Hey, I’m Still Here.

A year. It’s been exactly one year since I graduated and lost my sense of focus in life. 

For 20 years, school had been all I had known. Even when I was out of work or transitioning from place to place, I still knew that at the end of the day I would have the structure and responsibility that school afforded. 

When I submitted my thesis, my final requirement to graduate, I expected fireworks or a dramatic moment of relief, weight falling off of my shoulders, or possibly a system notification saying, “Congrats you passed this stage in life, here’s your next mission to complete the game.” Instead, all I got was a tremendous wave of anxiety.

I felt like I was drowning. What I thought was a break in the waves—a breath of fresh air coming to greet my eager lungs—was actually an even larger wave coming to swallow me whole.

My entire life had led up to this point. It had led to this moment where I knew what I was supposed to do next. After you graduate you go travel for a summer, find yourself, and then come back to find a job and wait for the next great landmark. Maybe you start a career or maybe you get married and have kids or maybe you give it all up to experience life in a way unique to you. That’s what life is all about, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Instead of finding myself in a small town in Italy, fulfilling my helpless romantic fantasies, I found myself in bed watching Netflix as the world itself was being swallowed with its second wave. 

A path derailed doesn’t mean the end of the path entirely, it just means there needs to be a change in direction, but where do you go when all directions are marked “DO NOT ENTER”? Where do you go when there’s nowhere left to go? Nothing left to do?

I thought that asking the never-ending list of rhetorical questions would lead me to some kind of eureka moment. It didn’t. The answer I did receive was the answer I didn’t want. To be patient and to trust. 

As a person, I’ve never been one to sit idly by. In fact, “not sitting idly by” is a phrase I use in most every single cover letter I send out to potential employers. I always had to have a plan and a backup plan and a backup backup plan. If I wanted something, I went out and got it. There was no need to wait but for the first time in my life, that was all I could do. There was no backup plan or, at least, not anymore. 

Obviously, it took me a while to understand this. I floundered about and tried to forge my own path, pushing and pulling and trying to tear down these closed doors. My result was the same. Countless job/internship applications with no response, rejection letters from service opportunities, and missed deadlines for grad school applications. 

The only way I was getting out of this, the only way I would find a different path is if I waited for one to appear before me. My proactivity was getting me nowhere. If anything, it was digging a deeper hole in my mind. The more I fought, the more I fell. Fell into depression. Fell into anxiety. Fell into a void that I could feel myself slipping further and further into. 

So, I did what I could. I waited. 

I picked up the books that I had been unable to read throughout my undergrad years. I started writing again, this time with the intention to make it consistent. I joined the wonderful world of bookstagramming and the community that came with it (Here’s a link to that post here). I started rebuilding and strengthening my relationships with the people who stuck around through the pandemic, family or otherwise. I started helping my mom do construction around the house and picking up my sister from school and feeding the homeless once a week and and and…

When I found myself in the midst of this identity crisis, which is what it was, I realized that my entire being was dependent on that title of “Honors Student.” Who was Chloé without it? What did she do? What did she like? Who did she like to be around? What did she dream of besides academic accolades?

Then the lightbulb went off. Chloé is an honors student but she isn’t just that one thing. That title was a part that made up the whole. Chloé was an honors student but she was also a friend, a family member, an employee, a lover of books and coffee, of travel and rock climbing, of writing and serving, of of of…

When we start believing that we are but a part that makes up the whole, we start believing in less of what we truly are. We are a whole made of many perfect and imperfect parts. One does not define the many, but it is the many that define the whole. Looking at one aspect of myself and declaring that “this is me” was denying that I could be more. 

I was denying that my life meant more. 

We don’t exist to just be one thing. If my mom, for example, decided that she was just a mom and nothing else she would be denying that she has the strength and capacity to be everything. My mother is not only a mom. She’s an electrician, a carpenter, a tiler, a gardener, a cleaner, an expert of sewing and handicrafts, a decorator, a creator, a daughter, a wife, and a mother. 

She’s never one to question whether or not she cannot be, rather, she questions why she couldn’t be because she can. There is absolutely no doubt in her, that if she put her mind to it, she could do it. She knows in her bones that she is everything and not the one. 

I may be an honors student but that’s not all that I am. I am everything that I need to be. I am a whole person. A collection of individual parts, defined not by the one but by the many. 

If you had the chance to read my op-ed published in USA Today, you may be somewhat familiar with the concept I’m discussing here, which is the danger of a single story. The way in which I discussed it in my op-ed though was purely from the outside perspective, of stereotyping by external factors. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done internally though.

A single-story, looking at a piece of the whole rather than the whole itself, can be internalized as well. If you feed yourself the same single story over and over again (i.e. “I’m only this” or “I’ll never be that”), eventually that will become your reality. A self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

When I first drafted this post (June 14, 2021), my doors had still yet to open. I was patiently waiting for a green light. Simultaneously though, I felt the urge to start searching again, patiently waiting but actively searching. An odd combination if I do say so myself.

I didn’t even dream of the possibility that the ending of this post would be anything other than, “Hey, I’m still here waiting.” Hence the title. Yet, here I am with some pretty exciting news.

On August 30th, I will be beginning a master’s program!

When I’ve previously reflected on this past year, all I could focus on were things I was no longer able to do rather than the things I was doing. Now, I see the year for what it is which was a year full of me doing what I wanted to do. You may look at that and go, “Duh! You spent a year inside finding ways to keep yourself entertained, of course, you did what you wanted to do.”

Like always, my imaginary conversation partner in this instance is a smartass surprise, surprise. Let’s back up a little though, the reason I didn’t understand or see this freedom as an opportunity was that I had always been so busy. I’ve not had a break from school in about 20 years.

Sure, I had summers and winters off but that was never enough time to really figure out what I wanted to do. I dabbled, of course, but my ADHD made it impossible to focus on one thing for a long enough period of time to even figure out if I liked it or if it was just another hyper-fixation that would fade.

During this time though, I’ve discovered a few things. First, I don’t want to be a psychologist. Period. Subconsciously, I think my brain has always known that my psychology career would end in my undergrad years. In accepting that I’d much rather be a creator of some kind rather than live in a dark corner of the library for the rest of my life, I’ve been accepted into a master’s program for New Media Journalism at Full Sail University.

Essentially, it’s a degree program centered around writing that also simultaneously brings in aspects of multimedia (filming, photography, web design, etc.) to create a well-rounded individual for the workforce. Basically, it’s my dream degree. That being said, this announcement has a second part, which is I will also be starting an internship as a Social Media Marketer on August 18th with a company I’m super excited to work with!

Before I close things out, I would like to say that I’m extremely grateful for all of the people over the years that have allowed me to create in some fashion (whether that be a website or graphics or blog posts) because I wouldn’t have even tried to do something like this unless you had given me that chance. For which, I am forever grateful.

Where does that leave me now? Well, let’s see, I spent a year waiting, having multiple existential crises, found my own power, found a new passion, and am currently acting on said new passion.

I think someone hit the pause button on my life a year ago, and boy am I glad they did because I was a mess. I was burnt out beyond belief, doing things I wouldn’t ordinarily do if I was in my right mind, and going down a path that involved a tremendous amount of college debt and, frankly, unhappiness. I would’ve never seen that if I wasn’t forced to stop and slow down.

So, here’s to taking breaks and breaking down! And here’s another, for starting back up and never backing down! We rise and we fall, like the changing of seasons and the falling of leaves, but the most important part is not when we fall but how many times we choose to get back up.

So here’s to us!