Final Thoughts on My Gap Year + Why I'm Deleting My Facebook

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