Graduation and then...Whiteness

On May 19, 2012, I will graduate college, and the same image keeps playing before my eyes.

I am walking through a forest. Below me is a path of laid brick, direction straight, unwavering. Around me are trees as tall and daring as the sky, bark brown, leaves cool green. There are no footprints ahead. This path is mine. I have walked it my entire life, and never has it forked, always leading me forward, unequivocally on: preschool to elementary school to middle school to high school to college to…

…and here is where the laid brick ends, fragmenting into a million directions of a million colors.

A prism, and from it, my life. Streaming onwards, blindingly, merging into Whiteness.

Whiteness so white it glows like the rim of a cloud in June.

Whiteness without definition, without shape or shadow or past.

Whiteness without depth, without stillness.

Whiteness without sky or forest.

Whiteness without path.

It ends here, in every direction it ends, a great sheet unfurled from the sky, a sail without wind.

Shel Silverstein, I have found where the sidewalk ends and it is May 19, 2012—the day where the path laid for me by my parents runs out of brick and mortar, solid no more. 

Only Whiteness.

The Whiteness is terrifying. I want to run from it. Turn around and run back to the beginning. Run back to me curled inside my mother’s womb. Return to the place before thought, before decision, before past and future and consequence. Return to the place of being and warmth and closeness. Return to the place where I was carried and I was happy wherever that path lead.

But I can’t run back. I can’t turn around. Because I can’t stop staring at the Whiteness. The colors mesmerize me, playing on my face, ohhing my mouth, searching my eyes; my eyes searching it. I reach a hand into the Whiteness. It disappears. Lost. Atoms bursting into a million possibilities.

The Whiteness is my canvas to Jackson Pollock. It is my book’s first blank page. It is my sail to fill, to tear, to whether, to hoist, to wrap myself in. It is a shot of adrenaline, fluid, pure, addicting. It is the light pouring from the doors of my life thrown wide, radiating from every dream, every wish, every hope, every opportunity carefully placed on the other side.

After May 19, 2012, I have no idea what is going to happen. I have no idea where I am going to go. I only know that I am the only thing standing in my way and that despite this fear stopping my lungs and this freedom quickening my blood on its path from heart to lung to limb, urging me to go! go! go! GO!, I know that wherever I go, it is going to be one hell of an adventure.

[Image Source]