Well, this is it, ladies and gentlemen. In a mere five days, I will be striding across a stage in College Park, Maryland, celebrating my journey through the last four years - a journey that has been alternately filled with painful, dark memories and rich, bright beauty that would make anyone weep.
It's been such a long time coming.
Four years ago, when I began this road, I never thought that I would live to see this day, because I was suicidal and didn't care if I lived or died. It wasn't as if I was going to do anything about it, you see - I'd tried multiple times in multiple ways to kill myself and it was a drastic failure every time, so I decided to just .... wait it out. I went back to school because I had nothing better to do with my life. I went with criminal justice because it had been a long-forgotten, thought-lost dream that I'd once had when I was young and foolish. I never expected to take the subject and master it. Yet.... somehow that's just what I've done.
Over the course of those four years, though, I've learned much more than tort law and computer forensics,.I've gained wisdom in much more than elementary Spanish and psychology of criminal behavior. I've grown up, somehow. I've learned that not everyone is out to get me. I've learned the wisdom of slowing down, saying no, being true to myself and not allowing others to dictate to me what I should be. I've learned the true meaning of love and I've learned the right way to handle difficult situations. I've also learned that it's okay - it's all going to be okay. No matter what happens to me.
What was it that John Lennon once said? Oh, right. "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
There's always going to be situations that will make me freak out, upset, whatever. I still tend to overreact sometimes - but I'm beginning to recognize when that is, and I'm taking steps to prevent that from happening so much. And even if it does - so what? That's who I am, and I'm okay with being who I am. I need to accept and understand that I'll have flaws, dark thoughts, whatever - am I not human, after all?
In the meantime, while I learned all of this through the school of hard knocks... I studied mean, median and mode. I read about the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970s. I wrote about the theory of the correctional system and absorbed information about web design. I took courses on diversity, conjugated verbs in Spanish, held discussions on public safety policies. Some classes were boring as hell. Others were a hell of a lot of fun - my art history course, something that I thought was going to be the driest subject ever, was actually a blast and my favorite course ever. Who wouldn't love to curl up with the one they love and watch old movies for homework?
All of those courses, all of these years. It's all over now. In five days, the culmination of that work, those experiences, that life, will be called in a single name as I walk across a stage forty miles from home. The door on that life will close for good. And all I will have to show for it is a piece of paper that says I have graduated from college. A Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice with a minor in Gender Studies. A degree. The most valuable thing that I have ever worked for up to this point in time.
I was going to apologize for crowing, really. But I'll be damned if I don't deserve to crow. I worked HARD for this. We're talking blood, sweat, tears for this. I deserve it.
I guess at this point, my real question is - what will I do now? School took up so much of my time and energy - but now it's over. What next?
There's nothing left to do but find out. :)
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