Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I'm graduating way too soon. I feel like Rip Van Winkle's daughter, who took a nap while she was packing to move away to college and woke up four (oops, five) years later. All of a sudden, I want to rewind to when I had semesters' worth of classes ahead of me, because I don't feel quite ready to be a non-student yet. What are you if you're not a student? An adult? A grown-up? A member of the working class? When I walk across the stage on May 14th at 9 a.m., I'll be a graduate of ASU's College of Nursing and Health Innovation. And a month or two later, when I take my NCLEX, I'm planning on being a registered nurse. And even at twenty-two, I don't feel ready for it quite yet.

I'm scared that I won't get my dream job, or won't get a job at all. I'm scared that now that I've decided I want to give Arizona another shot, I won't be able to find a job here. I'm scared that I'll have to move to the middle of nowhere and I won't know anyone other than Vegas and I'll crash my car into a snowbank and no one will ever find me. Mostly, I'm scared that I won't make it until May. And if I do, I'm scared that it will have been a waste because then I'll be an unemployed loser who has to move back in with her parents and work retail after studying her brains out for the past four (oops, five) years.

I'm scared to even make wishes about my future for fear that they won't come true.

Even when life is scary and wants me to be older than I'm ready for, I've got you. The "you" that I've got varies from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute. I've got the "you" that I can call in the middle of the night, the "you" that bankrolls me, the "you" that sits with me while I pretend to study, the "you" that kisses me on the forehead when I'm stressed out, and most importantly, the "you" who takes up my whole bed at night, digs me out from the covers in the morning, and wags her tail when I get home from a 13-hour day.

And even if I have to live in a tent in my dad's backyard and work at McDonald's to pay my rent, I've got you. And really, truly, that's all I need. I'm happy with that.