Change is something that we either love or hate. Some of us love to hate it, and hate to love it. For some of us, change is good. Change is wiping that guck of a messy year off of your shoulders, or change is profusely starring at yourself in a mirror telling yourself to do something different with your life. Change can sometimes really hurt us, and break our hearts into two million zillion pieces. Change can also sometimes pick up all of those millions and zillions of pieces and turn them into something that you never imagined them to be- forgetting to look in the mirror before leaving the house in the morning because you’re too excited to get out there.
Currently, change is something that I’m dealing with. Well, I take that back. I am going to be experiencing change in the coming months and it’s a big change as well as a big choice. Alright alright I’ll tell you, but only because you’re on the edge of your seat. Yes, it is that time of my life. All 17 years of my pink tutu, booty shaking life has led up to this moment- choosing where to go to college. I saw “choosing” like I got into a gazillion colleges that are just dying to have me, Emily Sullivan attend them. Please know that is not the case. Believe me, these past few months have been filled with tears pouring down my face as I stare at a computer screen that starts with, “We regret to inform you…”, and they’ve also been filled with moments of me standing in the middle of my kitchen looking at an unopened envelop. If that small, almost puny, envelop is here to tell me that I got in, then I must be dreaming because last time I checked, acceptance letters are big, wonderful, giant pieces of paper holding your whole glorious future ahead of you in them. In the middle of my kitchen, that puny envelop starred right back and me and laughed with me. We laughed as I said without reading, “Dear Miss. Sullivan, we regret to inform you that we cannot…”, in absolute solitude that I did not get in. But anyways, I’ve narrowed down my choices to two schools that six months ago I would’ve never even thought about attending. It’s kind of crazy how the big man upstairs works. One of these options is right down the road from me, in the city I’ve always lived, with opportunity growing out of its fingertips. The other school is tucked away in a small college town in the mountains of North Carolina.
I always said that I wanted to go far away. Not like three or four hours away, like all the way across the country. I’m not crazy for thinking that because all I wanted was change. I wanted change so big that I was absolutely forced to look at myself in that mirror and DO IT. Change where I couldn’t just come home whenever I wanted. I thought to myself that if anyone can handle being far away from home and who has the opportunity to go somewhere far away, then they would be absolutely crazy for not doing it.
Then I sorta did it. I went out all the way across the country to my potential home for the next four years, just to visit for a week. “This would be a lot of getting use to”, I told myself humbly. I slowly realized that I was forcing myself to feel these things. I also told myself “I wont experience change at these other in-state schools because I’ll be in the same box I’ve always been in, with people I’ve known forever”. I mean, I still partly think that because I still partly want to go far away. But is what I’m telling myself an excuse? Am I really scared of change so much that I am masking it with achieving the biggest change imaginable?
Truth be told, change is going to be scary. This change isn’t like going from elementary school to middle school. This change, looks you right back in the eyes and gives it to you the hard way. It gives you the option to stay inside of a warm, comfortable cardboard box that is decorated with things you’ve seen your whole life, or it gives you the option to go outside of that comfortable cardboard box and be really cold and really uncomfortable. The big man upstairs calls me, and you, and your neighbor, and your classmate, and even your pet fish to be uncomfortable. If I know one thing, change is surely uncomfortable. You know what else is uncomfortable? Those shoes on your feet right now when you put them on for the first few months of having them. You hated wearing them! But, you kept wearing them because you didn’t have another pair of warm shoes that didn’t have holes in them. Soon, you start to live in those shoes and put them on not because you have to, but because they keep you warm and they’re what you need. Maybe look at yourself like that, speaking to me too. You get put somewhere that you don't really love at first. You obviously have no other choice then to put up with it, to keep trucking along. Then, things that you were forced to do at one point start to become comfortable and necessary. Things like these are craved for in the well being of the human race.
Finally, this is when you look at yourself in the mirror and smile. You smile while you feel your heart beat rise a little bit because you’re nervous. No body said being nervous was a bad thing.