endings--late tuesday night musings

well, as fast as it came and went, my undergraduate career at UM is over. [and WOW, can you ever tell that I've been studying a lot lately in this picture.] I'd like to have some wonderfully profound and yet clever and somehow hilarious comments to add to this, but honestly, it hasn't even really sunk in yet that I'm graduated.

what seems to be happening is a syndrome that i like to think, egotistically, that i am the sole sufferer of, but in reality i believe is probably fairly common. i'm running. perhaps out of a fear of stopping to think what i'm leaving or perhaps because i'm so focused on what's ahead, i haven't even paused to think about what graduating signifies or what is happening here. i'm never going back to live in ann arbor again. if i have dorm food again, it'll probably be because i'm visiting a friend (unlikely) or a child (more likely, but hopefully much farther down the road).

at twenty years old, it's hard to leave the safe bubble that college at least partially is. sure, the threat of real life looms close, and some of us feel it more than others, but mostly, mom&dad are still there to catch you and your phone bill--and your groceries, if you're lucky--and instead of office drama, promotions, bills, and benefits, you have to worry about homework, professors, and group projects, which, if not pleasant, are at least familiar.

if you think about it, i've spent the last seventeen years of my life in school; different schools, same patterns. same teacher, homework, test routine. sometimes they get different names and they always get harder, but it's the same idea. this next step is completely different, completely foreign, and completely scary. and at once i'm so relieved that i don't have to do it alone and petrified at the additional, very complicated addition that getting married is.


I'm also calling this one "endings" because I'm promising myself to call any final wedding-related post "beginnings." it's very tempting to look at the wedding [because i am a fairly depressive, nostalgic personality] as an end [once again] to my childhood, my safe environment, my position as my parents' daughter, and my life here on the east side. and it is an end; but it is also the beginning of an adventure that i hope lasts for a very, very long time--we're talking diamond jubilee, here. as romantic as it is, though, the realist in me knows how very difficult, conflict-filled, and emotional the next few months, years, and decades will be. marriage is work!

but we'll make it work, and i'm still confident that my life will be fuller and happier with him than without.