steph's blog

I feel a long entry coming on...

... mostly because I'm facing the end of an era and it all seems very strange to me and, until a few days ago, I really hadn't faced the fact that today marks one month until I move into an apartment complex with people I don't know, in a city I don't know. (I feel badly for Paul, who unknowingly brought this all on when he asked me when I had to be in Denton for orientation... and somehow looking at my calendar and verbalizng my impending departure made everything more real.)

I'm not really afraid of failure in grad school. In fact, I'm fairly sure that I will succeed. I'm quite afraid of the pain and the loneliness, however, that comes from knowing your best friends, your family, etc. are much further than they are currently. Somehow, the words "you can always come visit" or "it won't be the same without you" are of little assistance to me. I recall a poem I heard right before graduation, "There is no Indispensable Man" by Saxon N. White Kessinger:

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego's in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You're the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you'll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

I'm not so arrogant as to believe that, the day I leave for Denton, the sun will fail to shine. I do, essentially, believe what this poem states: that it would be absolutely foolish to believe that I'm indispensable to everyone around me. My only complaint with what the poem says is that it doesn't speak to how it feels to be the "dispensable man". Do I lose my right to self-pity merely because my situation is common? I haven't figured this out quite yet. I imagine my self-pity will disappear before I know the answer.

I just can't shake the feeling that I'm in a quite strange position right now. I feel simultaneously that I ought to spend as much time as possible with my friends and I should retreat so detachment is less painful. I also know that, in most cases, physical distance creates some degree of emotional distance and that, like it or not, we don't always bring our friends with us to the next stage of our lives. This scares me.... a lot.

Anyway, that's what's been going through my mind as of late. Feel free to comment if you like. This blog is, like most others, unabashedly self-serving; it's therapeutic for me to write in it from time to time, and it's quite frankly an added bonus that it enables others to see what's been up with me lately. I hope no one's offended :-)