Paint and Canvas

I come to the library to think sometimes, when the world needs to lose its edge. And that’s where I am, writing out this little piece of eventual nothing. Knowing that in due time this will become illegible and invisible makes this harder to write. I keep wondering what the point of it all is.

But then I remember the reasoning behind my eventual career.

I’ve been in college for a little over two weeks now, and my reinvention keeps springing to mind as my primary focus. Yes, I’m here to learn – my parents made sure I knew that before I left – but I’m also here to change, to grow, to meet people I never would have met, to do things I never would have done.

I sincerely wonder if anyone that I called friend in high school would recognize me anymore. I’m a completely different person.

They say you shouldn’t grow up too fast, and for most people that adage seems to be true. But I’ve grown a lot in the past half-month, discovered depths of self that I never knew existed. These four years are my delving into the Marianas.

This is a reworking, a rediscovery of who I am and with what I choose to define myself.

I almost can’t even bring myself to write about high school. It seems so little, so small, so insignificant in the past tense. I never would have told you, my freshman year, that I’d be the person you see in front of me today. But that’s the beauty of things, sometimes.

The earth is not a cold dead place, though we live in paper towns. And the towns aren’t really paper – I mean, the Jack-in-the-Box is gonna be on the corner by the grocery store whether you want it to be or not, and the grass will be so green some days that it hurts your eyes. But the people, the paper people, in that little vapor of a place. They blow where the winds take them, they write their lives on themselves, and in time the ink becomes impossible to read. But we seem to forget that we are paper for a reason. The color that is all around us seeps into our everyday lives; it’s in everything we do. The paint that is still wet is absorbed through our paper feet. We are vessels for something far greater than ourselves, and we feel that Great Something coursing through our veins sometimes at a current so fast that we feel we must explode or evolve. And today I am green from the grass and purple from the little flecks of stone in the marble and I shine from the metal I will touch later in the parking lot.

And I am so very satisfied with my little collegiate paper life.

This is my time; this place my place. Whether or not I truly thrive here is my decision and mine alone. No one else can make it for me - I control my own destiny. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Deep breath. One, two. Close my eyes.

Jump.