More Than Okay
It will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay.
As I lie in bed, wrapped in the safety of my blanket burrito, I religiously repeat these four words in my head like a nightly prayer. It’s my Hail Mary attempt to silence the 1001 future what-if scenarios racing through my mind.
What if I don’t find a job that I love? What if I have to go back to school? What if I have to live under my mother’s roof until I’m 30? What if I just pack up my bags and go?
What if? What if? What if?
This voice of anxiety seems to get louder and louder as graduation day approaches. I always thought of myself as a person who hits the ground running, but right now, it feels like I’ve fallen flat on my face.
You see, my last year of journalism school hasn’t been anything like I expected it to be. From classes to full-time internships, late nights at the school’s paper, a long distance relationship and what seems to be a never-ending job hunt, I’ve never been so drained in my life.
In this sleep-deprived state, I’m in awe as I witness my peers do it all. Celebrations of incredible new big-kid jobs and acceptances into competitive graduate schools. Elaborate trips all over the world. Bylines on the front pages of the country’s best newspapers. Engagement rings.
We’re the same age, I think to myself. How are you doing all of this?
Just like geometry or parallel parking, perhaps this fear of my post-grad future will be something I won’t ever fully understand. I’m proud of my achievements and the adventures my degree has brought me but I’m equally terrified and excited not knowing what’s in store for my future.
I do my best to be brave and embrace this uncertainty but if I’m being honest, sometimes the stress of it all just makes me want to cry. And so I do. I turn on my playlist of favourite heart-wrenching acoustic Coldplay songs and let it all out. It’s in this dramatic state that I remind myself that even though I’m just now entering this new post-grad life, it hasn’t been the first time where I’ve been in this purgatory of in-between before.
Four years ago I was an over-achieving high school student, terrified of not knowing if I’d get accepted into my dream school. Two winters ago I was as equally frustrated about my study abroad applications and would fret for hours about being unsure of where in the world I’d end up. In all of these instances, the universe had a way of working things out in a way better than I could have ever dreamt for myself. If that was the case then, then why not now?
After all, it will be more than just okay. It will be better than anything I can even imagine.
[Photo by Juliette Kibodeaux.]
