there was a time in my life when i didn't know where to go, and now the time is right and i still don't know

so i once again find myself facing another graduation day. and once again, after already completing a semester of my next degree, the whole celebration seems a little after the fact. but that doesn't mean that the butterflies that my stomach grows just for graduations aren't there. (actually, my stomach harbors butterflies to let out for just about every thing that could even possibly be mistaken for an occasion, but the graduation ones are different.)

i was a whirlpool of emotions the day of my high school graduation. the two most prominent of those were sadness and terror. leaving the sheltered hallways of my high school to take my first step into the real world without the teachers and students that i had spent more time with than my family was a big deal. a very big deal. before my undergrad graduation, i was more nervous than anything else. the idea that my time spent in-between school and real life was coming to an end scared me, to be completely honest. it didn't matter that i was doing my master's. i was already a semester into it and i knew it couldn't last forever. adulthood was looming big and scary just a year down the road. this morning, though, the nerves do not come from fear of the next step forward. i've already taken a few steps towards growing up since my last degree, and i find that i am looking forward to finally being done with school. (though i won't be for a while. gah.) no, the butterflies have gathered just to work me up over the passing of time.

it feels like just yesterday that i was telling my kindergarten teacher that i wanted to be a farmer, an artist, and an author. it was yesterday that i was using gummy worms to learn math in first grade. just yesterday i was moving across the country to start fifth grade in a new school, in a new state, with a semi-new language. it was just yesterday when i spent a year in saudi arabia, eating lunch on the stage in the elementary section and starting to overcome my debilitating shyness. it was yesterday when i spent my first day back at school in virginia locked up in the auditorium because i hadn't gotten my tb test after spending a year overseas. it was yesterday when i started mason afraid to be alone. it was yesterday when i finished my first degree at mason relishing every moment i spent alone. it was yesterday that i wrote the story, yesterday that i wrote two and a half novels and started to get over my fear of having my work read. it was just yesterday. all of it i swear.

and when i think about it, think of all the memories i have stored up and the degrees i'm collecting like they're limited editions, i panic. because it doesn't matter that i have two degrees in computers and am working towards my third. i still don't know what i want to do with my life. i still don't know how to balance books and computers without pushing one to the back burner. i still don't know how to walk the line between what's expected of me and what i want without disappointing someone. i still don't know how to fit religion and culture and family and dreams and fiction and reality and loves and distastes and personality and friends and responsibilities into a neatly composed package that is myself. i don't know.

instead of celebrating everything that i learned, that i know, this graduation is just bringing to light everything that i have yet to figure out, that i don't know, but probably should by now. guess i should go get dressed for it.

*Still Don't Know - Icona Pop