The glove compartment is inaccurately named

Over the last couple weeks I've thought many times of the summer after my senior year. I thought it was just because it's summer. I've always thought fondly of that summer. That was my summer, our summer. I spent every waking moment with Cameron. Some how we were blessed with nearly identical schedules that summer. 

Every morning I woke up, got dressed and went to Cameron's house. Most mornings were spent swapping music, burning CDs, watching films-sometimes amazing life changing ones, and sometimes horrible foreign films (I remember a French one about a flute teacher being particularly awful). After a few hours of lazy companionship (occasionally accompanied by only the best boxed wine) we would leave the house and head for Westport, listening to our freshly burned CDs along the way, there we would eat lunch at one of the foreign food restaurants and then enjoy a coffee drink at Broadway Cafe, all the while discussing some book, movie, musician,or political, theological or philosophical concept that we were entrenching ourselves in at the time. Eventually we would head back home and go our separate ways to work, me to Noland Fashion Cinema 6 (in all its glory) and Cameron to HyVee. Many times after each of us would get off work around ten or eleven we would get together once again and watch one of those hit or miss movies, only to go back home, fall asleep, and repeat the process all over again.

I remember most clearly sitting outside the Cafe one gorgeously sunny afternoon and being in absolute comfort. Not in the sense that everything was a breeze-but that for now, everything was going as well as it could. I had a wonderful friend who had similar needs and desires as I, yet was different enough to expand my understanding of friendship and compassion. I had a job that I actually enjoyed, even though it was at the dollar theater (its still one of my favorite work experiences ever). And on top of that I was enjoying some of the widest freedoms I'd experienced in my life. Mom and I were both getting sick of me being around, both eagerly awaiting my move to college. Not in a hateful or uncaring way, just in the sense that we were both ready.

As you can tell, I still look back on this time fondly. It was that teenage summer that I think many people have memories of. I always thought that type of experience was what most people had throughout their teenage years, and that I was simply a late bloomer. I was, and I think that is part of the reason my experiences in that short amount of time were so rich. Sometimes I wondered if I just idealize the time because of its place in my life. I wondered if it was as perfect as it is in my head.

Yesterday I found Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism in my car. Granted it starting skipping after four or five songs, but it still brought something to me. It made me think, once again of that summer and I had to start thinking why that time has been on my thoughts so much lately.

This morning on my drive to work, I listened to the album with the windows down, the volume up. The music, one of the most significant parts of that time, was the final puzzle piece, making me feel like it was that summer all over again. It made me feel silly. It made me feel like that dumb 18 year old girl who thinks that the last year of her life was all that and a bag of skittles. Then taking a more critical eye to that time, I realized that the summer of 2006 and the summer of 2011 had incredible similarities.

Five years ago I had just graduated, was exploring my own self, was exploring this relatively new companionship, and was most significantly, waiting for the next move. It was a time of transition. Today I find myself just graduated, exploring myself still, both personally and professionally, and exploring a new companionship, this time a different kind; marriage. And once again, waiting for the next move. From college student to real world. 

I think its times like these when something in your subconscious changes. There is so much uncertainty that maybe the conscious mind just can't deal with it all. Not knowing what a daily life will look like, not knowing what my room or home will look like, what the people I meet will be like, if they will ever compare to those I hold dearly already, what mistakes I'll make. Its like this little tickle in the back of the head. 

I guess I didn't realize the deep impact inherent in transitional stages. I know my time in Columbia is limited, and frankly I'm scared. I'm scared that my friendships with people here will weaken. I'm scared that I won't find a job, or a job that is satisfying. I'm afraid I won't meet people who are the kind of people  I crave being around. I'm scared that all my conceptions about how life will be different in all the best ways is just wishful thinking. I'm afraid I will have regrets. 

I think the difference between myself then and now is this ability to recognize not only that I have so many inspiring, wonderful, amazing people, places, and experiences in my life now, but that I have so much to lose. I think before, I was a doe-eyed teenager who wondered what could possibly be more exciting than college?  And now...after being through college, after spending the last five years racking up thousands of dollars in debt, never having enough money to support myself, and battle after battle with the bureaucratic bull shit with what is supposedly a not for profit institution, I wonder sometimes what could possibly be worse. 

I know I gained from my college education, but that is because of devoted professors in my department, and a few others that I met along the way who were deeply passionate about their field and the true education of their students. It is not because of the school over all. I don't feel like I've wasted the last five years of my life, but I often wonder if another path would have been better.

I think that I have reached the point where I know the system all too well. I know the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the mundane, the exhilarating, and the soul crushing parts of the university, of the organizations I was involved in, and the job that I have. And yet, I have no knowledge of what my life will look like three months from now. Its so threatening, such a juxtaposition. 

The transitional periods in life can also be mundane, exhilarating, and soul crushing times, all rolled into one steamy summer. I hold on to the voice in my head, telling me that my resume is solid, that I will meet people, that I will maintain friendships, that I will be okay.

I know that doing the work that is necessary today is all I can do, knowing that nothing will make that next step come fast enough. All I can do is attempt to prepare for it. It makes me think of this Emerson quote that I'm fairly certain has been on my facebook profile for about the last five years:

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it. 
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

So while there are deep resonating similarities between this time and this time five years ago, there are changes. I have learned so much, about myself, my relationships, my abilities, and my faults. I still have the fresh faced smile of an 18 year old ready to move off to college, but with the slightly aged wisdom that not all will go as planned, and that it is a good thing.

I'm thankful for everything and everyone in the last five years. But I am ready, so ready, to take the next step, regardless of how scary the thought of setting my foot down is.