Eight Months
The school year is over.
But really, these last eight months have been about everything but classes. In these last eight months, I've grown more than I ever have before. I've learned more than I thought I could; about humanity, life, the world, myself, and those close to me.
In these last eight months, I've vacillated from feeling lost as in the tunnels of an ant colony, to feeling moments of clarity that illuminated like a lighthouse on a dark night. The moments of the latter have been few and far in between, but have always struck when I needed it.
There are moments in these last eight months that I will not forget, so irrevokably changed by them that there's simply no way to shake them. Moments that have left a tangible, perceptible mark on my life and who I am. These times have been intensely miserable, and some as joyous to the point where my heart skips at the mere remembrance right now.
Ten years from now, even a year from now, I have no idea where I'll be, what I'll be doing, or who I'll become. In eight months, I went from knowing nothing of HTML and CSS, to redesigning the MSU Professional Writing Program website. In eight months, I went from turning my back on humanity, to thinking that it has a chance. In eight months, I went from feeling like a college student taking classes, to a college student with a future underneath his feet. During those eight months, though, I've felt considerable stress, guilt, frustration, and smash-your-face-in-with-a-brick rage. Through it all, I have to thank my friends for keeping me grounded and sane, for without them...I don't know where I'd be. But prison or a mental institution might be a good guess.
Right now, memories are flashing through like a reel of film gone haywire. Bits and pieces of random scenes, taken out of context. A foggy November morning, standing on a bus at 7AM, barely able to keep my balance. Throwing and taking punches in the dark on a street somewhere. Laughing, splitting my sides, with three good friends. Strolling sidewalks with a friend, talking about everything from zombies to debating why "Moisty" is a good name for a first-born. Reaquainting my ass with the concrete by way of skateboarding for the first time, under a semi-watchful, trained eye. Realizing I've fallen in love.
Eight months. How powerful is time so that just eight months can shape me so much?
But right now, most of all, I can smell the blossoms by the back entrance to Berkey Hall. I can smell how distractingly, alluringly sweet they were, and how it drew me from a somber reverie and made me chuckle in its simple, quaint power over me in that one, brief moment.
