Act 2: 1.5 Months until New York
In just a month and a half, I will be ending one story and beginning another. My wish to finally get up out of Florida is coming true. Sometime in August (I still have no idea of a date), I’ll be moving from Florida to New York City. As someone who has moved every 3–4 years as a kid, living in Florida has the longest I’ve been in any one particular place. Now, considering that 4 of these 6 years in Florida have been because of university, I have been here much too long. The heat, the people, just the idea that I’ve been stationary for 6 years makes me a little nauseous. It’s time for a change, and now that it is happening, I can’t help but feel… nervous?
This move to New York will be something that I have dreamed of for so long. This image I have of a huge city housing everything I could ever need has kept me alive for a few years. I’ve visited a few times, and I can’t help but fall deeper in love each and every time I visit. Now those dreams are becoming a reality. This long-distance relationship is finally going to be a permanent day to day thing.
In 1.5 months, I will be starting grad school at Columbia University. This is like the cherry on top of the sundae. To be living IN New York AND attending Columbia for grad school? Am I on drugs or is this actually happening? I don’t think, never in a million years, that a kid like me would be making it this far. That I would have this kind of opportunity. That I would last this long to make this happen. Each step along the way has been… interesting(yeah this is a really lame way to describe it), very typical come up story but even though it has been played out one thousand and one times, this feels like the first time I am ever seeing it because in reality it is.
I feel nervous. I feel anxious. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. I’m afraid it will all be taken away from me like a rug from beneath my feet. I worry I’ll be consumed that is the “bigger life” I’ve always desired. I worry I’ve talked this up too much not only to myself but to all my peers and I won’t deliver. I worry this is all one big episode of punk’d and I’m waiting for someone to come along and tell it has all just been one huge prank. Even with all that weighing on my mind and weighing my insides like 1 too many Popeye’s biscuits, I literally cannot wait to get to it. To touch it. To smell it. To live it. It’s literally within arms reach. I feel like a dog that has been on a leash for MUCH too long and I see someone coming along to rid me of my restraints and let me loose.
As much as I feel ready to move on to this higher stage, as much as I feel I deserve it, as much as I feel that all my hard work is finally paying off, sometimes, something, still not sure what, whispers to me that I don’t “belong there”. Something bigger and darker than myself looms over me, trying to let me know I’m not mean to go to that place that lies just beyond my fingertips. And sometimes I listen. Sometimes, I think, I have no business being there. I have no right to follow through with my dreams and ambitions. I look at where I’ve come from and think I shouldn’t be allowed to enter that Place that sits off in the distance. But they’re only whispers right? I figure if I yell loud enough, I can shut them up. I mean, I do REALLY want to follow through with this and I can’t help but smile when thinking about my life a month and half from now. Then the butterflies start fluttering, and any inhibitions are softly pushed aside and replaced with chants for me to seize the very thing I’ve wanted for a little while now.
But who knows. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I mean, it really isn’t THAT big of a deal tbh.
