“It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside.”
-Elton John
Well Elton you said it. I am experiencing quite a strange feeling. It’s not quite fear, not quite excitement. I’m not outwardly anxious, happy or afraid. Internally I am experiencing mild anxiety or stress, but I’m not overcome with it. Maybe that’s because if I thought about it too much I would lose it completely. There are some indications, hints at my current insanity. For example, my absent mindedness. In the past week I have left the stove on all morning, left the oven on all night, ordered a homeburger instead of a natureburger, lost approximately seven things and counting, found one of them, and then lost the list of things I’d lost. Fortunately I found that.
People say this is from the underlying stress of experiencing a grand transition.
I certainly hope so.
Otherwise, I appear to the untrained eye to be okay. I was speaking with my dad yesterday and realized that the thing I’m having the most trouble with is the fact that I don’t really know very much about where I’m going and therefore do not have much control over my situation. And that’s hard for me. Because while I don’t need to control other people’s behaviour, it’s difficult for me to experience a change over which I hold no control. It was bothering me a lot that this situation was completely unknown to me: don’t know my room, where my classes are, don’t have the meal plan figured out, yadda yadda yadda. It’s not so much anxiety over making friends, etc, it’s knowing that I have no control over who I’ll meet. I have no idea what is going to happen, and that is the scariest part by far.
Also on my mind is this idea of shifting relationships. In a few short days I am going to be far away from my friends and family, in a different city, province and headspace. My greatest fear of all is that I’ll return a stranger to my family and lose contact with my friends.
Not to mention school itself! I have spent so much time worrying about everything else that I haven’t given much thought to the workload itself, the hours spent studying, the reading, the labs, the stress. I just have to remember to keep my head down and work hard I guess.
I have been getting so many great words of advice from the wise people around me: parents, friends, sisters, colleagues. I am leaving so soon that I am at the point of inevitability. It is happening in three days and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it.
Which is fairly terrifying in its own right.
