Today my class is graduating, the class of 2021. I am not attending, opting to procrastinate on studying for my philosophy exam. Since Friday, since our senior picnic, I have been feeling an awkward restlessness permeate within me. It's indistinguishable, settled there like an itchy, ugly scab the past few days. I can't feel myself within my skin. I know I am there, but I cannot fill my edges. Yet I know I have been feeling this strange cloud the past several years, wane and wash away every so often; but never leave.
It's not completely uncomfortable. It started when we moved, not feeling my corners, down to my fingertips and toes. I barely remember those times, just going through the motions of eat, sleep, cry and repeat. I found distractions in school and art, being present but not completely there. The same feeling carried until I met some good people. It didn't cloud my vision so much as it used to, settled more like smog. Slowly over the years, I felt pulls from people I met. From friends, family and acquaintances, their red strings tangled with mine and reeled me in. Some became clumpy knots, and others just crossed mine briefly, but I felt the threads all the same.
I think this time is different because of the nostalgia. Those strings helped me discover who I am, who I want to be, my goals and my visions. They helped me acknowledge my reality and confront the person within me. I don't feel like I fit within my skin, but this discomfort does not grow from hatred, envy and rage as it used to. Instead it stems from uncertainty, fear and anxiety. Not very positive feelings, but they are an improvement from the more painful sins that lived within my head.
I feel like I can recognize why and when now. I don't know how to fix myself yet. I don't know all the colors on my palette. I don't know the extent of which I can stretch my container until I bleed. But with watching the ceremony today, with seeing them walk the stage, give speeches and glow in theirs, I feel like I have a chance at mine. I feel like maybe, I am not as unfit to be me as I once thought. The alien-like stage I have been blessed to trial these past few months called "adulthood" looks bleary and dry, but for the first time I am ecstatic to paint my known and unknown colors onto the blank canvas.
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