We Were Born to Overcome

This has been the worst week of my first year of college.

But it's okay. It's going to be okay.

I know this because the worst week of my first year of college could be so much worse. I got to experience Holi Moli. I'm not sure how religiously accurate it was, but it was fun. Thousands of UNC students, dressed in old white clothing on a huge white tarp, gather in Polk Place and throw vibrantly colored pigment at each other until everyone is just a blob of color. The pictures reveal the multicolored cloud of dust hovering about the cheering crowd. An uninformed viewer might think were extremely dedicated hippies, even tye dying our smoke.

The Holi festival, a Hindu celebration, is supposed to celebrate the coming of Spring. Rebirth. While I was tossing paint manically at my friends, this message seemed distant, just an excuse to defy the long-ingrained instinct not to make stains.

However, as I stood in the already-stained-purple shower, watching the water run off my skin in little rainbow rivers and leaving me squeaky clean and new, I understood. Spring blooms everywhere, pink and purple and green coloring the campus, even the dusty yellow pollen coating everything brightens up the place. Even after the spring showers have washed away all the evidence of spring's coming, the hope is left. The birds chirping in the rain, the sweet smell of May mornings, the sparkling morning dew.

I'll admit a few tears might've mixed into the mess of soap, water, and paint as I stood in the shower evaluating my life. But it's okay because next spring, as I stand in the middle of the colorful crowd at Holi Moli, this week won't matter anymore. The grades will have faded into the background; the sting of inconvenience of being temporary homeless and temporary extraneous will have dulled into a vague, old ache; the midterms will be long-forgotten. It just won't matter. I'll wash myself anew in the shower, and it'll be another new beginning.

"And we carry on
When our lives come undone
We carry on
Cause there's promise in the morning sun
We carry on
As the dark surrenders to the dawn
We were born to overcome
We carry on."

Doubt

"Oh, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts."

"I'm trying to be assertive; I'm making plans. Gonna rise to the occasion, yeah, meet all their demands, but all I do is just lay in bed and hide under the covers.
It's too hard to focus through all this doubt, keep making these to-do lists and nothing gets crossed out."

Oh, Sylvia and Conor always know what to say. I'm having trouble articulating my doubts to anyone; everything seems to think I'm being silly. They overestimate me. They don't try to think of my situation objectively. I can't meet all their demands. I just keep hitting snooze.

I get so frustrated when people think I'm overreacting when I doubt my future. Give it time, give it time. I don't have time! The future is now; the future is always right now. I don't want to screw myself over later by not knowing what I'm doing right now. I have to feel prepared; I have to be working towards a goal. I have to assess my own abilities honestly and truly. But I can't! There doesn't seem to be an objective enough person on earth.

The cloud of a false reputation surrounds me. I'm not as smart, responsible, capable, determined, or ambitious as anyone thinks I am. I suppose I should take it as a compliment that people perceive me as so much better than I am, but it is going to catch up with me. I'm always living in dread of those moments when the veneer cracks a little. Eventually, it's going to fall all apart and I'll be left without options. I wonder if I'm actually any of the things people attribute to me, or I've just been hearing them so long, I started to believe them myself.

As I have learned from my meager studies, a fracture between identity and essence is not good for mental health. I don't want to be Mrs. Dalloway, perched on the edge of instability all the time--inches away from being Septimus falling from the window at any given moment.

So I'm searching, searching for what I want. What I'm actually capable of. But I can't figure it out without any honest assessment. That leaves me obsessed with my falling grades, the image of the Cs tainting my papers and tests, mocking me with their averageness, their reek of failure. But they're objective and unyielding. They're the only reliable measure of my abilities. And they're telling me I'm not good enough.

I try to listen to what the grades are telling me. At a certain point, my mantra of just "work harder" fails me because I hit a stalemate of work and ability. Sometimes, my best is just not good enough. My dad always says it's okay if I'm doing my best. Is it? Their conception of my best is not what reality may be. What am I supposed to do if my best isn't really good enough?

The desire to do something, to earn a Doctorate's degree, is not enough to obtain it. Why am I the only one who thinks so? No, you cannot do anything you put your mind to. Everyone has limitations.

I just don't know where mine are, and testing them is slowly chipping away at me. Is it cowardly to back down into safety, or is it the smart thing to do?

I don't know; I don't know. I just hide under the covers. Academic advising is going to have a good time with me.