My Sendoff Before Exam Season

Solana Pasqual

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This is dedicated to the people in my life that have helped me get to where I am today: sitting at my wobbly desk, incense wafting through the soft yellow room, while cars race through puddles outside my window, and the promise of a house dinner on my tongue.

I am writing this as someone who prides herself on being an independent boss ass bitch, but I would be lying if I said that I go through my life unaided. This year has made me grow up and become confident in my abilities to persevere and do hard things, but this year has also been a year of reliance. For most moments this year, I have needed my friends, and I have needed my family, and I have been the benefactor of the kindness of strangers. Sometimes it was humiliating, and sometimes, despite all the love and support, I failed anyways, and my ego took a hit. But it showed me a lot about who I actually was under all the layers I had built up because I thought it was what was required of me. I am here to say, as the threat of exams and essays looms over us all and the days get darker and darker and you get more tired and find yourself slipping into exhaustion, that it is okay to lean on the people in your life. Chances are, they’ll need you too.

A song introduced to me yesterday plays in the background, and I am tucked into slippers given to me on a random day. A plant from first-year sits next to me, alive only because my friends took care of it over the summers when I flew back home.

You can acknowledge that while incredibly capable, you still need help. It is not an act of weakness or a failure, or a scuff to buff out. I am sorry to say, but there will never be a point in your life where you won’t benefit from help, regardless of whether you feel like you need it or not. A smile from a stranger on a gloomy day, your mom texting you goodnight, a friend picking up milk because they know you’re out. Allow yourself to fall into, or even just cautiously dip a toe, into the warmth of your people.

As ironic as this may seem, loving and being loved is what makes boundaries so important. They force you, and your loved ones, to reach out to each other without sacrificing yourselves in the rush. Boundaries are bittersweet. They hurt, and they sometimes feel like you’re intentionally hurting other people. They’re uncomfortable, and sometimes, they make me feel like I’m being really mean. But learning how to set some boundaries has allowed me to meet people in different, but deeper, ways. They help you understand that the people in your life don’t stay with you because of the services you can provide, because when you draw that line and you say no, they still stay. For you. And if they don’t, they were not your people. And that’s also okay. Lonely. But okay.

To give and to receive is to make yourself a part of a bigger picture, and to put that picture into perspective is to give it boundaries and shape. Boundaries help us remember that we are a part of much bigger communities, filled with people who are equally as deserving of your respect, as they are your love.

Four mugs litter my room, all personalized gifts from people who prefaced the gift with “This reminded me of you.” My hair is tied up in a hair tie I stole from my housemate, and my hair smells of her shampoo because I ran out of my own, and she offered. My mom just texted me a countdown to when I can finally relax.

So,

It’s okay if your friend is going through a hard time, and you just don’t have the capacity to help them to the extent you have in the past. It’s okay if other people step up to the plate, and you focus on yourself. It doesn’t make you a bad friend, much less a bad person. It makes you a human being with emotions and limitations. Limitations allow you to understand just what it is that you are capable of (hint: it’s a lot), and they serve you a slice of humble pie along with that. They make you fall short sometimes, and they give you the gift of realizing that the fall doesn’t kill you. We live in societies that place great value on “human perfection,” as if those two concepts aren’t inherently incompatible. It’s like binding two negative magnets together with string, and saying that they’re meant to be. We are often tricked, and sometimes, we do the tricking, into believing that there is such a thing as attainable perfection.

There isn’t.

And being forced to reckon with that fact never fails to piss me off while also making me feel free. To realize that I can never be perfect means that I can be other things, and still be loved and valued. I can be all of me: good and bad, neutral, boring, annoying and helpful, useless, petty and caring, loving, lazy and terrible, angry and sad, frustrated, frustrating. It means that I can now say, in soft but stern confidence, that it’s okay to be anything less than perfect because the people who love you don’t love you because they think you’re perfect. They love you because you’re you. And as I say that, keep in mind,

You are the longest relationship you will ever have.

The promise of snow lies in the air. My walls are covered in pictures of familiar smiling faces. Gifts and clothes are strewn all over my floor, my wallet feels emptier. I feel full. Everywhere, there are reminders of care and love and forgiveness.

You need to learn how to show yourself the forgiveness and empathy you give others. And really go deep down into yourself, into the places only you know are there, and figure out what you need from yourself. Is it the gift of speaking your mind? Is it the gift of eight hours of sleep, and a lay-in? Is it one last romp with your friends and nine-dollar beer? Maybe it’s a soft pat, a firm hand, and the acknowledgement that you need to push yourself a little harder. Ask yourself what respect and love you need to show yourself, and try to do it.

I don’t pretend to know a lot, but I know that things are a little easier when you know that you will be okay regardless of what OnQ, your parents, grad school or your future career says. They are meaningless if you don’t find it within yourself to be who you need yourself to be. Try not to lose that little spark (you haven’t lost it, it’s just hiding). Remember why you’re here. Why you’re making the sacrifices that you’re making.

And give yourself a good wet smooch for making it this far.

I can hear my housemates laughing downstairs. The cat wanders into my room.