Once in high school, I and a few others from my ASB traveled to the state capitol to develop and speak on our suggestions for the Board of Education. We found ourselves shotgunned into groups of students from all over the state to learn how to debate and create legislation together. It was a long weekend of late nights and groups built like patchwork quilts -- stitched together with our passion to change the world.
In my group, there was this boy. He had charm and height and an air about him which exuded confidence that was a border town to cockiness. We shared a few laughs and a package of care-packed Redvines on the couch at a downtown hotel. He made fun of my pink energy drink, which to this day I can't find a reason as to why I was even drinking it. That drink was like death -- pink death.
This boy was the kind to have it all already figured out. He was a card carrying MENSA member and was going to be a lawyer. There was no plan, only certainty. When he talked it wasn't the sort of passion filled determination of a hopeful high school student, but a robust certainty that only those with their own law firm would/could know. As a fifteen year-old with a ramshackle sack of unknown and sort of kind of desires and dreams, I stared at him in awe and bewilderment.
How did he become one of those people who knew what he wanted to be -- was it knit between the strands of his DNA? Was it a dream he found tucked into his kindergarten knapsack or on the play ground during recess? Did his grandfather's grandfather start the family line of lawyers-who-always-knew?
Even now, I sit back and want to peel back the layers to see what makes these kinds of people know. Sometimes I wish I could gather all these sorts of people up on to a big old couch in the middle of a big city, break apart a package of licorice like we're breaking bread, and have them each tell me one by one how they exactly know.
In July, I started my first job post-college in the PR world. I, a lot of the time, still feel like the fifteen year old girl I once was with her bag full of undecided dreams. Except now, I'm wearing electric blue suede kitten heels and have a cubical and a work phone. Transition is so strange and sometimes it feels like you've been uninvited to your own story. Like, life is just a whirl-wind that blows past you on its way to more.
I have been blessed with a position that houses a ton of learning opportunities and ways to garner experience. It's a depiction of what I always spoke about wanting: a nonprofit who works to make the world better for those who have been wronged, but it doesn't quite yet feel like home. And that in it of it self feels strange, because I convinced myself it already should.
Like when as a kid your sweet momma bought you new jeans or thrifted a worn, strong pair always with a hem that flapped around your heel at the beginning of every school year. She'd remind you that you wouldn't forever be the scrawny, half-lanky kid, but one who would stretch a handful of inches by the end of the year -- you'd grow into them, they wouldn't grow around you.
Transition is the too long in the legs and a little bit loose in the waist part of life. The here and the now of change feels like the never ending yanking up on the hips and the cuffing of the too much, but in the end the button gets tight and the ankles of life look as if they're preparing for a flood. Growing into the new takes time. Wearing in that denim is an art form.
I guess I'll still look up from my desk some days and stare at the grey-blue walls of my cubical wondering if the world and my place in it still exists outside of the office, but I know that I know that cubical won't hold me forever.
I pray the lawyer-boy felt the ramification of change despite his "knowing." I hope he takes the time to wear in a few pairs of jeans. As for me, I want to wear in my jeans until they are good and hole-ly, tight and lived in.
Besides, a good pair of jeans and pair of blue suede kitten heels make for one hell of an outfit.
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