Why i don't write about college [yet]

There's a box inside of me that's super locked up. Mega bolted, in fact. It contains all the hopes and dreams I haven't properly grieved.

Somehow, I've always been fixated on being enough. And the FIRST TIME, I EVER EVER felt, enough, was when I was in college.
And it might've been the last time. As an adult, I struggle a lot. I struggle less than as a child, because I have more solutions now. I don't have less problems.

In college, all that mattered to me was I was GOOD at journalism. I had friends that didn't backstab me. I felt like things I put effort into MATTERED. I felt like I could set a goal and wORK TOWARD IT without it being an implicit losing game.
And I was LOVED by all the white kids at my school. They didn't judge me the way I had felt growing up in Portland.
Missouri somehow was an oasis. It was the first time I felt safe, even if I also disconnected from my Asian identity to really cherish that.

I wanted to be a journalist because I thought it'd bring me value. I wanted to meet people because it was as good as I'd hoped life would be outside of my suburb.

College was also a lover. LA was the lover I had after college. My college experience defined me more than anything else did. While the pain of my childhood is a chip I carry on my shoulder, the loss of the best time of my life - college - still haunts me to this day. It was inevitable, because you must grow up and move on. But recreating the feelings I had in college is something I've sought fiercely to do as an adult.

Because it was the first time I felt ok. It was the first time I didn't contemplate suicide. It was where I found astrology, tarot, MBTI, and purpose.

This was after I decided that being smart wouldn't be the thing I strived for anymore, but being good at writing for the world and impacting it would be reachable.

Redefining what my career will look like, when I loved it for so long, takes up so much energy when I know I could drown myself in more sadness all the time. I already do that. And redefining my career also signaled to me a loss of innocence I still can't face without feeling sick and sad.

College also gave me something to look forward to. A structure. I ripped it all up when I realized I'd been sold a dream that I couldn't honor, where I couldn't sacrifice the low pay and burnout. I got paid less when I left journalism, but I had more free time. It was basically equalizing. That hurt.

Processing high school is easier now, bc I have directly seen evidence that high school didn't matter. College is a bigger boss. College is like, yeah so you left your hometown and you found awesomeness and then it just... had to end. It didn't "implode." There wasn't any psychodrama. It was the only peaceful time in my life where my trauma didn't matter.

The box symbolizes "college." It reminds me of how I ran hard toward something and crashed and burned when the something was a snake, and it came up and ate me alive.
I was sold a dream, not just by the society I live in, but by myself. I told myself, "this is the start of the rest of your life." I want to not acknowledge how much the dream ended. I forbid myself from fully, fully grieving college, because I already had to grieve the career that I thought would bring me security.

I told myself that until I could see outside of this box, I wouldn't reopen it again. Right now it's so large. The fact that it's there, the box, is what occupies my consciousness more than what's inside.

I will open it soon though. I sense it's coming.

I just miss you, College. A lot.


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