I never expected the adventure to begin so soon. I fully
expected that by the time I was feeling the way I am, I would be at college, or
at the very least on the way down. But I’m sitting in my mom’s car with a week
to the day left until I leave for Bard, and I feel like something has begun. I
don’t know why this is a surprise. Most if not all stories, after all, begin
with someone coming to town or someone leaving home. I guess I just didn’t
count the time leading up to the leaving as part of the leaving.
Life is a
flurry around me, and at the same time, it is impossibly still. I have homework
to finish, shopping to do, and packing to start. I need to sign up for an
absentee ballot, because the first time I’m old enough to vote I’ll be states
away from home. I have more than enough to do, and more than enough to worry about.
I said goodbye to my best friend for the last time yesterday and cried. I still
have more goodbyes in store between now and leaving, and the mental cataloging
and the preparing never seem to end.
Yet, at
the same time, everything is normal. I’m waiting in the car with my brother in
the front seat while my mom runs into a craft store. I’m visiting my uncle’s
house later today and him and my mom are fighting about it. Dad and Marie are
cooking, Evan is reading. The dogs are being dogs and the cats are being cats.
Everything is normal in an almost disconcerting way. I never expected life at
home to stop with me leaving for college, but it’s almost too easy right now to
see everything continuing on without me as though I was never really here
to begin with, never actually a part of it all. How much has my life been worth
so far?
More importantly,
what will it be worth a month from now? Unintentionally, I set college up to be
the end of my personal narrative. It has always been the goal I’ve honed in on.
As a small child, it was an elusive but promised part of my future. Almost every
decision I’ve made since becoming old enough to be conscious of the weight of
my decisions has been geared towards making it to college. I made it through
high school only because I knew college was waiting at the end of the gloomy, cavernous
abyss. I made college the happily ever after, when in reality it’s the once upon
a time.
So this
is the beginning of the journey that I’ve waited for. My life so far has been a
prologue, or maybe a prequel. The kind of prequel that only the painfully
dedicated readers have any interest in, because there’s no way it could ever be
half as good as the original. The adventures are small-time, and the
characterization is off because the author is trying to stay true to the
character, and in a lot of ways they succeed, but the character just isn’t who
you know yet because they’re still stumbling all over themselves, or they’re
too much who you know and you know it doesn’t make sense for them to be who
they are without some events that just haven’t happened yet.
But this,
this is where the good stuff starts. I have choices now. My life at this point
is literally nothing but infinite possibility stretching into innumerable universes.
Any one of those, right now, could be the one I occupy. Every day is going to
be a new choice, and it will be impossible to tell what affect those choices
will have until it’s already too late. I don’t know if I’ll be fighting destiny
or finding destiny. All I really know is that I’ll do it at Bard. Right now, I
am no one and I am everyone. This… This
is the beginning.
