“Don’t Look Back in Anger”

While you were there in that auditorium feeling like a complete failure of a person, I probably would have told you that it was exactly where you needed to be.

It was only the second day of being in Virginia, and I had been fighting the jetlag to get through orientation. The administrator stood at the bottom of the auditorium in front of me and all the other kids trading the microphone with different people that had run the community college. But as the administrator spoke about financial aid and in-state tuition, I began to think about my feelings of regret. Throughout my junior and senior years of high school, I gave up on the prospects of going to a reputable 4-year university. I had traded A’s for joyrides around town, seeking the thrill of an escape. I knew that I couldn’t afford college, so I gave up on the effort to amass scholarships or stipends. I drifted away from the future, because it had altogether scared me too much.

I wasted away those years searching for the missing steps of a broken path I had been on. From 14 to 18, I had attended 3 different high schools. I hardly had the framework to understand how important that leap after college. But at community college, something took root in my brain, beneath the layers of shame and embarrassment. I told myself that if I could get out of Virginia one day, then that meant I had done enough to create momentum. I may have been inspired to create an escape pod that would take me far away from my self-imposed oblivion. And all of those things that I thought of myself then – that I was dumb. I was stupid. I was poor. I was selfish. I was a waste. I was a mistake. These are the things I could be far, far away from.

As orientation ended, I got up from my seat with a little more wind in my sails. I walked out into the Virginian mug to embrace a type of muted sunshine that shed light through broken patches of the branches that lined the main walkway. I sat on a bench, and I tried to even talk to someone that I had saw in orientation. Sooner or later, he got the drift that I was a weirdo and moved to a different bench. In silence, I watched as other kids walked past. I wondered if they were just as lonely as I was. I wondered if they too were scared of something. Were they too here because the path had brought them here? Were they too trying to make their escape?

Once I had finished sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I got up and made my way to the car that I shared with my sister. I put the key in the ignition. I revved up the engine. I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward where I had lived. But I knew that I wasn’t headed home anytime soon.