When I told people I was moving to Belize to volunteer at a Catholic high school, the responses were unique. Some people panicked at the thought of me getting Zika. My parents were shocked, but supported me. Friends were excited for me but also sad, and most of my friends’ parents asked me if it was safe where I would be staying. A select few still don't know where Belize is, or they still think I said Brazil.
Read MoreI had never been to a protest before. I had been content, I had been comfortable, I had been quiet in my place of privilege. I had cared, but just enough. I had signed a petition here, donated a few dollars there. I had never acted with any urgency or fear or intention.
Read MoreAlthough I studied English, I don’t always have a way with words. The scariest question I get is the very first one I am asked on all interviews: Can you tell me about yourself? Although I have my elevator pitch down, I never feel fully satisfied with my answer. In the post-graduate world there is so much more to a person than high school grades and college majors. There is confusion, crying, laughing, drinking, and a lot of second-guessing.
Read MoreI turned 23 on a Monday. Twenty-three is that age right on the cusp of true adulthood and nothing says adulthood like having a birthday on a Monday. Twenty-two is forever associated with Taylor Swift and college. Twenty-four sounds like you have a real job with health insurance, or marriage, or at least owning a dog. But 23. It’s just right there in between. Like 11 and 19. What happens when you’re 23? Is it the Cinderella moment? Will my fairy godmother appear and bippity boppity boo! I’m an adult?!
Read More2016 was an election year that changed everything, for myself and for so many others around me. People became divided by their presidential candidates in a heated political climate everyone on every side could call agonizing. Friendships, relationships, and families fell apart. Opinions were turned into angry memes, and after the long-held tradition of keeping your views off social media, finally everybody seemed to know where everybody stood.
Read MoreI had always thought the “fear of missing out” was that juvenile feeling I got when I was 3 years old and forced to take a nap while my brother, four years my senior, got to play all afternoon. I thought of it as a silly bout of envy that I soon grew out of... until college. My sophomore year, I got my first smart phone. And with it, I excitedly downloaded Instagram.
Read MoreAn election happened recently.
As a writer, I have been struggling. I understand the immense privilege I have been afforded in this life of mine—of employment, happiness, a loving family, a stable home. I’m 23 years old and from some standpoints, I know blessed little of suffering. But I have not been able to shake that something about this American election has marked a fundamental transition. The world around me feels different, a little less familiar. I feel so frantic to be informed every day, and to have an opinion, to agree or disagree; yet I’m often too anxious or paralyzed to bear turning on the news.
Read MoreI felt like I had transported right back to where I was my senior year, caught in the in-between of trying to hold on so tightly to those last few months of my life as a student, and looking so forward to venturing out of it. But it brought back that old familiar, restless feeling—the same feeling I had when I got back from London, and when I first moved here—of wanting so many things and trying to figure out a way to make them all coexist.
Read MoreOn the morning of January 1st I wrote down in my journal: “The panic is beginning to set in.”
I love New Year’s Eve; I welcome the new year surrounded by some of my favourite people, the constants in my life. We drink wine and play silly games and laugh our way through midnight. But by January 1st, the familiar feeling arrives. It's like standing at the top of a steep cliff drop; calendar pages splay out tauntingly before me with big red circles, lines and crosses mapping out the things unknown, the things I'm frightened of.
Read MoreIt’s two weeks into January, and the Christmas tree in the living room is slowly gravitating toward our wooden floors. Fallen pine needles sit in a one-inch circumference around the willowy tree. The pine smell still illuminates the air, though, making me happy.
The day we got the tree was the second week of December. I remember. It was the day I cried to my mentor over the phone.
Read MoreFive months ago I accepted my first full-time job as a building substitute at my former middle school. Although I wasn’t given my own classroom, I was relieved to have a place to go every day and to practice, observe, and grow in the education field. The very first day during lunch duty, however, a co-worker smiled as I introduced myself and promptly asked, “So are you overwhelmed with all the applications you’re filling out?”
Read More“I’m going to therapy.” When that statement was first true for me, the sentence felt slippery, like I couldn’t quite wrap my hands around it, like trying to hold one of those weird liquid-filled sparkly gel blobs we played with as kids (really, what were those?). Or like trying to roll those Spanish “r”s or pronounce those deep-throated “e”s like the French do—it sounded unnatural when I tried to say it. So instead, I said “I’m going to see Sarah” or “I have an appointment” or, mostly, I just don’t say anything at all, keeping it tucked away in my I’d-rather-not-say collection.
Read MoreAnd then, in early July, my father died. I had assumed I would have a job sometime mid-summer, but with the grieving process looming in front of me, how could I fathom going to work?
Read MoreIt's Monday night. I'm gathering up all of the trash because tomorrow is garbage day. I feel like I just did this two days ago, but no, a whole week has gone by. A whole week of nothing exciting, nothing life-changing—nothing different at all.
Read More“What will you do next?”
I’ve been asked that question three times in the last week.
I’ve fielded this question before—we all have; the moment our graduation date appears on the year’s horizon, every family member, friend, and kind stranger who discovers you’re a near-graduating student presents this question to you. It’s been two years since I graduated college, and I still don’t have a good answer to this question, despite the younger me who thought 24 years-old meant your life trajectory was set firmly in place.
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