(Author's Note: I wrote this essay in August of 2022 as a mandatory assignment for my entire freshman class based on our common reading for the year titled, Renewal. Last week I got an email saying I was a winner of the common reading essay contest which includes a prize package, an Instagram feature, and inclusion in the 2023-2024 Reading and Teaching Guide. I honestly forgot about this essay and what I even wrote about, but if it is decent enough to be a winner of the essay contest I assume it is decent enough to include on the blog. Enjoy!)
Cycles: The Love Affair Between the Good and the Bad
The intimidation, yet anticipation, of a blank page lying before me is the strongest sense of renewal in my life. At any point in time, I can unlatch my green leather notebook and renew myself in the shapes my pen dances onto the pages begging to be attended to. My curser currently flashing in stark contrast against the blue light keeping me up tonight is my driving force into the chapter of my life where every first impression is a grand act of renewal. Pages before me tell my stories of starting anew, some ending in heartbreak, others in tears of joy, but all teaching me lessons to go about life with a fearless embrace of change.
Momentous changes are scary because their outcomes are predicted to be extremes of either good or bad. The start of college, one of the biggest and hardest changes, lies before every student typing similar words to mine all stringing along and expanding themes of renewal. Our fears stem from the most extreme forms such as spiritual renewal dawning after the end of the world, but Meade’s Why the World Doesn’t End reassures this feeling with the reinstatement of cycles. Heartbreak may come crashing down in a storm with deafening claps of thunder, but the rain still wipes the evidence once brought to life, and thus births a new chapter. The idea of renewal is often caught up in the fresh starts of phoenixes rising above when they would never have come to be without the crashing, burning, and ending humanity hates to face. To be renewed is to accept the apocalypse towering down because “sometimes the only place to begin is at the end” (2). By accepting the end, we can finally embrace renewal for not just the heartbreak, but also for tears propelled by immense joy.
Thinking back on the times in my life when I stood on the cliffside looking down at the millions of outcomes my next few steps could entail, I was clicking the post button on the pictures of me holding a pride flag for the very first time, opening my email during my break on my usual Tuesday night shift to a decision letter from my dream school, and publishing those poems on my blog even when everybody knew whom they were about. All these pivotal moments could have crashed and burned like I half expected them to, although their beginnings opened doors for me to be my most authentic self, which the thought of is currently bringing wells of cathartic tears to sit upon my waterline but not yet fall. In this period of stillness stuck between the black-or-white outcomes destined to prevail themselves soon, I relish in the greyscale world where possibilities are still endless and “hope still perches in my soul” (Dickinson). That Instagram post I almost discarded still reigns as my most liked even two years later as my openness with my sexuality has allowed me to surround myself with like-minded people and given me the opportunities to inspire others who have not yet crossed that bridge. That email I opened with the most anticipation of my life while at work of all places, rained confetti across my screen before I could even see the words of acceptance or scholarship award. My blog has become not only an outlet for my creative work but flourished into a space for individuals across the world to inspire each other by sharing a piece of their minds, hearts, and souls. All these moments stuck in the grey after seeing nothing but the end of a chapter, a new door opened and led me to exactly where I am today, being exactly who I have always aspired to be.
Life as I know it would not be the same if I had not succeeded in the aspects most important to me, but my failures have renewed me more than ever imagined, making me the strongest version of myself. Failure is not often a goal one aims for although Allison D. Carr tells us “Failure is not an Option” and that “failure should be welcomed [as it signals] the presence of creative risky thinking and an opportunity to explore a new direction” (18). In the past, tears have been the result of many of my failures, and they still are on occasion, while I have been more consciously adapting this same mindset as Carr with growing age and experience. My parents were disappointed when I did not receive more scholarship money considering the amount I applied for, but I simply accepted it and considered my other options for making up the money to pay for school instead of giving in to the guilt. This failure propelled me into finding a campus job in the library my first semester which is actually helping me advance in this new academic and social world faster than to be expected. More programs are available to me, and I feel as though I have an upper hand with resources that otherwise would have been neglected, so I am thankful for my failures which have renewed me. I am destined to fail within the next four years here at Susquehanna University and I honestly cannot wait to see what doors these failures open after the earlier hit me on the way out.
Coming into college, a new setting in an infinite number of regards, with having absorbed the common reading, Renewal, I feel as though I know how to better navigate the new experiences destined to find their way to me. Within this essay itself, I have renewed myself in reflection on my past cycles and failures which have caused me to grow into this version that is sprawling itself across the paper before my reader.
Works Cited
Free Poem Analysis. 2016. Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson Analysis. [online] Available at: <http://freepoemanalysis.com/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers- emily-dickinson-poem-analysis/> [Accessed 8 May 2016].
Renewal. Susquehanna University, 2022.