There was once a girl who traveled across the continent to go to college. At 18 years old, she thought herself a trailblazer, a nomad with lofty goals. She left behind a life many would envy- loyal friends, a nuclear family (fractured but not broken), and a town still small enough to invite small town jokes by its residents, many who would live there for a lifetime. As many eighteen year olds do, she thought herself the nucleus of her world. In her bags, she had love letters from boys she left behind, and gifts from her childhood friends. She had a copy of The Places You'll Go, a course catalog she had highlighted in the early summer days, her dreams of being a doctor between every line she marked.
She had the heartbreak on her sleeve so many girls her age wore, a puppy love that ran its course, the tragic deaths of adoring grandparents, the divorce that had fractured (but not broken) the family. But she considered herself an optimist, a true glass is half full kind of gal, with enough confidence to not look back as the car began its 3,000 mile journey across plains and deserts to Phoenix.
A month later, she no longer found herself the nucleus, but an errant electron, circling a life so unfamiliar and lonely, that the girl often found herself gazing at the sky, fantasizing that there was an otherworldly girl like herself, light years away, feeling the same isolation. An alien soul mate to keep her from feeling so overwhelmingly lonely. In the evenings, she would often sit in the hallway of her dorms, coloring in the stack of coloring books she had brought from home. She would hear the bustle of the other students as they came and went, to sorority parties, to evening labs, to the commons to eat dinner, and she would color away. She would outline first, dark and intense, and then begin to fill inside, the steady and reliable crayon (Crayola Magic Scents) a soothing balm, the methodicalness predictable and comforting. She did this for weeks, coloring across the Disney spectrum. Tulip for Ariel's lips, leather jacket for Price Charming's glossy hair, Lilac for Aurora's dress. Until one day, when she met a fellow East Coaster, one who would join her in dancing across campus in a torrential monsoon, and help her to find a home away from home.
This year there are 3.7 million American high school senior awaiting graduation. Awaiting a future some have planned to the smallest detail since early childhood. A future path on which some are terrified to embark. And in what may be the hardest era for a high school senior to endure since the Vietnam drafts, their atoms are no longer under their control. So many of the rites of passage they were promised are now tentatively buried under a loose pack of soil- prom, graduation, elementary school walk throughs, time capsules opened. The last months of high school, usually filled with parties and furtive kisses with suitors who will someday be forgotten memories, found in a yearbook decades later are instead being spent in isolation, with siblings who are somehow both beloved and reviled, with parents who are suddenly at a loss. The kids but not kids are confused and nervous, though many won't tell their parents this until it has all passed. They may act up, they may stay up in their rooms for an interminably long time. Or they may color. They may find a coloring book tucked into an Easter basket or in an old box of school supplies from grade school, and they may sit down in their favorite chair, the one that gets the lion's share of afternoon sun, and color. And if they do, let them do it without reproach. They will color until the page is full, or until they are ready to close the book and run through the storm.
She had the heartbreak on her sleeve so many girls her age wore, a puppy love that ran its course, the tragic deaths of adoring grandparents, the divorce that had fractured (but not broken) the family. But she considered herself an optimist, a true glass is half full kind of gal, with enough confidence to not look back as the car began its 3,000 mile journey across plains and deserts to Phoenix.
A month later, she no longer found herself the nucleus, but an errant electron, circling a life so unfamiliar and lonely, that the girl often found herself gazing at the sky, fantasizing that there was an otherworldly girl like herself, light years away, feeling the same isolation. An alien soul mate to keep her from feeling so overwhelmingly lonely. In the evenings, she would often sit in the hallway of her dorms, coloring in the stack of coloring books she had brought from home. She would hear the bustle of the other students as they came and went, to sorority parties, to evening labs, to the commons to eat dinner, and she would color away. She would outline first, dark and intense, and then begin to fill inside, the steady and reliable crayon (Crayola Magic Scents) a soothing balm, the methodicalness predictable and comforting. She did this for weeks, coloring across the Disney spectrum. Tulip for Ariel's lips, leather jacket for Price Charming's glossy hair, Lilac for Aurora's dress. Until one day, when she met a fellow East Coaster, one who would join her in dancing across campus in a torrential monsoon, and help her to find a home away from home.
This year there are 3.7 million American high school senior awaiting graduation. Awaiting a future some have planned to the smallest detail since early childhood. A future path on which some are terrified to embark. And in what may be the hardest era for a high school senior to endure since the Vietnam drafts, their atoms are no longer under their control. So many of the rites of passage they were promised are now tentatively buried under a loose pack of soil- prom, graduation, elementary school walk throughs, time capsules opened. The last months of high school, usually filled with parties and furtive kisses with suitors who will someday be forgotten memories, found in a yearbook decades later are instead being spent in isolation, with siblings who are somehow both beloved and reviled, with parents who are suddenly at a loss. The kids but not kids are confused and nervous, though many won't tell their parents this until it has all passed. They may act up, they may stay up in their rooms for an interminably long time. Or they may color. They may find a coloring book tucked into an Easter basket or in an old box of school supplies from grade school, and they may sit down in their favorite chair, the one that gets the lion's share of afternoon sun, and color. And if they do, let them do it without reproach. They will color until the page is full, or until they are ready to close the book and run through the storm.
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