December Thoughts: Part 3

I'm sick of people being nice to me.

Check that. I'm glad people are being nice to me. But it came way too suddenly. Like one day everybody was riffing on me and mocking me like I prefer, then the next day a switch flipped and now people like me. I mean, they always liked me. But now it's as if I just got some kind of life-changing diagnosis and everyone is making their peace with it.

Guys. I'm just graduating.

I know using just in this sense is hypocritical coming from me. I teared up watching To Kill a Mockingbird last night. I'm a very emotional guy. But even I am sick of the nostalgia at this point.

I feel so loved. I feel so very #blessed to have built the relationships I did in college and to have as many people eulogizing me as I have had. And I don't want to make it seem like it's a big number. It's probably still in single digits and if it isn't it barely peeked over. But the fact remains that I have an entirely-too-big contingent of people in my life treating my like I'm about to get on that ship with Frodo and never be seen again.

This sounds like a #humblebrag. Maybe it is. I don't know. I just know that right now I'm sitting at my desk at The Red & Black. Well, it's not my desk anymore. It's my successor's desk. But I had to come by to retrieve a few possessions. And now I can't bring myself to leave. So I'm typing this ramble while listening to my Spotify playlist entitled "2015" and trying to tell myself that nothing is a big deal.

The sad truth is, I don't worry like I used to. I used to be the most paranoid person on the planet. My parents joked with me when I was growing up that I was going to be the youngest person ever to have a heart attack. And that just made me even more nervous. I was a ball of emotion and stress. My poker face was so bad that other people failed lie detector tests because they had been near me too recently. But when I got to college something changed. I became a lot more comfortable. I subscribed to the theory that everything will be alright in the end. I carried that very mantra in my wallet for more than a year.

At first, though, I resisted the change. I wanted things to be as they were when I was a kid. I wanted to be the anxious knot of sarcasm and dried sweat that I had been growing up and that got me as far in life as it did. Eventually, however, I came to accept my new, less deranged, outlook on life. And I think a big reason that this happened was the people with whom I chose to align myself.

Which is why I can't leave this desk that no longer belongs to me. Because as much as I say I'm sick of people eulogizing me, I know that they're kind of right. I don't know if it's modesty or if it's false modesty or if it's just denial, but I've had a hard time acknowledging that I've changed people and that people have changed me.

Now I can't seem to make up my mind. I want to defer to my earlier claim. I want to defer to the thought that I don't care about graduating and people need to calm down. But now I think I'm swaying myself the other way. Now I just want to get in a big circle with all my college friends and sing kumbaya until my least-touchy-feely friends get so uncomfortable and have to leave.

Geez I'm a friggin' contradiction.

What was even the point of this? I certainly don't know. If you know, let me know in the comments.

Sorry if this post wasted your time. This is what I think about in December, apparently. This is a weird series of posts.