Graduation Day...Sorta

So I've been jogging every morning since I got back from vacation. As soon as I wake up the first thing I do is put on my jogging clothes and head to what can be considered the civic center/park to jog.

It's actually been kind of refreshing and a relaxing practice. It's the only form of exercise I do not get bored from. It's an exercise that I truly feel I can push myself further to get better at.
Of course the track is right around the building I graduated from, and while running I started thinking about the impending graduation of many high school students which then brought me to think of mine.

My graduation was weird. High school years in general for me was very weird. You come in thinking you are going to be someone that you later on figure you couldn't be. Unless you were the small few popular people, high school pretty much was average for most of us. I had my good days and bad days.

I think the reason high school lingers with us is because everybody loves college. College are like the best years of our lives, but high school was filled with the good, bad, and ugly. We remember cliques, and crushes, and having that feeling like you couldn't wait until you graduated. There was an objective: Graduation and even a little bit of innocence and wonder that awaited us.

Looking back at the place I graduated I was surprised at seeing that I'm not that girl anymore. Sure I'm still shy and a little distant, but there is something different that allows me not to be bitter about high school.

High School is like a rite of passage. They aren't meant to be easy. All the tears shed seem stupid now, all the disagreements seem worthless. I've even let go of the would of-should of-could of's.

My first semester of college I had to write a final essay about something that impacted our lives. I always considered moving away a moment in my life that changed me. I compared myself to Dorothy from the wizard of Oz being torn away from Kansas. I ended it with saying that I was still in Oz, this strange, bizarre place that tests my drive to find a way back home.

But watching Girl Interrupted and hearing the commentary from the director(which is the best commentary I have seen in a while, I highly recommend checking it out), he also compared Susan Kaysen to Dorothy, and that the whole movie is this comparison of Dorothy's journey through Oz. He made this genius comment that at the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy always had the ability to go home. With a quick click of her ruby red shoes she could head back to safe Kansas.

So when I think back to that girl that I was, that girl searching for a way out, I finally realized that I have always had the strength to be in a position of returning home. Not literally of course. But I mean I've always had it in me. Whatever it is. Hopefully it is a greater sense of myself worth and happiness.

I wasn't happy with myself in high school. I was so ashamed because I never felt good enough. I was always the quiet sidekick and wanted so desperately to be seen(which is very much my want now) I think what sadness that lies now, and most often appears on this blog, are these two struggling perspectives of myself. The one I am trying to leave behind and the one that is slowly trying to emerge from it's shadow.

So sure I may be stuck in Oz, but I have more self to uncover and I don't mind staying for a little while longer.

And I'm almost certain the yellow brick road spans on for however long it takes until I click my heels.

Back to daydreaming and reading.