I'm Better at Endings
reflections from one year post-graduation
I’m standing with my toes hanging off the diving board of a new ending. It’s summer. The cool, aqua pool of Dublin, grad school, and the world’s blankest page is just beneath my feet. Weeks away basically. And yet my feet are actually planted on a rough, bouncy, white board that is tethered back to land—the town I know almost too well. The future is becoming much more real, but the present moment is all I can truly feel. I’m at the beginning of an ending, and I couldn’t be happier.
For a girl that has a bit of a reputation for being bad about change, I love a fresh start. Change the place we’re going for lunch at the last minute and I’ll need a second to quell the irrational panic of the picture of the day that existed in my head that morning shifting. But I’ll start a new school or move across the country (now the world) without a second thought. Beginnings are still plenty hard and intimidating, sure. That’s not the best part of these giant changes. The good stuff is the ending.
Life is never better, in my humble opinion, than in the last month or two before a major life shake-up. Suddenly, everything that’s been mundane or annoying or even infuriating falls into a new light. I’m only doing this x more times, I’ll think. Daily tasks feel easier, lighter, unburdened by the weighty idea that this particular pattern of behavior and routine could be forever. Anything can be cherished on a temporary basis.
I never loved LA more (honestly, I never loved LA, period, which was a big part of the problem) than the month before I left. Its problems were no longer my own. The inconveniences were suddenly charming. I was a temporary person living a temporary existence like a character in a book.
And then I moved home, and while I was immensely relieved to be back in a town and a job where I felt comfortable, everything was once again clouded with the weight of forever. Every interaction, choice, fork in the road had so much consequence attached. I looked at everything as building the foundation for the rest of my life. I certainly had an important summer, a summer where I tried more than I ever had, but in a sort of awkward, self conscious way. Like a Sim who’s become suddenly aware of her own existence instead of actually playing the game as intended—living. I take things too seriously, have a tendency to get ahead of myself. And that’s exactly what I did with that beginning. I stacked up the weights until it all crumbled, and luckily, I fell into a next move that felt better, that alleviated the pressure.
Which necessitates yet another ending. My first year post-grad is up. My third summer of rafting season will be my last. I’m back in my comfort zone of finality where I feel free and ready to embrace anything and everything because I know I’ll never do it again. The consequences can only last so long, so I might as well fly at it head first—no regrets, no loose ends. And I’m thriving. Saying yes to everything, doing all the “one days” and “maybe next years” because I don’t have the option to delay. Checking off the bucket list at record speed.
But there’s also a different kind of freedom than the one I experienced leaving LA. Instead of romanticizing it all from a distance like watching a movie, removing myself from the script and all its problems, I find myself more engaged than ever. I’ve shed the conviction that things—relationships, jobs, hobbies, routines—have to last forever to be important. There’s a chance that I’ve finally learned how to live in the present, truly stand where my feet are with an openness to the temporary like never before. I want to make new friends, go on dates, stay out late, become deeply invested in this single summer even though it’s already predetermined that come September I’ll leave it all five thousand miles behind.
I guess I’ll call that growth that I’m past holding myself back from life until the perfect conditions present themselves. This has been a long, hard month. There have been plenty of rough days, but just in May alone, I can already feel the warm halo of the end. The, ‘this would matter in the long run, but we’re not running that far’ of it all. The ability to uncharacteristically look on the bright side and instead feel proud of everything I’ve accomplished and admiration for the people I get to do it with. A sense that I might actually be a participant in my own life in a meaningful way for maybe the first time.
This winter was hard, and I was ready to leave with the usual fire that accompanies my typical ending pattern. “This place could burn down for all I care,” is not an isolated thought I’ve had while leaving a school or an apartment or a city. But as the sun comes out and friends come back together and the summers that I love return, I’m realizing that leaving won’t be that easy. I don’t want it to be. I want to live the next few months in a way that reminds me of every single little thing I’ll miss about my hometown and the people in it. That might make the next beginning harder, but it’ll mean a present well spent. I can’t ruin the ending for fear of tainting the next chapter.
I guess to close I’ll say that reflecting on the beginning of this ending has made me realize that I need to reassess my idea of beginnings as well. To place less weight, have a looser relationship with the value of forever. Everything only needs to work right now. I’ve stopped projecting the future. If you’ve asked me about my life plan recently, you might have noticed I’ve become oddly evasive. I know, deep down, what I’d like to happen. I know how to take steps towards that, but I also understand it’s deeply silly to believe I have complete or even some control of the outcome. I’d rather stay open to what could happen than blind myself with uninformed, preconceived convictions.
I don’t know. I guess as someone who lost most of her childhood to living in the future, I’m reminding myself to stay where my feet are and keep my eyes up. Stay excited for what might happen instead of white-knuckling my backseat driver vision of a perfect future into existence.