Dear Admissions Officer
I would tell you my name, but it’s irrelevant, just like the tens of names you’ve read before this application, and the tens you’ll read after. So let’s not focus on me.
Let’s focus on you.
Let’s focus on your dreams and aspirations – to curl up with a good book, to spend the weekend mindlessly watching television, to finally plan a get-away with your friends, to spend a vacation without seeing a single teenager, to interact with someone without analysing them.
Let’s take a moment to remember how many of these (and other) wishes you’ve managed to fulfil.
Back here with me?
Cool
Let’s now take another moment and reflect on how many such moments make up the best memories if your childhood. Here’s some ideas to help you visualise.
Sitting in a car, crowded in the back seat with your siblings and a suitcase or two, squabbling over the game of I Spy while the buildings give way to trees. You wonder where the people in the car that just overtook yours are headed. Perhaps you’ll see them again at your holiday destination, and maybe their kids will join you to play catch on the beach, or maybe your paths were meant to cross for just a split moment, your eyes meeting theirs over the gap of two cars cruising towards their destination.
Fast forward to High School. You’ve just come back from a month-long International trip and making a plan to convince your parents for a sleepover at your friend’s house after the exams, when you get the news that they’re leaving town forever in the next 3 days and don’t have time to even meet you let alone a sleepover. You’re hit by a sense of betrayal which is only enhanced by the hormones they’re raging through your system. Surely this news could have been relayed just as easily over the phone so that you had time to prepare, mentally and emotionally. At the time, it doesn’t even occur to you that their whole life has been uprooted while just a portion of yours is affected.
You swear to go to the same college, to be those friends that talk every day, know everything about each other’s daily routine.
6 months later, you drift apart. The distance and demand on time too much strain for the relationship to handle.
You learn that your parents were right after all. People will always come and go. But they were wrong too. They didn’t know that a part of you will go away too.
You’re in college now, sharing a room with someone you don’t know. The person across the hallway greeted you enthusiastically, and you’re worried that they thought your response was cold. In truth, you’re just adjusting. You’ve learnt to protect yourself from breaking apart when others leave, but this is the first time you’re leaving home. Your bookcase groaning under the weight of your collections is no longer around the corner, ready with a comfort read. This pillow is not the one where you’ve laid your head every day for the past 17 years; it’s never listened to your dreams, and it doesn’t comfort when you cry.
You understand that it’s just as hard when you’re doing the leaving.
By the end of college, you’re prepared to take on the world. You have a job, you have new friends, and you have a better coping system. Your dreams have evolved, you’ve grown (in fashion and thoughts) and you’re going to travel for 3 months before settling down to the grind. You promise yourself that you shall expand your horizons – learn new languages, re-learn the guitar, join a book club, cook for yourself at least thrice a week, and plan family vacations twice a year. You know that promises are meant to be broken, so you don’t make any. A list is the way to go.
When your job starts, the list gets forgotten. You don’t have the time to learn a new language, you don’t know where the guitar is even kept, and the sort of energy required for cooking has drained out of you by the end of first week. Clearly, the list is not the solution.
You learn that your time management leaves a lot to be desired.
Years pass, you climb the ladder, professionally and socially. And fall emotionally and physically. You buy a gym subscription and let it expire. You let incoming calls go to voicemail and never call back. You don’t even know when isolation creeps in.
Until the day you wake up, paralysed with fear and no one to turn to. When you can’t distinguish between your living in isolation or isolation living in you. You understand that this is rock bottom, and you go through all the stages of grief.
Only when you accept your falls though, can you begin to plug in the holes. Those promises and lists were never the problem. They just required commitment. You argue that commitment is a two-way street, but you’re not even on the street yet.
So you change. You adapt.
And those wishes and dreams? They come true. That list expands and you tick through it. The promises are still broken, but through realisation and not strain. Looking back, you realise that you were happiest in the smallest moments when you were a child. Your favourite lunch during recess, getting a hug, playing with your dog.
As you grew, your moments got smaller, and your contentment disappeared with them.
Are you still visualising? Or have you recognised these moments in your life? Are you remembering the last time you planned a vacation or the time you were on one?
I know, for myself, that I shall try my damnest to avoid hitting rock bottom, because I never lose track of the small moments. I take note of them, recognise their lack when feeling off mood, and go back to track.
It’s been difficult finding like-minded individuals in this journey, everyone is too busy with the reputation-race, but I’m always on the lookout. Are you?
I don’t know if you’re still reading, but if you are, maybe you’ve gained an insight into my thought process.
.
.
.
And yeah, that beginning where I said we’re going to focus on you? I lied.
Because the world lies counsellor. But sometimes truth lies in the lies.
