proof that I was right. Maybe it's proof I'll never really be happy (of course, I include the word “really” because it allows me to “No-True-Scotsman” any happiness I do feel as not “real” happiness).
I don't try to be unhappy. I don't try to be hurt by other people's thorns, or by the rhythm of my own chest. But it happens anyways. Does that make me weak in a way? Whatever the case, I've sort of stopped talking about it to the people in my life; they don't want to hear it anyways. So I'm here instead (as if this blog were a place), lamenting the future by writing empty words into a faceless dearth. It doesn’t matter who I talk to, who hears it or not. It changes nothing. Everyone leaves, anyway. Eventually I will leave them too. If anyone does come back, who knows what they will find if they stumble into my room. Pieces of my former self, a discarded molt, or something else? That's something my clairvoyance can't tell me.
I guess that's the thing that makes me want to vomit. Unpredictability. The shifting winds, the inconstancy of life. The question that sneaks into every goodbye: “When will I see you again? Will I ever?” An inability to not only prevent the ground from disappearing beneath me, but also to predict what will come next. Does everyone feel that uncertainty? Maybe all the overthinkers do. Does everyone, like me, just ignore those feelings and press on and pretend it's okay to say their goodbyes, as if we are not leaving behind a piece of our heart every time a friend exits our doorway, a family member turns back home, or we start down a new path of our life? I don't want to say goodbye. I want to live in all the little moments that do make me happy. Sitting with friends on a mountaintop, driving in the dark and singing my heart out, embracing my girlfriend, laughing with my family. I know they're special because they end, but I also know what comes after. Because that's the only thing my clairvoyance really ever tells me (it's a pretty crappy form of clairvoyance): that every time I feel a little bit okay or content, everything will change and I will be left adrift and alone.
That's the word I use all the time–adrift. I'm terrified that's all I'll be after I graduate. And maybe everyone's at least a little adrift, but they all seem to be handling it a little bit better than I do. Unless everyone is secretly miserable and I'm selfishly wasting time pretending my misery is worth all these words. Or maybe they're words that need to be written. Maybe they're words that need to burst out like venom sucked from a wound, words that can then touch my own, tiny corner of the world and Internet.
I do accept that I'm not the first one to feel all of these things. I know there's a million other kids feeling the same things, or worse, and that makes me feel a little bit less lonely, but mostly it makes me more miserable to imagine other kids grappling with these things. I mean, they're kids (yes, my peers are now 18, but I think my point stands). They don't deserve that pain of not knowing how to continue with life, of being unmoored and alone. I know because I didn't deserve that pain. It always makes me want to cry when I think about it. I, whether it was the version of me from a few months ago or two years ago, was just a kid, and I didn't deserve to feel the pain I'm feeling now. Pain I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, felt by my younger, less experienced self. It makes me want to hug him. And it makes me want to hug all of the other kids feeling the same things right now. It makes me want to reach through time and hug all of the other kids throughout history who felt the same way. And don't even get me started on the adults who feel the same way; at least with teenagers, people expect them to be a little depressed, especially on the verge of big milestones. Adults do not get that luxury. So when I write these words, I lament my own feelings, I lament the feelings of my past self, and I lament every other soul who relates or has related to me.
Aha, but that's the solution, right? The fact that these are feelings so many other people go through, and that they make it through somehow is encouraging, right? Maybe. But some people feel all of these things and do not make it. We just don't hear about it, because they no longer have a voice with which to tell their story.
My very first blog post was about the song “Valentine's Day” and those perfect things in life that speak to you. And I was writing about hope and the beauty of life, but I was also writing about loneliness. Now, I am writing by far my most vulnerable post (so, thank you for reading this far), and it's all boiling down to loneliness again. Yes, it's about the uncertainty of the future and the terrible unavoidability of goodbyes, but the reason those scare me so much is because I'm afraid loneliness is what comes after. I think I've written myself into a corner, though, because I don't have anything reassuring to say about loneliness. Yes, I can say we are never alone or that it's okay to be alone or something, but that all rings hollow to me. So when I graduate, I will not think about my loneliness. I will simply ignore it, and linger in the doorway as I say goodbye, hoping it will all come back around.
I apologize for being so disjointed, for going back and forth and all around and not really getting anywhere. This post was a bit more akin to a diary entry than anything, I guess. Thanks for reading it all the way through if you did.
”It's a friend you've known so well, and for so long you just let it be with you, and it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day or phone in a day, and it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with LeVar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will." - Abed Nadir, Community
