Me and My Romantic Mythologies

 

I think if I mythologize everything that occurs to me, something interesting will finally happen.

Maybe the missed connections won’t keep me up at night, spending precious twilight hours overthinking, overwhelmed by the barely planted seeds of something that has barely kissed the dirt. Or maybe it’ll be an uncertain reunion, me, the suburban-turned-city kid (whose heart is still soft), and a reason to go back home. (Or just a reminder for me to call home. Sorry mom.)

Rarely one to just sit in new experiences, I have clearly not outgrown the child who expects the orange tree in her backyard the next day after spitting up a couple of orange seeds. Brown skin singed but not burnt with unscarred hands not used to nurturing. I want to reside in the “success” that luck has afforded me, but I keep bracing for something.

A final trick, the very last, totally important test before I’m a Real AdultTM, and when (not if!) I’ll fail, I’ll be sentenced to the deepest recesses of my overthinking, spending the other “Best Part of My Life” trapped in a cage of my own making.

But I love dreaming, the gentle greetings of the sunrise and moonset leave me with tiny peeks of heaven that have me yearning for today to be something special.

All of that is to say: hello again.

It has been a certifiably unbearable number of hours, seconds, and weeks since I left the BU Bubble, and my journey hasn’t taken me so far physically. I skedaddled from the tree-lined sidewalks of Bay State Road down to Stoughton, where job limbo left me in a constant state of analysis paralysis, despite having accepted an offer. (Maybe they didn’t want me? Maybe there was something wrong with my physical?)

That didn’t happen, and instead, I spent hours upon hours into the digital landscape conquering the next biggest challenge: finding housing.

I ended up being pointed back towards BU resources, the off campus website for someone who had everything I was looking for (furnished room, close to work, decent transportation); I handed over what felt like six million dollars and within days, I was in my new, not-forever home for at least the next three months.

It was… rough.

(It sucked. It sucked a lot.)

My roommate luck evened out from great and utterly abysmal, to just about average Apartment Experience.

I was lonelier than I had ever been, this time in a cage of my own making. (Hoisted by your own petard fans, anyone?) Without the immediate ease of reaching out because of my own struggles and personal fears, having lost the ability to be able to just run into a new or old friend by walking around for ten minutes, I lost myself in my bed, in my head, and at work. I burrowed into the rented furniture, without a single picture to remind me that I’m not just renting my existence out for months at a time.

But as I slowly latched on to new things: new rendezvous with old friends and new inside jokes with new ones; I simultaneously forget how to see myself from the outside and remember that nobody knows what I mean.

From the last (insert number of days here since graduation), I am constantly re-learning that it is okay to be a bit abrasive and a bit annoying. If possible, I’ll blab about interactive fiction games for forty minutes while on a service point, or hang up post-it note doodles of cats right about my current list of manga, assigned to me by fellow library workers.

It’s things like that that have me reading the earliest chapters of D. Gray Man, borrowed from one of my closest work friends. (Her heart is open to me about something that would’ve gotten us made fun of sixteen years ago. I love her.)

It’s things like that that have my roommate and me having an impromptu dance party and sharing music recommendations as if these moments, these blinding rays of sunlight won’t end. (She’s going to med school in the fall, and I’ll miss her.)

It’s all of the constant transformations that took root and blossomed, especially in EN502, because before that, I couldn’t share any unfinished, unpolished piece without at least six of my own run-throughs. (And even then, I was still bracing for impact.)

And here I stand, hopelessly waiting for anything to will me in the right direction. I don’t know if I am where I’m meant to be or if I’ll ever find that alleged place.

I want to stand strong in the face of changes, everything new rushing towards me in a wave of colleagues, applications, apartments, memories, roommates; but I’m scared.

The fear of eroding who I once was takes hold, and I’ll wonder if what I was is what I was never meant to be. I don’t want my memories to have been a waste, but I’m uncertain if change will be a good thing for me in the end.

Currently, I’m nestled in tea green bedsheets, waiting for tomorrow to come in a wave of work. I wonder what dreams await us, post-eclipse.

But for now EN502-ers, please give me that needed peace in the discontentment, because in a wave of change, I relish in the comfort of spilling my sappy heart to you all once again.

With teeth,

Sam ♥

currently reading: d-gray man (up to chapter 141!), my hero academia (up to chapter 419!), dear medusa by olivia a. cole.

currently watching: dungeon meshi, game changer, and fantasy high: junior year.