Where the Sidewalk Ends

At some point in the next couple days, I will need to preregister for my last set of college courses. I don't think I'm overreacting when I say @#$%^!@$%^. I swing between putting too much and too little thought into my choices. Do I want this to be easy but boring? Or challenging but intellectually stimulating? Call it a defense mechanism, but mostly, I pretend that this is not happening.

Of late, I have found myself in a limbo state. Wedged between what was and what is to be. Each day just, passes by. I don't know that it's ennui, exactly, because I still smile, laugh, look forward. Still expect. Still enjoy. But deep down, I can't help but notice the days rushing by. It's like trying to hold dry sand. Perhaps because I have not yet concretized my "life" plans, whatever that means, perhaps because I am a hapless romantic who is just waiting for things to fall into place, I feel like I am soon going to be standing not at a fork in the road but at a dead end asking myself, "Now what?"

My life hasn't always been a mudslide, though. When I was younger, my weeks were landmarked, and I attribute my present preference for routine to the strict schedule by which I used to live. And by landmarked, I mean that to me, each day meant a certain commitment, and nothing else. Art Class Monday, Soccer Tuesday, Piano Wednesday, Singing Thursday, Soccer Friday, Dance Saturday. As I moved on into high school, some of the activities dropped out, but now there were sign posts in the year. Soccer season, quarterly piano recitals, Dance Production, Annual Certificate of Merit Exam, holiday choir tour, monthly exams, the list goes on. And though, at the time, I sometimes wished them away or cursed them for their nightmare-inducing qualities, they were steady markers in my life. And after every single one, I would find myself in withdrawal, wondering how I would sit still for three hundred and sixty five days until I could do it again. But as one activity would sink to the bottom, another would bubble up. And such was my life.

When I first started college, I felt like I was lost in a vast open space. There was no structure; there were no landmarks. I felt lost and confused and in dire need of direction. I could do anything I wanted to do. I could be anyone I wanted to be. Though it took a while, I have become involved in various activities, have found my bearings and a sense of belonging. I have a map again.

And now that I'm comfortable, I'm starting to realize it's already time to move on. Move, not into another vast open space, but a vacuum. One where my only signposts will be the four quarters of the fiscal year. One where if I'm not careful, time will fall away.

Call me a cynic, but not a pessimist. To be a pessimist, I would have to believe that it was all downhill from here. But I refuse to believe that. Every single one of those "time landmarks" by which I lived were imposed by some higher authority. And though, in some capacity, I chose for them to be a part of my life, I had little say in their occurrences. While the markers shaped me, I find my unmarked future to be highly symbolic. Symbolic of the control I will now take over my own life, uncharted territory that only I can map out.

So it's not a dead end per se. It's the end of the sidewalk, that thing that protects you from the cars on the road. That industrial symbol of societal constraints and restrictions. Because, as Shel Silverstein writes in his poem, "there the grass grows soft and white, and there the sun burns crimson bright." When I get there, it won't be the end of the sidewalk. It will be the beginning of my life.