The Graduate

My mom and me

Tommy and me

Me and my dad

My best friend Sandy and me. She and her fiance drove three hours that morning to see me graduate, and then had another three hour trip home that afternoon! Dedication.

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."  ~e.e. cummings

Graduation was strange.

It was a lot of things, really. Loud. Colorful. Exceptionally long.

I goofed off most of the time with the people around me.

I thought, going into it, graduation would be a time for reflection. I could let my thoughts meander throughout the course of the three hours we sat there, and maybe come up with some pearl of wisdom that would make me feel ready to be an adult.

Not quite.

I walked out feeling as anxious as I did walking in, and considerably hungrier.

Graduation was a wonderfully ceremonial, but the graduation feelings didn't really set in until the next day.

When I was the last one to move out of my apartment.

I've lived in that apartment for two years, including summers. I was the first one to move in, and the last one to move out. After my last roommate had left, I laid on the floor in the living room for awhile, feeling confused.

And honestly, I felt like I had died or something.

Because life as I knew it was over. And it's true. All that time being a student, and now I had to find a way to be...what. Me? Or something like it?

I am now moved into the basement of my boyfriend's parents' home, and I'm still not unpacked. I start work a week from today. And my only goal this week, aside from some errands, is to prepare myself for the rest of my life.

Luckily it comes a day at a time, because I'm a bit overwhelmed with the thought of it.

It has driven me to watch a lot of Castle and eat things. 

But I have also continued working on my fiction novel, worked a bit in the garden, and enjoyed the beautiful weather, so I'd call that a success.

I have also suddenly acquired many new roommates in the form of a kitty, a puppy, a fish, Tom's parents, his best friend from the Marines who is in town for two weeks, his sister, his sister's boyfriend, and of course, my Tommy.

And thus begins life without a class schedule.

Onward.