The Shing
Ashly Bickford // March 1, 2013
I feel like a moth in the dead of summer. It’s warm and peaceful as I’m drawn toward the soft light. And then, ZAP! I realize too late I made the wrong move. That’s a bit how it seems as I near the end of my university career. All I have known for these past few years are classes and work terms and now the inevitable lack of structure and the fear of the unknown almost makes me break out in hives. Hives are the worst.
Life up until this point has been pretty carefree. Write exams, do your assignments and take multiple breaks to congratulate yourself by streaming your favorite show. It’s arguable that we’ve learned more from, or at least paid more attention to, the Walter Whites and Olivia Popes and Jax Tellers of the fictional world than from our parents, profs and mentors. What the cast of New Girl can’t teach you is where to go after this bubble of scholarly safety has burst.
Here’s what I know: I won’t be doing any further education at this time, my degree is enough for me to set out and explore the field. I am open to travelling for work, what better time than now? I want to do something that matters. It’s not that I am not ambitious, I am. I just don’t have my life planned out. I think then the disappointment of not realizing every date in impeccable order would be worse than hives. I have never aspired to put myself into a box and stay there focused on one thing.
Having completed my work terms in three different sectors of public relations, I thought it would bring me clarity. That by the end I would know for sure which area suited me best and further defined me as a person. Wrong again. If anything, it just made me more confused because I liked them all. I guess this reinforces that I am in the right field, however it still doesn’t help with the dilemma of where I’ll go next.
No matter how much we (students, I am now your official spokesperson) complain about exams and boring profs and research papers, I think we can collectively agree that school really isn’t the torture house we make it out to be. Unless of course the person running your school is Miss. Trunchbull, and you frequent the dreaded “chokey.”
One thing I’m sure of is that I’m a bit of a wanderer; I’m not fond of staying in one place for too long. Maybe it’s my inner drifter, but more likely it’s my fear of serious relationships. Talking about my feelings goes against every fiber of my cowardly being. Discussing the future of a relationship makes me wish I was a turtle or had an invisibility cloak so I could hide. And also because that would be cool and useful in other situations like encountering a bear or when public speaking.
I have realized that my fear of commitment or of getting too close to someone stems from having felt the truly gut-twisting, bile-bubbling, heart-sinking feeling of betrayal. It’s like your body has been trained from birth to run the denial marathon with the broken hearts after party to follow. Every physiological response in your body is suddenly awakened to make sure you know what has happened and that you won’t soon forget it.
This fear may take a little longer to turn into something positive and for me to break out of my comfort zone. My point is that I’m going to try. I’m a work-in-progress, a flawed human. I know my limitations and want to start pushing them.
I had many of these revelations when I developed a horrible condition on my last work term – shingles. When I got the “shing”, as I affectionately called it, I had a bit of a quarter life crisis. Getting shingles at 21 may have been the painful kick in the butt I needed to stop acting 75 and start living my prime years. Now if only my hip replacement would cooperate…
I’m not going to go all Christopher McCandless on everyone and hitchhike my way to Alaska trying to find the meaning of life (although I have considered it). I’ve decided to take a lesson from my yoga instructor and find comfort in the uncomfortable. Breathe through the uneasiness. I have found a knight of confidence in myself to keep the anxiety at bay. If we plan out every second of our lives in an effort to avoid choosing the wrong path, we are bound to miss something important (or get shingles from the stress).
So while some may be looking straight ahead, at their set plans and concrete timelines, I will be avoiding this tunnel vision. I will be carefully considering every option, the kaleidoscope of possibilities. I’m ok with not knowing what comes next because I have faith it will be something good. I believe in happy accidents and making mistakes and up until recently, magic. We’ll be ok, fellow moths. If we get zapped, we’ll learn that things aren’t always what they seem.
And, at the very least, we will have flown.
