Sleepless Stories

I'm Not Excited About Graduating College

"Wait you graduated a semester early? You should be proud!"

"You finished the semester, when should we celebrate?"

"You're done with school how do you feel?"

All of those questions are just general ideas of what people said to me after I finished my last semester of college. In response to all of these questions the directions uttering in my mind went 'smile and nod, you are supposed to be happy.' According to the general public I shouldn't have to tell myself to celebrate the supposed victory that comes with earning a degree. Three and a half years of toil. Arguing with professors, fighting the little letters they mark my work with, the glitchy public menace; blackboard that would shut down right when assignments were due. The wrestle between sleep and my fourth can of Starbucks espresso and cream...five or ten hours of sleep doesn't make a difference and you're about to find out why.  All the brain power I needed had to ooze out of my brain, as if it was a nearly empty bottle of toothpaste. 

See certain classes drained my mind as it corroded its insides like an unneeded acidic clog drainer. I don't like lectures about things I don't care for... These folk were asking for a couplah Gs, to give me a migraine with all their loopty loop talks; talking in circles about whatever we were talking about. All the word vomit that spouted into assignment descriptions made me question if I was just illiterate. Which I'm not...my brain just doesn't fit in the holes of that teaching style, so I had to work extra hard (at least I think I did) to understand. I would rewrite instructions just so I could process them and by then my brain is already flashing a 'low battery' signal in front my cumbersome eyelids. While I could've let those classes make me force-quit I was gullible enough to think it was just me being weak so I push past it til my brain fries, sparks, and whirs down like a dino-computer...that's what we all do right? Apparently pain is normal? Or am I dramatic? Maybe, I can never tell.

Then I miss many assignments...but I don't like losing so I find ways to pull through in the end...every semester every time. If it weren't for the unfortunate pandemic I would've dropped out...was it that bad? I don't know, I can't tell the difference with that either...maybe we should unpack that at another time...

Now, there were other classes that I loved, my English classes that taught me how to better understand this new art I was slowly falling in love with. These classes were my favorite because they were centered on something I loved to do. I was writing all the time...I was writing material that wasn't even for class (that's how The Conquer series came about). Every workshop class I took I began to acquaint me more and more with writing. It enveloped my time as I whisked away into my stories in the dark of my timeless dreamlike bedroom...then soon hearing birds chirping. At the same time I came out of a year long reading slump first reading several books by Marie Lu, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler for an English class, and later on reading Wings of Ebony by J. Elle (one of my personal favorites).

During the summer of 2022 I consumed books like Galactus from MarvelComics. I began making book reviews left and right, I zero drafted book 2 of the Conquer series and I wasn't happy like that in a long time from the prior months. Don't get me wrong parts of this at times did feel like work but I didn't mind feeling tired from this...it's a different type of tired when I'm working on a story or other writing projects...a tired I can genuinely rest in.  That's when I realized, this is what I wanted to do with my life, I want to read, talk about, and create stories...

Nah I wanted more than that I wanted to forge worlds into something beautiful and share it with those who may need or want it. I wanted to heal people...my community with adventures. Adventures in lands far away from here but aren't that unfamiliar, so that they may grow and heal alongside my characters as they read... experiencing the flaws, hurt, comfort, and visibility they may need but haven't gotten. This was my home and I wanted to share it and build it with those I met along the way...imagine how heartbreaking it was to realize that I couldn't live there much longer...

The home I paid for with thousands of words embossed in blank word documents. I paid with blurry and tight eyes. Squinting and swishing across black ink that painted cream-colored pages that smelled of a home. Pages stained with tears and crinkles of excitement from my fingertips. The home I paid for with all the words I crafted in the palms of my hands that stationed perfectly between my mind, heart and soul. All the passion...no not passion all the love I put into what I did, and the best part is this is the one occupation that I could put my love into, and it didn't make me feel empty afterwards. This was an occupation that taught me a language I could finally understand, a place where I could finally make sense, a place to process pain and twine it into something worth reading. You mean to tell me, if you began building a home like that you would celebrate to give it up?

I know what you're gonna say, 'just because you're  graduating college doesn't mean you have to give up writing.' I didn't say I was giving up...what I'm saying is the general social condition is clawing into my hands and ripping the home I love from them...

What do you do after college? Everyone says you can finally get that cute lil job you've been eyeballing like a hungry child locked outside a cookie store. But what they won't tell you is that the cookies you're gawking at are just wallpaper. Behind the wallpaper is a long dark tunnel with some scrawny and sorry torches lighting the way, torches that your college reluctantly lit to 'help you'. The tunnel is your nine to five...the one everyone is so grateful for but fixes they lips to spit fire on it...I don't blame y'all...the job you're walking into is doing to you what those agonizing classes did to me. It breaks your battery so it's a lil more difficult to ever be fully charged. Now you're saying, 'but you could work your way up!' 'You don't have to stay at a job you don't like.' Ok cool BET! I'll hop around til I find something I like... yet I could still find myself grasping at time while it floats off into the atmosphere. I don't want a job I like when I can incontrovertibly see the job, I love but, it's a possibility that it could rot away in a corner. How long would my home have to sit there and rot before I can't recognize it anymore?

See what's happening to me right now is this: I'm holding this beautiful gem; light swirling and dancing at its core and illuminating just below the surface...this gem I began to morph into a beautiful little universe. I'm having visions of it losing its light as it flashes like them lights, we had in our old high school hallways. Its disintegrating into tiny particles as it slips right through my desperate fingers. Its once warm and electrifying touch becoming cold and distant, gruelingly warring with the general pressure of a 9-5 to survive. Not live. Survive....Here I am desperate to hold it together while my fingers turn into vice grips. I can see my muscles and bones pulsing under my brown skin, hoping to steal just a little more time.

Why would I allow myself to feel this in front of anyone anyway?  How do I explain the loss of an invisible home to people who've already been consumed by their agreeable jobs, people who already don't recognize the home they lost. Which is why I'm telling you cause telling them would somehow manage to speed up the process.

I'm not giving up. I am not quitting.

I'll fight while my hands blister and bleed as I endeavor to sustain my dying home that was gifted to me. A home crafted to perfection to fit my awkward hands...and purposed to gift to those who were willing to experience the vibrant, ambiguous, and saturated colors that created the worlds in my mind. To fashion the gift of a beautiful story for people who are told that they are only castaways, people who need a little more umph to maintain their homes too. I'm not giving up...I can't. Cause I know people, no matter how many... may need a room in my home too. But, it's hard not to grieve something that's dying while I'm watching it struggle through a possible end.

It's strenuous to not grieve someone I see buried in the eyes that stare back at me in the mirror everyday...

So, why would I be excited about finishing college... when every road they dragged me across the pavement to see, include the precondition to watch the best parts of myself gasp for air until they die...

and the worst part is I don't even know if I'll remember to say goodbye...