How to Cope With Endings
(Cover image by Natalie Hernandez)
It’s been some time since I last dedicated myself to a personal post. However, I feel like now is the perfect chance to present a blog with some real weight to it. Because, as I have realized heading into my senior year of college, this may be one of my last chances to connect with my oldest audience.
Since I am becoming a senior this school year, that means I will be graduating soon. By next May, I will earn a diploma and the right to tread water. Once I fill out my degree sheet, the infinite responsibilities of adulthood are all I have to meet. As I leave the commercial cathedral of the Thomas and Mack stadium, I also leave behind the sacred sanctum of university study. This finality that I face is what I want. Graduation and that which lies beyond were always my goal. My education has always been a means to an end, but what does it mean now that I’ve come to the end?
I’ve always been very interested in how things come to an end. Growing up, I remember turning the family cable box on just to watch the finale of a TV show that I had never seen before. I would open up books and flip to the last page to read the last line, just to know that the ending was worth getting to. As a teenager, I would carelessly disappoint myself by reading online all the spoilers for the latest pop-culture pop up, just because I could.
I like to think my fascination with endings is akin to a morbid interest in death, but without being morbid.
What really stirs this interest in me now, at this point of my life, is that my time in college is almost over. Knowing my dedication to my goals and the work that I have put into my academics, my desired diploma is definitely destined to me. Yet this sweet reward holds a hint of bitterness. I want to graduate and go on to live a full and exciting life. I want to join the successive statistics of successful college graduates. But this change also means the ending to what is now a three year long routine. No more challenging classes and cheeky conversations with classmates. No more unnecessary afternoon snacks from the SU. Not even the daily car ride to and from campus will survive, as sacred a ritual as it is.
Yes, there is post-grad, a new level of education that far too many people have justifiably recommended to me. But is that really the same as the circumstances I have now? I don’t think it is, and I don’t think anything will ever replicate the way that my life is now.
And that is okay.
Life is change, and change is life. There is no need to fear that because there is nothing I can do about it. Yes, I can control the variables that influence my life, but only for a moment. With each of these changes, I am given a chance to keep moving my life along.
To each of my readers, I hope you believe this too. No matter where you are, your life can change. Sometimes for the best and sometimes for the worst. We cannot know what it will be. But what we can control is how we choose to take the changes. We can always push ahead even when things feel like they are gone for good.
Maybe this point of my life is not a finale. Maybe it's a beginning to something new. Only way to know is by going ahead.
