Ready or Not, Here I Come

Ready or Not, Here I Come

In the past two years I’ve felt very detached from my identity as a writer, and I think that could be because so much about me has changed. I spend too much time idealizing the me that I was before I graduated, and not enough time appreciating who I have become since then and accepting myself. I love growth but I hate change, it’s a tough combination. I see the pre-graduation version of me as perfect at times. I picture her standing in golden light, as a skinnier, smarter, busier, slightly more confident, and a little less sad version of myself. I envy her, and I miss her. I think in some ways I am still her, but I have to write to see that. If I can write this piece, and tell you all about what I’ve experienced in the last two years, I can solidify my new identity. To reestablish myself as a writer I’m going to prove to myself that I can still share my thoughts, in an interesting way, on the page. So buckle up, here we go:

Fall 2018 to May 2019 was my senior year of college. During that year I didn’t look forward to graduating at all. I spent the entire school year terrified of graduation instead of being excited about it because it meant the end of the first year at Umich that I had genuinely enjoyed. It also meant the end of academic learning, which I was familiar with and understood very well, and the beginning of life as a normal adult, which was something I did not, and still do not understand. Similarly, I didn’t want to graduate because I feared that would mean the end of multiple friendships; specifically, the friendships I forged earlier that year while studying abroad in Austria for three weeks. Five of us (Dom, Chloe, Olive, Evan, and myself), who I will refer to as The Five from now on, formed a friend group while there, and I sensed that I could be friends with them for life. I had spent most of my life searching for friends that I felt like I truly fit-in with, and when I met The Five, I believed I had finally found what I was looking for! For the first time in my life it felt like my friends and I were all pieces of the same puzzle. I wasn’t the imposter puzzle piece trying to make myself fit into a picture where I didn’t belong. I felt amazing, and I was thrilled to finally have the social life I had always craved. I loved the friends I already had, but I think a big part of me always had a deep desire to be part of a friend group. I didn’t feel as whole when I had several separate friends. 

In hindsight, I think I gave and continue to give my friends too much importance in my life. When I get really close to someone, I tend to make them my sun; the center of my universe. I forget that I’m always supposed to be in the center.  Once the person leaves my life, it’s as catastrophic for me as it would be if the sun literally left our solar system. All sense of being whole, all sense of self is lost.  Anyway, I’m not sure what the balance is between valuing other people and letting them take up space in your life, and valuing and honoring yourself. I now know that I cannot lose my sun, and I cannot overextend myself to keep others connected to me. I’m currently working on figuring out how to make myself into my own sun.

Back to graduation, and the impending doom that was the end of school. I wrote many poems about how I felt at this time. I did not look upon the future with hope. In 2017, I started noticing negative changes in my mental health, and that downward spiral continued throughout my senior year.  I became significantly more anxious and started developing depression. My stomach was unhappy all the time, I lost my appetite for about 10 months, and I unintentionally lost about 15 pounds. At points I didn’t really feel like myself, and I would rejoice when the “dark grey cloud” that I’d called my depression waves would finally drift past me. Mentally, it was my worst year of school. It became so much harder to complete my homework. I had a hard time motivating myself to get things done. I didn’t want to fail, but I don’t think I cared enough to try harder either. I managed to maintain mostly A’s, but I felt a big change in my work ethic. My friends would make fun of me for not doing my required reading but they didn’t understand that the year before I met them, I didn’t struggle quite as much. They would be confused and very concerned about me not eating much, but they didn’t know that I used to eat plenty of food before I met them. It was a weird time to present myself to new people, I was an unusual version of myself. My brain was working against me in a much more intense fashion than ever before and it was very upsetting for me. 

I wonder if my internal struggles had anything to do with why I clung to The Five so much. Academically and mentally, I struggled, but socially I was having a great time. This is very cliché but they were the sun for me during that year which was filled with a lot of dark grey clouds, so it was really difficult for me to imagine letting them go. I finally had what I had always wanted, but I felt that it had a time limit. For any Mob Psycho 100 fans out there, as each day inched closer and closer to graduation, it felt like the progression toward Mob’s explosion. For non-fans, click here. 

With my mental state the way it was, I didn’t do much applying for jobs, and I knew I wasn’t ready for grad school yet. I needed a break to focus on my mental health, and hopefully regain the motivation that I needed in order to be successful. The decision to give myself a break contributed to the fear of graduating. I had no future plans. What if I never figured it all out? Would people still be proud of me? Would they look down on me for not having a plan? Was I the one that failed?

May 2019 came and I graduated, and just as I predicted, my world crumbled into bits. I overextended myself to try to keep my friendships alive and active with The Five. I was bitter and angry about this for a very long time, because I felt that I was the only one that cared. Actually, Dom, who had also graduated, cared too, because we were both extremely lonely and in this new and alarming position that the others had yet to experience. Despite my efforts, in my eyes we fell apart anyway. That was an incredibly painful blow to me. In the end, my friendships with the friends I had prior to meeting The Five (shoutout to Molly, Nicole, Kuhu, and Alexis you guys mean so much to me) are the ones that I’ve continued to keep. I am no longer upset about losing The Five now that my perspective has changed, but I do miss the connection we had. 

Immediately following graduation, I spent a lot of time filled with internal darkness. Summer 2019 was a very lonely summer for me. I was never suicidal, but at times I just wanted everything to stop. If I could just pause everything, (which I think is sort of how we feel when we say we want to die) and find happiness again, everything would be okay. But I couldn’t pause my life. I couldn’t pause everyone else so that I could catch up. Unfortunately time doesn’t work like that. So, I spent that summer enduring horrible mood swings. One minute I was on top of the world, then the smallest thing would happen and I’d come crashing down. My limbs grew heavy. It was harder to see. Normal tasks became very difficult for me to do. That summer was the first time my mom had seen me consistently in that state, and I think she was very confused about who her daughter was. I spent that summer mostly alone.

  The highlights of summer 2019 were dog sitting my Aunt’s dogs for a week with my other Aunt, going to the Jackson County Fair, and babysitting my little cousin. We’ll call her Peppa because she loves Peppa Pig. Peppa was nearly two years old when I started babysitting in June 2019. I babysat her from then until August 2021. She’s not my baby, but she’s my baby and she just turned four a few weeks ago. I knew very little about caring for a toddler when she first started coming over. I started out changing her diapers with a scarf tied around my mouth and nose so that I couldn’t smell the poop. I knew it was ridiculous, but I already didn’t want to be that close to poop in the first place; I REFUSED to smell it too. I learned a lot about myself and Peppa, and toddlers in general during those two years. I was especially grateful for her presence the first summer because having her around filled me with so much joy. Peppa served as my main social outlet. Outside of my immediate family, I would see her every week, and I was more than content to watch Elmo with her over and over and try to get her to say new words. Even though she hogged the bed, I liked having her warm little body next to me when I slept. It was nice to not be so alone. She would cry when I left the room. It felt good to have someone care so much about my presence. I would often immediately get sad when she went home. With her attention I felt like a real person. I felt seen.

However I didn’t enjoy feeling seen at The Jackson County Fair. I usually go alone each year. My mom comes with me to eat, and then after she eats, she leaves and I stay. Technically my sister, Ariah, is there with me, but she usually is with friends so I end up alone. She’ll typically join me for a few rides at the end of the night. I have a taste of social anxiety so I usually have to spend a good amount of time convincing myself that I don’t need to be scared to get on the rides alone. In August 2019, my sister went with me to the fair. 

Yeah, you read that right. She went WITH me! I was so excited that she spent the entire time with me that year. When my mom picked us up from the fair, I sat in the backseat quietly grinning during the entire drive home. I don’t think she knows how much that meant to me. When I was younger, if I didn’t have anyone else, I always had my little sister. Despite our five-year age gap, there were times when she was my best friend. I’ve always struggled with feeling very lonely and not really fitting in all the way, I don’t know why that is. But I was never out of place with my sister. We might get on each other’s nerves, but at the end of the day, Ariah was always my friend. Once she became a teenager, she made actual friends, which meant she grew less and less interested in spending time with me. This was difficult for me to accept. I came home from college and suddenly she didn’t need me anymore. But I still needed her to be my friend. I still do. Therefore, when she went with me to the fair, and I had all of her attention, I was overjoyed to have my sister back. Even if it was just for a day. Thinking about that day still makes me really happy. It was a bright spot in an otherwise very gloomy summer for me.

Fall 2019 came to pass and things started looking up for me! I wrote a great poem that is now published. Additionally, after my mom’s forceful insistence, I increased my dose of my antidepressant and found equilibrium. I didn’t experience mood swings as often and I was glad about that. Socially, my life started improving as well. I had a friend named Louie that I have known since 7^th grade. We were fairly good friends by my standards throughout that time, but we hung out much more during 2019. I was more than grateful to finally have a friend again. It meant the world to me. I don’t do well with loneliness. Some things that made my friendship with Louie great were: we both talked a lot, we liked similar music and reacted to it similarly, we were both Black, and Louie was deeply invested in the world of musical theatre. During my senior year of college I had gained an interest in theatre and film, so I loved getting a chance to learn more about theatre from him. We hung out two or three times a week and shared our problems with each other. I enjoyed having someone to laugh with again.

I was elated about our friendship. I thought we valued friendship the same way, and I again thought I had made a lifelong friend. To show Louie my appreciation of his friendship, I worked really hard on his Christmas gift. He loves musicals and we both really liked the same musical (Candide), so I made up a musical that featured him and I; it was about our friendship. I created a poster and made a little booklet of songs. I rewrote the lyrics of songs from Candide, so that he would already know the rhythm. My first time driving alone was to Walgreens to get materials for this project. I printed everything out at the library and made it into a physical booklet so that he could put the opening poster up on the wall as if it was a real thing, if he liked it enough. He ended up loving that gift. Watching him open it was a gift in itself, I hadn’t seen him so happy. 

While all of this was happening, he had also started getting close to a girl named Brenda. Brenda and I hadn’t met but we heard of each other. Eventually they started dating, and slowly but surely as 2020 progressed, I was pushed out of the picture. Around the same time, I broke up the friendship with my closest friend from the earlier friend group (Dom). I had also impulse purchased a puppy, and then rehomed her when I realized she was not the answer to all of my problems. All three of these events filled me with varying yet similarly persistent levels of pain. The loss of Dom and the puppy left holes within me that were very slow to close. I still miss being friends with Louie. I officially broke off the friendship in October 2019, while telling him to burn the musical poster I had made for him because he didn’t deserve it anymore. He barely replied to me throughout the year, and his girlfriend never liked me because she thought I liked him more than a friend.

Therefore, the two times I saw him between March and October 2020, she chaperoned the hangouts. I didn’t like that she didn’t trust me for no reason, especially when I was not the new character in the story, she was. If anything, the problem would be between her and Louie instead of her and I; you’re supposed to trust your partner. I also was angry with Louie for choosing to remove me from his life, like I was dog poop on the bottom of his shoe. I had very little explanation about the reasons for his sudden silence for months. On some days I’m over it, but on other days I am still upset about this. How could I try so hard to be a great friend, yet get kicked out the door like my friendship meant nothing? I still haven’t found anyone to replace the specific niche he filled in my life. Yet, I’m okay. I am better off without a friend who would discard me after entering a romantic relationship. Friendship is very important and I think many people undervalue its importance, while overestimating the importance of romantic relationships. I thought he thought that too, but I guess he just didn’t value my friendship in particular.

During the pandemic, like most others, I found myself very alone. You may be noticing a theme, I am a lonely girl, but the last two years have felt especially lonely. As mentioned above, I had just lost my best friend from The Five, so I lost my sun once again. In hindsight, with him in particular, had I spoken up sooner we could have avoided a problem. I have since learned that I need to tell people when they upset me sooner rather than later. If we have a problem together, I can’t solve it alone. Sometimes that statement sounds fake to me, but I try to keep it close to my heart, so that I can keep my relationships intact. 

To curb my pandemic loneliness, I turned to Tinder. It sounds silly, I know. I had been using dating apps since practically the second I finished college. Now that I didn’t have to think about class, I was ready to think about men. So, it’s not that I had finally downloaded Tinder during March 2020, it’s that I used it more often. For about a month during quarantine, Tinder’s passport feature was free. So of course, I set my location to various places, but I settled on Paris, France. The men were gorgeous; much better than what we have here (my apologies to any male Americans reading this right now). With Tinder passport I made a bunch of international friends, who I’ve actually become pretty close with! There’s Yuri in Brazil, who is currently my closest male friend, then there’s Nuno in Portugal (who I had a major crush on in 2020, he is beautiful), there’s also Erwan, the reggae-loving rapper from France, Armin, the very opinionated and stylish engineer from The Netherlands, and Miguel, the English teacher from Spain. Meeting these guys brought much needed positive change into my life, and I am forever grateful that we crossed paths. Meeting them has given me a chance to learn new things, and has given me an opportunity to try not to get so attached to others, even when I really enjoy their presence in my life. The only downside to being friends with them is that they’re very far away. I know I have friends, but it can feel like I don’t because they’re not right here in the same town as me.

Along with long distance friendships, I also dealt with a semi long distance relationship in 2020. I say semi because we were only about 40 minutes apart from each other, but that distance felt long when I couldn’t drive on the highway and he had school and I could only see him one day a week. I don’t know if it’s weird to include him in this because we’re not together anymore, but I learned a lot about myself with him, so our relationship has also played a part in who I am at this exact minute. He and I matched on Tinder on October 4^th last year. On my birthday. I felt like it had to be a sign. I liked that he took his time getting to know me. I had never been on a date, or absolutely anything else, so every time a Tinder guy would ask me out, I would automatically say no. I didn’t feel that I knew them well enough to be alone with them, even in public. I also felt bad about making a dude drive 30 or so minutes to me. But he was different from the other guys. He was the right amount of flirty, fun, and sweet. He was also very good looking. I couldn’t wait to meet him. On October 28^th, we met in person for the first time. On October 31^st, we had our first date (and my first ever date), and I had my first kiss (eww gross I know). By December 5^th we were official. I had my first boyfriend. 

I told EVERYONE. I couldn’t believe that anything that happened from the moment we met up till that day was happening to me. Having absolutely zero male experience at 23 had made me feel like something was wrong with me. I hate to admit it, but it hurt me to my core. I also felt left out because I had always been single. It was like I had to sit on the bench during every game for years, and I wondered when the coach would put me in. I thought that for other people it just happened, so why couldn’t it happen to me? I worried that for some reason I just didn’t deserve a relationship, or that my attachment style was too intense or that I was damaged goods. Due to my mental health and internal sadness after the loss of so many things I thought maybe I couldn’t handle it or something. I worried that maybe I was ugly, maybe if I was skinnier or had longer hair or didn’t wear glasses or knew how to apply makeup or something, anything, that would fix it. I was sure there was something wrong with me. But there wasn’t. By simply being myself, I had found myself in a relationship. 

In hindsight, he and I were not similar enough to be together, which we knew from the beginning, but we hoped it would work out anyway. By May 11^th, 2021, we officially realized it was not going to work out long term. Even though I think we could both see the breakup coming from a mile away, it still felt very abrupt. I don’t want to give out too many details, but being with him taught me so many things about me. I learned what I do and don’t want in a relationship, and I learned how I act in a relationship. I learned what it feels like to be genuinely loved and cared for in that way. I learned that I need to share what I’m thinking more often, and that it’s okay to be angry with someone. It’s okay for people to see you cry. I know my primary love languages now. I give gifts, I do acts of service, and I provide words of affirmation. I require quality time. I learned that no matter how much you like someone, they will disappoint you in some way, and rather than run, you have to work through that. He was really good at talking things out and openly expressing and claiming his emotions, and I’ve picked up a bit of this from him. 

The worst thing I learned from him is what heartbreak felt like. It was a mutual breakup, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of my most emotionally painful experiences. I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t want to eat. I wrote line after line of sad poetry about this loss. At one point I just sobbed into my pillow, saying his name over and over. I had made him my sun. Yet again I made this horrible mistake. Why wasn’t I my center? How do I attach to people without making them my center? Where is the line drawn when it comes to romantic relationships? Where do I end and where do they begin? I’ll have to figure out this balance in my next relationship.  I sometimes forget when I get close to people that we are still two separate people, not one person, so when we broke up it felt like we were two different colors of Playdoh that had been mashed together, and suddenly I was supposed to separate the colors. If you’ve ever played with Playdoh you know that once you mix colors together, they never return to their original colors again. That dough is a new creation now, you’ll never have that single color again. 

That’s kind of how human connections are. Everyone we come into contact with adds a new color to our personal Playdoh. Some add more significant amounts of their color to us than others, but each interaction changes us, for better or for worse. I wanted to tell you guys what new colors I am now, which was incredibly difficult for me to do. I know this reflection piece isn’t perfect, and I know it’s very long, but I needed to write it. I had to see who I am now, because after all these events, I am no longer pre-graduation Aarel. I needed to share my new Playdoh color, because I would have felt like an imposter had I tried to write something similar to what I’ve written before, without sharing how I have changed. 

I feel like I was born as pastel pink Playdoh, in this metaphor. Not because I’m a girl, but because I really loved the color pink up until maybe 5^th grade when I had to be cool instead of “girly”. But I was pink, and I think I’m a significantly darker shade now, with the losses I’ve experienced in the last two years. I would call each loss black Playdoh. I would call my ex red Playdoh. I now have much more of those two colors as a part of who I am.  The last two years have been murky for me. I changed so much that I didn’t feel like I could even be a writer anymore. The smart and confident golden girl had been replaced by a smaller, sadder person that wasn’t sure she could operate properly anymore, let alone write. There is so much that I didn’t even include (weight gain, family covid scares, more info about the puppy, my second published poem, male disappointment in general, therapists, feeling kind of dumb from lack of academic work, joining “nerd” culture by trying video games and watching anime, my love for astrology, making new friends) that I may address in different pieces in the future. I felt like I couldn’t write anymore because I was out of practice. I felt the pressure of my previous work weighing upon me. If I couldn’t produce that again, then what was the point of writing? But here I am. I want to be a writer again. Even though I now write from a darker place, I can still be a writer, with these new experiences inside of me, and a new perspective. And whether you like this new version of me or not, and whether I like this new version of me or not, I’m going to continue writing. I need to show myself that no matter what I experience, the writer never has to go away. I don’t have to be School Aarel to work with words. Additionally, I am most consistently my own center when I write, and so I think that is another reason why I need to continue writing. I know this isn’t the most coherent, expect better in the future as I get back into this. Thanks for reading.

             Love, 

                                                                            Aarel Calhoun