Austin Downtown Arts Magazine
Essays/Non-fiction
Moving On
by Lucy Shaw
I think I'm in a stage in my life where things are just now
starting to get complicated. Now I feel like everything I
do (or don't do) has consequences. I think about the future
and there is just this vast blank space, and I'm supposed
to make something out of it...and that makes not knowing very
scary.
I remember my dad telling me one day at dinner that he wouldn't
choose to be my age again because in the next 10 years I'm
going to have to make some of the toughest decisions of my
life. I never thought about it that way; but it's true. I
think not knowing can be worse than having something already
decided for you. On second thought, I wouldn't give up this
freedom I have for anything.
But I guess it's not unusual that I feel kind of empty, like
something important is missing, when there is this gaping
hole staring at me. Until I fill this void, the things I do
are just distractions that keep me from thinking too much
about it. When I do think about it, I end up trying to make
sense of how I've grown and where I've come from.
It's funny now to think back to junior high school and high
school. Needless to say, I'm glad to be out. That was definitely
not the kind of environment I could have taken any longer.
I think of my younger cousins and other kids I know that hate
school, and it worries me that that's the experience they
are getting before they have to figure out what they want
to do with their lives. But I guess it never changes, and
everyone has to go through it. I tell them, when they ask
me, just to hang in there. It gets better.
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I don't mean to give teenage kids a bad rap, though. I used
to think of them all as punks, but a little incident that
happened recently made me change my mind. Let me tell you
about it. What happened was someone broke into my car the
other night. My neighborhood is full of little vandals, so
I knew it was one of them. Anyway, as I was picking up the
contents of my car that had been thrown out in the yard, these
two kids walked by. They looked a little shady so I immediately
jumped on their case and asked them, "Did you little
f*uckers break into my car?" They looked shocked and
said, "What? No." Then I felt bad for automatically
assuming it was them, so I apologized. I expected them to
think I was a bitch for yelling at them. Instead, they were
really cool about it and said, "That's alright, if I
had a car and someone broke into it, I'd be pissed too."
Then they helped me get all my stuff together. I thought that
was cute of them. Anyway, the reason for that story is just
to say that kids sometimes surprise me.
But to get back to the point, I've been in college for a
while now, and I think I'm learning some important things
about myself. I now I have some ambition. A lot of the friends
I had in high school never went to college and are just working
at dead-end jobs. I've lost touch with most of them. The friends
I have in college are all pretty much clueless about the future,
like me. We all just want to be happy, but who knows if we
are going to make any money. I've been in Austin too long
now (almost all my life) to really want to stay here. I know
I'm ready to leave and do something, but I've never taken
that big step before and it's taking me some time to get ready.
I have been living a pretty comfortable and selfish life so
far. By that I mean my parents have given me an easy life.
I know I'm still innocent to a lot of new experiences, and
I've avoided some opportunities out of fear. But this emptiness
inside me is telling me that I am ready to make a move. I've
been thinking of studying in Taiwan when this school year
id over. I think it will be the kind of change I need. Writing
this down is kind of like finalizing the decision.
I'm the youngest in my family, so I've watched my brother
and sister go off to pursue their own lives and it motivates
me to get out of here. It's not that I'm unhappy with my life
as if is, but I definitely need to explore some other possibilities.
My friends and I have commented on how fast these two-and-a-half
years of college have blown by, and we joke about how we're
getting old. Maybe it's time I think about growing up and
moving on.
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