Can I put you on hold?

I hate calling somewhere and being put on hold. I called the IRS once and hung up after spending twenty minutes listening to bad elevator music.

Unless you are somehow lucky enough to jump straight into your career or graduate school, this is the world right after finishing college. The endless job applications, interviews, and questions from well-meaning family friends are the elevator music of your life.

Then you find out that you aren't qualified to do the things you want to do yet, but you're somehow overqualified to do anything else. I found out that I'm overqualified to sell vitamins at GNC, and I wasn't even worth getting a rejection letter from In n' Out Burger. (Low point in life: applying to flip burgers two days before you graduate with a BS in Biology.)

So you make a change of plans. Instead of finishing up prerequisites to enter a graduate nursing school a year from now, you find yourself on overseas teacher recruiting sites. You find yourself posting your CV to an international job board. You find yourself committing the next two years of your life to an international girls' school that may as well be situated on the face of the sun. You find yourself suddenly excited about a job that you thought you never wanted.

Most importantly you think that, although this journey will be the hardest thing you've ever done, you may just be finding yourself.

I'm hanging up the phone. I'm moving to Abu Dhabi.

Katie

Lost at Sea

I have been so naive to think that I am in control.

I almost had myself convinced. But reality surfaces every once in a while and reminds me that not only am I not in control of everything, I am actually in control of nothing. How could I begin to think that I am somebody? In the scheme of this vast, expanding universe, the life of Katie Larkins seems rather insignificant.

I am in crisis. Graduation should be an exciting thing, but I am terrified. I've spent the last four years of my life working toward a piece of paper to frame and put in my future office. I'll have it in 3 weeks and I have nothing else to show for it. Sure, there are plenty of memories and experiences that are personally important but rather useless in the real world. On April 30th my world is going to turn upside down and I'm freaking out! I have to move home, as of right now I can't keep my job, I'm not going straight to a grad program, and I don't even know if I want my career to go the direction that it's headed. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to feel. I don't know how to be truly excited for my friends that have it all figured out because deep down, I'm struggling to avoid being jealous.

And home is different. For the past two and a half years (minus Christmas and spring breaks) my home has been on campus. My parents' house has been a place that I go on weekends or for dinner. It seems more of a place that I visit now than a place that I call home. And I know it is, but it's not the same as it used to be. Nothing in my life is what it used to be. 

I am a directionless, soon-to-be jobless, homeless, single twenty-something.

This sucks.

Exhaustion

My reserves are depleted.

I slept until noon today, worked on some student government issues, watched TV shows, and napped. All day. That's what I did.

What didn't I do? I didn't have a normal meal. Didn't leave my pajamas. Didn't do my homework. Didn't call my parents, or anyone else. Didn't actually speak to anyone.

I hate being sick, but I can normally manage it with medicine and normal sleep hours. I can maintain my normal schedule and still get everything done that I need to do. This sucks. There's no medicine that I can take. I'm sleeping in ridiculous quantities and yet I can't seem to stay awake through class.

I want to stay awake. I want to go to the gym, and finish my homework in one sitting, and hang out with my friends late into the night. Every time I decide to do something, a wave of exhaustion crashes over me and I'm tired again. Nobody's around to make me get up.

So instead, I'm doing nothing.

I fall to exhaustion again.

Lacking

This is to be more of a bucket list than anything, I'm especially not complaining. I have a thousand things to be thankful for and I am. But there are a number of things that I can imagine would make me feel more like a whole person. So here is a list of things I lack.

1. A favorite poem- I just need to read more poetry. Period.
2. An award- I don't think I've ever really "won" anything. All of my elections were unopposed, anything I received for grades was based on merit and not by anybody's choice, etc.
3. A talent for something creative. I'm not very artsy. I can entertain, but not awe.
4. A theme, or a motto if you will. Something to live by, that I can claim as my own.
5. A plan.
6. To find a place where I feel "home". MY home. 
7. Another tattoo. (yes... already)
8. More stamps on my passport. (crafty way of saying I want to travel more. Much more.)
9. To be better at praying out loud.
10. To be 100% honest about how I feel and what I think, for at least one whole day.
11. To love without reservation.
12. To face all of my fears. Except for spiders. I'll just leave that one alone.
13. A quiet place.

To be continued, I'm sure.

Questioning

I focus too much attention this time of year on being sad. I know why I do this, and I don't want to. I do it nonetheless. 

If I could live in Inception, my brother would always be there. At the very least, he'd visit me long enough to answer my questions.

Why did he think he had to die? Was anything really that bad? Could somebody actually be that selfish? Does he miss us as much as we miss him? Does he mourn the precious minutes of life that float away with every one of our tears, just as we mourn him still? Did it hurt? Did he change his mind just a moment too late?

Questions for which I will never have answers.

Not in the books I read, the classes I take, or the conversations I have. It's a waste of my time, but I can't seem to stop it once the ball gets rolling. I spend some time being sad, but then I'm just angry for the time that I could have spent doing something useful. I'm angry that my thoughts are hijacked by the would-be 27 year old who is eternally 20. January 9th will always be the day I say, "my brother would have been ___ years old today" just as October 3rd will always be the day I say, "it's been __ years now". On and around those days, it's like I've gone back to the beginning. That feeling that I've been ripped to shreds? Rarely, but it still makes appearances. Fighting myself to not cry in class? Oh yes... that's there too. It makes me such a downer, and I hate that. It's not who I am.

The other 50 weeks of the year it's a completely different story. The other 50 weeks, I am completely myself. I can smile when I know that Brandon would laugh at the thing I just said. I can pause and feel joy when I put the sweatshirt on that he gave me for the last birthday I had before he died. As strange as it sounds, I can be thankful. I'm thankful that I still know what he smelled like because my little brother wears his cologne. I'm thankful to know that he loved me enough to cry when he found out I was being bullied. I'm most thankful that I have my brother's Bible, and that I received it when I needed it. That even in death, there was Brandon telling me to wake up and smell the Jesus; because no matter how strung out he was, even he knew that when he needed help he would find it in the Word. (He hid money there. Maybe it's because its the last place he would look, but I believe with everything in me that it's so much more than that.)

I miss my brother. But I guess the point is this:

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

- Pierre Auguste Renoir

Falling

I fell fast, and I fell far. I loved it.

That sentence could figuratively stand for so many things in my life. Today its meaning is literal. Somewhere in the beginning of school, I decided that this year would finally be a time to start anew. Why wouldn't it? I'm slowly preparing myself to leave my home and my comfortable way of life, so of course it has to change.

I started by jumping.

Head first.

From 13,000 feet.

It was like nothing I had expected. It was so cold; so quiet. There was no rush of adrenaline, no scream of terror or of rapturous joy. No conscious thought. Only overwhelming peace. Silence. Life. 

I jumped on October 3rd. The plans came together so fast that when I realized what day it would be, I knew it would be something big. Exactly six years after my brother acted on a decision to end his life, I acted on a decision to start mine. To date, it's a decision that hasn't disappointed me.

I'm 21 and I'm only just beginning to figure this out. Since then I've made some steps that not everyone would appreciate as being truly important, but I think they are. Body art and jewelry, being Santa Clause to my niece and nephew, reaching the mark of being 1 year single. The big things are yet to come, but recognizing the smaller accomplishments makes me feel like I might actually be doing something worthwhile as I wait for them.

I constantly wish I was back at October 3rd. If I try really hard, I can still feel the silence of that trip back to Earth. But I guess that's why we move forward; so you can find out what's next and yet still remember what it was like before. You can't get back into the plane, but really... who would want to?