The Bittersweet Feeling That Comes With Graduation

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When winter transitions into spring and summer transitions into fall, there’s a certain similarity in the way the air feels. Its as if the change of the weather signifies a change of heart as the time passes. Most of us graduate around the time when spring is transitioning into summer, and the heat just keeps rising. The colors of spring start getting too bright to be bearably beautiful, and then we part ways with what we have known for a long time.

What we have known up till then is the feeling of familiarity. Of knowing the people, of knowing the schedules of our day-to-day lives, of knowing who likes who and who to be around when one is happy, and who to call up when sad. Its a very known world we have been a part of for so long, that when we leave it behind, excited and full of adrenaline, we keep the sadness hidden to make the present present itself as a present.

And when we lay in bed is when we think about what lies ahead. We think about it because we don’t know what lies ahead.

It is not the feeling of dread, or sadness that disturbs our sense of comfort, but the feeling of not knowing. The feeling of losing familiarity. We don’t know what we will be, or what we will do with our lives. But then when we think about the things we’ve grown accustomed to, we fear losing the familiarity.

We will not know the people we once learned to love. We will not know who will die first. We will not know how much rent money will be eaten up from whatever job we get. We don’t even know if we will get a job or not. We will not know if we will ever get out of our parents’ homes. We will not know if our partners will be our partners two years from now. We will not know if our best friends will still be our best friends. We will not know if we will be nice, kind, sad, happy, sour. We will not know if we kill someone’s dog as we rush away from a fight with a loved one. We will not know anything now.

In bed, in subway rides, on a jog, or just a walk, as we listen to sad songs as we breathe in the air that is changing as we change, we fear change. Growing up comes with a certain loss of time. As if the years that pass, and the time we take, really is eating up what we’re being given.

And we don’t know what time will do, or give, to us. And we don’t know if we can give time what it wants.

But we know one thing. That even as every three months, our red blood cells die and new ones form, we will keep trying to live. Because that is what this is all about. The will to understand that its ok to be uncertain, and that we should embrace the uncertainty while being the best we can be. And understand that all of us are going through this lonely sad feeling of losing the known.

We have each other as we fight through the loneliness of not knowing. We have our dreams. We have hope. We have resilience. We have our experiences that have shaped us into this person. We know life cannot give us what we cannot handle. And this is life’s way of showing us that in the longing for understanding and comprehension, we belong together.

And we will get through the change.