and that's a wrap!
Cutting your own bangs is never a good idea. Not even the second time. Don’t even try it.
This is what I wish I would have told myself on the eve of the 2010s. Alas, I suffered the consequences.
We’ve reached the end of another decade, which means that people who most likely never finished let alone touched their copy of The Great Gatsby during high school are throwing “Roaring 20s” themed New Year’s parties and saying they’re going to “party like Gatsby.” Unless you want to pine for your married lost love and end up dead in a pool, I’d recommend checking Sparknotes instead before taking that prolonged sip of White Claw. As far as my generation is concerned, F. Scott Fitzgerald may as well have invented the phrase “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”
It’s been a while. Over two months, to be exact. During that time, I’ve not only been haunted by the fact that I need to get a blog post out, but I’ve turned 23 and graduated college. And managed to squeeze in a day trip to New York and Detroit.
“I’m so excited to READ! Maybe I’ll buy a plant! A Monstera, preferably. They’re so pretty. Also, I started looking at online certification programs for editing—”
“You need to relax, babe,” my boyfriend said. “Take some time. You just graduated yesterday.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do with myself.” Moments earlier I was speaking with such feverish excitement I felt as if my eyes were bulging out of their sockets.
This was the day after I graduated. Since then, I’ve spent my time gorging myself silly on ice cream cake, listening to Harry Styles’ new album, tuning in and out of the impeachment hearings, watching Broad City and cackling to myself in my empty apartment (my roommate was away doing holiday shows with her Irish dance company), looking at adoptable cats, and celebrating the holidays with my family. At work, I caught myself panicking about getting home too late to finish an assignment that was due at midnight, and realized nothing of that nature existed anymore.
Being the sentimental Scorpio I am, I thought I would cry when I turned in my final English paper. Instead, awkward sniffling ensued when I was waiting to line up in the back of the stadium on the day of commencement. I was a combination of relieved, astonished, and bloated (from all the gluttonous binge-eating with my family the night before and at brunch). I just barely survived my eighteen credit semester by the skin of my teeth, which resulted in an upped dosage of my antidepressants. Needless to say, these past few months have been messier than I had originally anticipated—it was not a “real hot girl fall” so I did not honor Megan Thee Stallion’s prophecy. But I made it to the other side. While it’s a huge relief unlike any other I’ve experienced, my days now resemble blank pages. To this extent I understand now why people go to grad school.
I guess you could say my current job is answering the “So, now what?” question when people discover I’ve just finished college. Truthfully, there is no right way to satisfy the slip of those three words. My job search has almost reached the three-month mark, including two phone interviews with recruiters that didn’t lead to anything promising. Sigh. I’ve had people tell me that it’s okay to not have everything figured out right away, and while I appreciate the reassurance, it’s still frustrating. I suppose what I’m most afraid of at this point is settling.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Master of None and how Aziz Ansari tied The Bell Jar’s fig tree metaphor to his predicament in the season one finale. In a sense we are all haunted by indecisiveness, and the fear of missing out on something that could be much bigger than what path we end up choosing for ourselves. The only thing we’re comforted by is the knowledge of moving forward, and at times even that isn’t enough.
My paper for my senior seminar in English was about medical malpractice and mental illness among women in American Literature. While most of my work entailed analyzing “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the history of hysteria and what that word does to a woman’s credibility in the medical field, I also studied domesticity in the time periods of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Sylvia Plath. During the nineteenth century, women who wanted to pursue interests outside of marriage (i.e. education and politics) were referred to as “citybred” women. Marriage was more of an economic proposition than a romantic one. Whereas in the time of Sylvia Plath, marriage was a goal. Or rather, having a family was a goal. One of the main points of my paper was that domesticity failed the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Plath. In different contexts, yes, but still. By writing this, I’m not at all implying that marriage is a trap, or that we lose something, a part of ourselves, when we choose to settle down, but that’s what the paradox of the fig tree suggests.
At the start of each year I always say that I want to do more—write more, read more, etc. And most of the time I don’t follow through, or at least not in the way I planned. It’s hard.
I’ve expressed many times throughout these past few months that I “can’t wait to be a person” when school is over. The past four and a half years have been defined by deadlines and exams, long hours in the library, and packing up my belongings and moving to interchangeable homes. So I suppose it’s safe to say that my main goal for 2020 is figuring out who I am without the label of “student.” There’s a lot that I want to do, and while I know that not getting to do everything I want in this world is inevitable, I can’t let the fear of that fact hinder my growth.
That being said, here’s to the future, however unclear it may be right now.
Wishing you all a happy new year,
Grace