Tag Archives: graduating college

32 Lessons 2012 Taught Me

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When 2012 rolled around, I knew it was going to be life-changing. Every year is. But I’d set myself up for lesson after lesson, moment after moment, and my world was just completely and utterly never the same. There are still (only?) two months left, but I have to share this lessons I’ve learned in just ten months.

Some are sad. Some are sweet. Some might make you laugh. But all, all are true.

1. Just when you think you’ve grown up, you grow up ten times more.
2. It only takes about 30 minutes to go from complete strangers to ridiculously good friends.
3. My sister still loves me.
4. Not everyone understands why you’d blog to connect, blog for free, blog because you can’t imagine not blogging. But that’s OK.
5. Living alone is not mildly anything. It’s terrifying.
6. If you want to stand on your couch, stand on it. It’s yours.
7. Community lies in our collective anxieties
8. There is no shame in working your butt off.
9. Nobody has it all figured out. No. Body.
10. People actually buy shoes because they’re cute.
11. It’s probably wise not to install a Target app on your iPhone. If, you know, you want to save money.
12. My sister had it right: wear sweats or make a concerted effort, but no in-between.
13. Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I can’t trash talk.
14. Friends who text at 1 a.m. are friends, even if you’ve never hugged them.
15. Suicide isn’t just a teen issue; it’s a human issue.
16. When you believe in something so much your stomach aches, people will sit up and listen.
17. You cannot die from excitement.
18. The Church is everywhere. And it loves you.
19. I should’ve been nicer to my mom all those years ago.
20. Doing yoga poses while watching an NFL game will have no bearing on the outcome.
21. Some books hold within them both tears and laughter.
22. You can walk a dog in the rain, even if you’ve never walked a dog before.
23. Not all eggplant parmesan sandwiches are created equal.
24. It takes less than three days to fall in love with a dog.
25. Just because you thought about a song, turned the radio on, and it was on doesn’t mean you’re psychic.
26. I don’t know the world. Not even a fraction of it.
27. My family knows me better than I’d like to believe.
28. Don’t make blueberry muffins if you don’t like blueberries.
29. No matter how many almonds you eat, your face can still break out if you’re stressed.
30. Pinterest is the only reason I actually know how to dress myself.
31. If the world ends in December, at least I learned how to organize my scarf collection.
32. A year ago, none of this was possible.

I’m seriously dying to know: what did you learn this year? 

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I am just a dot on the spinner of a Twister board.

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Her voice breaks for the first time when I tell her I’m not living with her over the summer. That I am carting 1,460 days’ worth of Home back to the Home that held me close for four times that long. The Home that knows when I am there, that smells like sausage and peppers and onions simmering on the stove. Like risen pizza dough with giant air bubbles popped with wooden spoons. The Home that held my tears for sixteen years of failures and Almosts and Not Good Enoughs.

It is not that I cannot stay, because I can. It is not that she thinks I need to stay, because she doesn’t. It is the thing that happens when we grow like weeds to wrap our limbs around each other on dark December nights playing board games in the living room.

Left Foot Red. Right Hand Green. Left Hand Blue. Right Foot Yellow.

Until we are a weaved tapestry of bodies, no longer eight legs walking in different directions but one knot vying for the same direction: The Future.

The thing that makes us forget We Are Not One Entity but four people who did not know the other existed four years ago. Who may never have met had someone kept me close to home, had pushed her to pursue her true dreams.

And even if we had, even if the four of us had ended up in the same city on the same campus in the same hall, we may never have spoken a single word except one those first few days when they pushed us into each other and told us to break into conversation.

As if it is easy to slide on up to a stranger from the south, when you are a homesick Northerner who barely knew how to make friends in her own hometown for eighteen years. And now, they want her to introduce herself to strangers whose first words—in a state school in a different state—might be, “Wait, you aren’t from Virginia?!”

We could not have known we’d sit on sticky white-blanketed boards in living room floors and wobble in contorted positions until our legs forgot how to bend that way. Until our arms ached from the strain. Until we had to say goodbye because we could not push any further.

I can apologize to her for the next five months and it will not be enough. There are no words to explain to the girl who didn’t plan on finding a friend that she is now losing one of her limbs.

She thinks she needs a pair of crutches to hobble around without this Leg Lifting Her Into Tomorrow. Without this Arm Tugging Her Past Today.

She does not. She has been doing it for eighteen years.

I am not an amputated limb. I am just a dot on the spinner of a Twister board, challenging her to stretch for me someday in the future. But only if she wants to. Only if she wants to play the game.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

She carries a compass in her pocket and a Sureness in her step.

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Kerry DeVito of I’ve Got Roses

I couldn’t tell you how I stumbled upon Kerry’s blog, only that I couldn’t stop nodding my head with every single sentiment she’d typed. Every single thought she’d pasted onto her computer screen. Every single worry and fear.

She reminds me of myself, if that’s possible, since she’s out in the post-grad world, maneuvering her way through the abyss that opens up the minute you wrestle that silky gown off your newly-graduated self.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say she reminds me of the person I imagine my future self to be. The person I see standing on a quad in five months. The person I see lugging cardboard boxes full of things I thought I had to have in that tiny ten by ten room for three years.

But it’s not just that fear and energy and, for me at least, anxiety, that pins her down as someone I could see myself falling into step with. It’s a determination, a knowledge, an assurance that what comes next may not unfold itself in the seconds after you arrive home for the last time, no plans to exit the town again after summer break.

It’s a compass that points in one direction more than half the time and wavers occasionally in between. It’s like she’s carrying it around inside her jeans pockets, clasping it in her palm when her nerves start racing that she’s not got it all figured out just yet. She knows, I think, that that’s more than all right. Normal, even.

Not that she’s settling for Normal.

No, no, no. I have a feeling Kerry’s got her eye on trampling this world with her Big Ideas and Sureness that Good will always trump Evil. And sadly, that’s on the small side of the scale, the not-so-attractive conviction, but she’s got it.

And, I think, she’s given me the ammunition I need to push through the cold, dry winter and into the thawing spring until I am sitting in a fold-up plastic chair on a bright green lawn in the middle of a town I knew for a while. Until I am Home, wherever that Home becomes, until I have found the key to open the lock that keeps me from painting this world all sorts of colors with words and thoughts and heart.

So no, you will not have it all tied with a ribbon post-graduation, but Kerry’s taught me that if I have a compass, I will be fine just fine.

[Lesson 1: Hannah Brencher]
[Lesson 2: Katie Colihan]
[Lesson 3: Tehrene Firman]
[Lesson 4: Emily Dubin]

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.