5 Years Post-Grad

It’s been a while since I’ve written and even longer since I’ve written with the intention of posting on my blog.  Can I even call it a real blog when the few posts are spread out, years apart? Whatever this platform is or should be labeled, I find myself needing to process and document today, whether someone else reads it or I just save it here for further reflection. 

I have been caught today between the extremes, justifying both and trying to make them each happy. It has been 5 years since I graduated and, to my hopeful, almost-graduated, so many choices ahead, self that threw up a peace sign with her best friend and tried to secure her hat without making her bangs look like a helmet, 5 years is an infinity of time.  I truly remember thinking I couldn’t envision how I would feel in 5 years other than really old.  College is most often a completely encapsulated experience, especially if you live on campus. You are surrounded by people your age, doing just what you’re doing, and time outside of that bubble is sometimes hard to visualize.  5 years is a long time.   And yet. 5 years since I graduated: to my sister in her 30s, to my dad who just celebrated his 60th birthday, to many dear people in my life that have experienced more and lived longer, this is next to nothing.  5 years is barely any time compared to 20 years since graduating, 35 years, 40 years.  To say 5 years is a long time, to feel old in comparison to who I was then – oh, I should just wait and see how it feels in a few more years.  

These are the extremes fighting within me.  Is it a big deal or is am I just dramatizing it?  Do I recognize the passing of time or do I scoff at it and brush it under the rug, wait to acknowledge the grander, more impressive passings of time? 

And what do I do with all the other, smaller extremes that nag and that I don’t want to voice: do I feel older? Doesn’t that mean I should feel wiser? Shouldn’t I have done more in 5 years? Have I progressed emotionally and mentally – or have I regressed? Where is my career? If no career, then where are my accomplishments? Why don’t I have a family, children growing and a marriage to count back on? When I look at other peers, why do I feel far behind? What I have done with these 5 years? Have I wasted them? Am I less accomplished than my friends because my life is so different 5 years post grad? 

Maybe these questions aren’t very related to this mark of time; maybe they are questions that have been lurking for awhile, waiting to rise to the surface, waiting for a reason to be asked.  In reality, too often I feel myself justifying my life, justifying it to myself and to everyone who is not asking.  No, I am not married, haven’t had a wedding or been through all the adjustments of having a husband.  No, I don’t have children, haven’t carried a living being inside of me , birthed it with my own body, seen and experienced a part of myself as a separate entity. No, I don’t have years of one meaningful romantic relationship behind me, the “then and now” comparisons of 7, 8, 9+ years of dating. No, I don’t own my own home. I’m not even in the city or state I want to live in long-term. Yes, these are all family-oriented markers but I can’t even check the boxes for career-oriented lives.  I don’t have a high paying career (just years of being a waitress, a nanny, a barista, another cog in the wheel of corporate America). I haven’t gone to graduate school. Haven’t traveled overseas to teach English. 

All these things I haven’t done and this morning, when my mind went to this pile of markers we use to measure the sincerity of our lives, I started listing all the things I have done instead. I’ve moved out of state 3 times since graduating; celebrated my independent singleness by taking spontaneous trips, giving time to people I love, having the freedom to say yes and no to what I want without thinking of anyone else.  I’ve welcomed and loved many nieces and nephews. I’ve been able to volunteer time to my friends’ own weddings. I’ve been able to grow in my confidence (that’s what years of casual dating means, right?). All of these things that spit themselves out as a defense for how time has gone by and how I have spent it. I usually end there, satisfying myself and the unknown audience that is constantly interrogating me, but today it doesn’t feel right. Is this truly any better? Am I not still trying to measure my life, testing to see if it has been “real”, see if anything I’ve done has been worth it so far? Can I give a stark before and after description of everything that has changed in 5 years? And for goodness sakes, is it not ok to just simply be? 

What if I haven’t changed that much? What if all my small moves and my big, across-the -country-moves, where not hugely meaningful, what if I did feel lonely in my singleness and didn’t feel fulfilled by my freedom? Is that ok as well? 

I guess what I am trying to ask, what I want to answer, is this: can my life be both extremes? Can I, like Chesterton advises, stop trying to vacillate between the two and find contentment by holding on to both, fiercely embracing the paradox? If I want a before and after, can my answers be “yes, but”? Looking back to who I was in college and comparing to myself now: have I made progress in my grief? I was so unable to see myself or my loss clearly while in college. I was drowning, from the first semester when barely 5 months separated me from my moms death, to my graduation, I was drowning in grief that I didn’t know how to vocalize.  Have I changed, have I managed my pain and am I now living companionably with this dark passenger? Yes.  I am vastly different from that scared freshman, trying to piece together her life, taping obnoxious amounts of pictures of her mom all over dorm room, clinging to anyone who might present themselves as a motherly figure; I am different from that senior that tried to make it all seem like beauty, ignoring the ashes completely, turning from friends taking pictures with both of their parents and saying I didn’t need any. But have I mastered life with such a significant loss? No. I am still in the beginning stages of looking straight in the face of my reality and I’m not sure I’ll ever live a day where I feel content having a life without her.  

Have I enjoyed my years of singleness, making the most of all this freedom from entanglement? Yes. I have joyfully made big and small decisions, reveling in the fact that I had no one else to consult but myself.  I have moved from one side of the country to the other and thoroughly enjoyed the process of planting myself somewhere new.  But – and this cannot be overstated – was I lonely and did I long for a best friend, a companion to walk with me? More than anything.  And what fulfillment I have found in this season of life, engaged to a man that surpasses my expectations, looking forward to a life with him, eager to share more time at his side.    

There are many more questions and answers of the small progress made in five years. My journey has been slow, painful, embarrassing, sometimes very hard.  It has looked different than others, different than I thought it would.  I have learned to love more and I have lacked greatly in love.  I have learned to sympathize and yet my heart hardens too often in the face of need.  5 years is a long time and, oh boy, it is nothing at all in the light of eternity and I am learning to live both realities at once.  I am clinging to it all, extremes in each hand, and I am finding contentment.