If I were good at math, I would be able to tell you exactly how many years I have been in school from elementary school to completing a master’s program. I am not good at math, which is why my masters was an MFA in English and Creative Writing. So, in the language of an MFA graduate in English and Creative Writing, I would say that I have been in school half of my life. Perhaps more. It was forever. And no time at all. And all of my time. And - now what do I do with myself?
This is not the first momentous graduation I have faced. High school was a fairly interesting one, partly because I was attempting to escape an abusive home life with zero knowledge how to get myself into a college or attain a vehicle or earn a living.
Thankfully, I had family to help me on my way and by the time I moped back to my hometown, a mere eight months or so later (that’s a tale for another time) I could return to a safe place.
My second graduation was an associates degree in Humanities and Languages (with honors, thank you very much) from a community college in Pennsylvania. The ceremony was missed due to an unexpected snowstorm and I ‘walked’ for my diploma across my living room while my family played Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 (the graduation song).
My third graduation was a BA in Creative Writing and English with a Concentration in Fiction (Magna Cum Laude) and came with the sound of an email notification letting me know I had passed all of my courses. I thought my diploma lost, until my family revealed they had snatched it up when it was delivered to get it framed. I posted a picture of it on Facebook and then promptly spiraled, not knowing what to do with the damn thing.
Now, my fourth graduation is equally as quiet, finishing an online MFA program and simply waiting for the Editorial letter from my professor. I have an almost completed novel as a thesis, a professional writing certificate, and an overwhelming case of imposter syndrome.
I can go in so many directions, so many directions that I am quite literally qualified for, and yet I still feel like the recent high school graduate who was just trying to escape.
I’m finding myself having to plan.
One extremely significant outcome of an abusive home life is the trauma. I did not make plans for a long time because I did not see myself being around to experience the fruition of said plans. I’m out of practice, now, but also, for the first time in nearly two decades, I am in the headspace to dream again.
Now, I’m dreaming with an MFA under my belt, and the dreams are frighteningly possible and realistic. Also difficult, and possibly on paths full of setbacks and the word ‘no’ said over and over, but still doable. Still … something real.
The Crossroads
Here I am, at a crossroads. I can go in one direction (more school!), and another that has slightly less support but a great community (self-employed?!) or just drift in the breeze awhile, write and finish and publish (imagine that!) my novels.
I could shrug my shoulders and hope for a steady job that has nothing to do with my degrees but which has skillsets that I used to get my degrees. This imaginary job has a 401k, health insurance, and a decades long everyday routine that goes on and on and on.
And, maybe that’s not so bad. Growing up under or just at the poverty line, and then being under or just at the poverty line as an adult has shaped my perspective on financial security. Even while still insecure (one bad slip-up, one large bill, could make everything come crashing down) a steady pay-check has that spark of hope in it.
I may have just graduated, but I’ve been in the workforce since I was 19. I know the grind, the dragging everyday hustle and bustle and maybe if you get overtime it won’t be so difficult this week, this month, this year. I know it like I know nothing else. I could write a book about it, but then I think I would fall back into that mindset I had after escaping my childhood home and no one wants that, least of all me.
I am at a Crossroads
Here’s the thing: this journey has brought me to a place where I am a different woman than I was when I graduated high school, and different than when I graduated with an AA, a BA, and I am a more healed version of myself at 36 with an MFA.
But the crossroads are still scary. The journey is still full of the unknown. But I - I know things now too. I know how my brain can turn into the monster that stalks me, and I know the warning signs. I know when I’ve had enough. I know when I am not satisfied. I know when I can be content, and where I would be miserable, and I know that when I face obstacles, it’s not that nineteen year old girl that is facing them, it’s that ten year old girl - the one with the big dreams and even bigger sense of self. The one who knows who she is and where she stands and who she belongs to. The one who believed at such a young age, and spoke of angels in her dining room, and pretended to read before she could. That girl writes novels. That girl makes stuff happen. That girl believes.
I am at a crossroads, but that girl isn’t buried anymore. She rose again, she became. She uncovered herself from years of muck and labels and burdens and scars and wounds.
I am at a crossroads, but so is she.