Tuesday, August 23, 2011

the elephant in the room. the big, graduating elephant in the room.

 {via.}

This is a stream-of-consciousness post. I'm sorry if at parts it doesn't make sense, but if I didn't get it out I was going to lose it. 

I'm back stateside now. [Photo blogs and more about China will come soon.]   

I'm back stateside and back to real life. The real life where I have to write my senior thesis, asap. The real life where I'm graduating from college in December, in four months. The real life where I'm supposed to be applying for jobs or grad schools. The real life where everyone expects me to have my shit together, and I don't.

I talk about this a lot. This whole not having my shit together thing. I know sometimes I think I'm really really sure; I'm like, FOR REAL REAL THIS TIME GUYS.

But now it's crunch time, and I'm NOT for real real sure. Yet, post-graduation plans are all people seem to want to talk to me about these days. And no one wants the "I'm not sure" answer. I'm sure there are hundreds of people in the same position as me being asked the same question and giving the same answer, but right now I feel like the whole world is watching me. Everyone is waiting to see if I can sink or swim, but no one seems ready to throw me a line if I need some help.

Right now, I'm just paralyzed. I'm not sinking or swimming: I'm just barely keeping my head above water. Everyone is watching and it's taking me all my will power to not close my eyes and scream at them to just leave me alone for a second so I can figure my shit out. Jesus, let me think. Please.

I feel like I have so much to prove, to everyone - to my parents, to my boyfriend, to my school, to everyone who ever wrote me a recommendation letter, to everyone who ever scoffed at me for being proud that I'm Hispanic even though I have green eyes and blonde hair, to my status as a first-generation American on one side of my family, to the UCLA legacy I haven't acted on, to the side of the family that's watching me be their first college graduate this generation, to the old bosses that said I'd go far, to my fucking next door neighbor when I was twelve who was the first person to ever call me 'brilliant' - but I don't even know what I'm trying to prove.

That's the scariest part. It's all this pressure to prove that I'm something when I don't even know what that something is. It's too much pressure, it's way too much, and I feel like I'm being set up for failure.