Here's the official tally!
I remember almost two years ago, in
late fall of 2010, my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table. In the midst of
directing a play for my high school and keeping my head afloat in Trigonometry,
I was in tears, distraught over the amount of stress I was under. It was the
time when most teens were visiting campuses, finalizing their college decisions
and sending out applications, and I could barely handle the present. For weeks
I was physically incapable of breathing deeply; the stress rattled me to my
core. Watching me fall apart from across the table, she hit on a rather
unexpected solution: take a gap year. As she explained the idea to me, I began
to visibly relax. I would take a year off after graduation, get a job, research
colleges, have the time to figure out what was right for me, and most
importantly, free myself up to excel Senior year. Within thirty seconds, we
made a decision that altered the course of my life. A carefully planned break
from formal education. A Gap Year.
That gap year has now come to a
close and in less than twelve hours I will have my life altered again. Much
like I had no idea what to expect after graduation, tomorrow I am moving up to
Richmond, Virginia to start a new life at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Finding the right school and figuring out how to afford it wasn’t easy, but
with a lot of perseverance, the pieces fell together and the peace flooded over
my family.
At VCU
As you know, I created this blog to
keep myself occupied and on track with the things I wanted to accomplish. I
crossed a lot of goals off the list, started work on others, and thought about
some after a few months and said, “Nahhhh, not gonna happen.”
I would have liked to have been
more artistic this year; I hardly painted or drew a single thing. I didn’t
finish my beautiful art studio, didn’t write nearly as much as I wanted and my
new moleskin sketchbooks are still as empty as the day I bought them. I really
wanted to learn to sew and start creating garments, start a business around it maybe,
but I don’t even have a sewing machine.
It’s funny, all the things it would
have been nice to accomplish I could do totally alone, completely isolated.
There’s probably a reason why I didn’t devote myself to those things. I won’t
lie to you. Several times over this year, especially in the fall when all my
friends went to college, I struggled with penetrating loneliness. When you go
from work to home, work to home, you realize how healthy it was in high school
to see your best friends every day.
Suddenly I felt myself living life
online. My friends became robots. I see them through pixels on a computer
screen and people only know of me what I allow them to see on my facebook page
or blog. For the first time in my life, I let myself be hurt by cowardly actions
done entirely online. I was shocked by how hurt I was. Sticks and stones may
break my bones, and apparently facebook statuses also can hurt me. I was
embarrassed that I did not value myself more than that. When my grandmother began
to go downhill, I spent more time at her bedside and less on my computer. Faced
with the death of a warm, beautiful, living soul, the online world entirely
lost its allure.
My Grandmother, Emily and I
When I set out on this adventure, I
knew I would learn, grow and experience life in ways I could not begin to
predict. Hence, the last and most important goal I set for myself; find the beauty in this world. The
admittedly brilliant commercials for Google Chrome and Bing will make you think
you can find it online, but you can’t. The web may be what you make of it, but
your life and those around you are what you make of them. Social media is
supposed to make you care more about people, but in actuality, it makes you
care less. I find myself resenting
friends because of statuses about Chik Fil A or the frequency of their updates.
They annoy me online. When my
grandmother passed away a week ago, my notifications skyrocketed with people
wishing me their condolences. Mrs. Deavers is the only one who picked up a
phone to call me, and it meant more than any comment on facebook.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Do
you remember the days when you ran into an old friend and asked what they were
up to because you didn’t know, not out of politeness? Do you remember the days
when people passed beautifully and poignantly in and out of our lives instead
of gathering cyber dust in the far corners of our friend pages? Does the fact
that we can still “see” them lessen the importance of our memories? I believe
it does.
Like most humans who willingly
admit it, I am constantly engaged in battle against my vanity. The whole sphere
of social media I am involved in only serves as a mirror of myself. I see new
followers, comments, likes, friend requests and interactions as reflections of
how awesome I must be. It has gotten ridiculously out of hand.
This year I have found all the
beauty and meaning I need in the laughter of good friends around a full table
and in the sound of stifled tears around the casket of a beloved, great lady. That is life. It doesn’t take any effort
to be friends with someone on facebook. Creating long lasting friendships that
defy age and transcend technology? Now that
is hard work. Those are the kind of relationships I want.
This year I have been the happiest
in the company of The Most Interesting Women in the World, listening to the
Temper Trap lost on country roads with Sarah, eating Reese’s ice cream while
watching a storm roll in with Scotty, during the many, many times my best
friend Brenna has rescued me from myself, watching fireworks with Lizzy, eating
pizza while laughing and crying with my beloved family the night my grandmother
died, and embraced in the hugs of my friends from work.
This year, at one point or another,
has touched the furthest ends of the Amazing to Horrible scale. Sometimes life
is going along smoothly and you’re happy and sometimes your whole world comes
to a screeching halt. This summer alone has been the worst summer of my life,
but you know what? You cry, you laugh, you get stressed out, you get so mad you
want to throttle people, you turn the other cheek, you connect with someone,
you step on eggshells, you confide in people you shouldn’t, and someone you
love will floor you with how much they love you back… Life is made up of
periods of blissful happiness followed by times of unbearable sadness, and
sometimes they’re all mixed up with each other. The best we can do is love one
another, care for those in need, and continue to search for the beauty in this
world.
It’s been a thrill, the time of my
life, and if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Whatever
the circumstance, whatever the joy or the pain, I can never be out of the will
of God. The experiences of my gap year, both monumental and seemingly
insignificant, have changed my worldview and shaped me as a person in ways I
understand now and in ways I think I’ll be waiting to understand for a long
time to come! But you know what I have to do now. I have to end with my
favorite quote: I am a part of all that I
have met.
Now that I won't have a facebook, keep up with me at www.ifiwereartemis.com
