I've been trying to place my finger on exactly what I have been feeling over the past few days. But it sunk in as I was driving home from work today. Specifically, it sunk it when I was walking back to my car, hauling my face paint, balloons and heavy bags, sweating from head to toe from 2 hours in the hot georgia heat.
These times are coming to an end.
For years, I have spent many such weekends like this. I have gotten up, sat in class, done my homework through lunch. Study till 11 pm. Go to sleep. Wake up. Repeat. Don't take it too easy on Fridays - you have work over the weekend. Wake up. Shower. Dress. Drive to work. Do kids' parties. At the end of the 3rd of 4th party that day, I'll be making balloons and not even watching my hands move. I have the muscle memory down. Balloons pop. Smile. Offer to remake balloon. Offer to touch up face paint. Eat food. Go home. Sleep. Get up. Repeat.
It's been 6 years since I left home. It feels like a lifetime ago. I packed my white truck full of too many belongings, knowing I wouldn't be coming home much anymore - I wasn't moving back in - I brought everything but my furniture, which was later sold or given away, and left my stuffed animals that someday I'll finally take home. I had barely started to learn balloons when I left home, and my first gig in Georgia, I muddle through, offering what I knew. I'd practice over the years and get good. I knew hardly anything about business back then. I didn't take deposits - a practice I learned I needed to do the hard way when I got stood up for a party once. I hadn't wrecked my truck yet. I hadn't experienced heart break yet. My pancreas was still producing a little insulin and I had insurance, diabetes wasn't as hard yet, but my 100lb self kept bruising from the shots and hadn't gained back the weight I'd lost from the diabetes yet.
For 6 years, I worked. And worked, And worked. Putting money away, being practical, studying hard, doing school. Eyes on the goal: graduate. Just a few more years. Graduate. Count down the years some more. Tell myself they weren't that long. Work a little more, push a little harder.
What I am feeling now is the silence of life. It is the calm of new beginnings that have not yet formed. For the first time in my entire life, I'm not working towards a degree. The grind is settling down. I've got some money put away, I'm interviewing for jobs and I'm studying for boards and I'm living life. The feeling of living life having already gotten the huge goals out of the way is strange. I'm 23 - now what? I have forever to live life, forever to figure things out, to learn more, to become better at my career. To travel. To just enjoy life with my sweet husband. I used to be a girl, a little lost in the world, eyes only on her goals, pushing to work a little more, press a little further, make it a little longer towards those goals... and I'm there now. I know, I'll make more goals. I'll figure out more things in life to do. I'll discover work and 401k's and paying off student debt and one day we'll buy a house and maybe we'll even have kids if we want to. I've worked for a long time, and somedays I feel a little older than I should. School and work have always come first and life has always been on the backburner, after the responsibility aspect. I have enjoyed these long summer days and sleeping in and morning yoga and bikes and walks through the park. The days go on and on and I don't even have to know what day of the week it is except for days I work parties. Some day, I'll stop doing parties, too. There will come a day that is the last day of hauling those heavy bags of face paint and balloons back to my car trunk, and someday I'll get my trunk door fixed so I don't have to hold it up on my head.
My college days have ended - now comes the rest. That'll take some time to get used to.
No comments:
Post a Comment