Who are you? Who am I? | Week 15

April | College Years and Friendship | Week 15 | 4/16/2023
Talk about junior year of college

For most of our life, January 1st to December 31st is considered a year. But in our adolescence and young adulthood, the "year" is more accurately defined in the context of the school year, summer to summer. This parameter, set some generations ago (probably for farming reasons), gives structure to our pre-career lives. I know this to be true both anecdotally and personally - it is how I've catalogued and remember the events of the my life prior to leaving college, and I've confirmed this to be true for others. I've yet to find much commonality however, with my peers on the way in which my brain categorizes time periods thematically - years of growth, years of suffering, years of progress, of exploration, of rebirth. I see this tendency as perpendicular to my particularly strong, natural inclination towards nostalgia. And while this pairing can occasionally create difficulty separating myself from the past, I do believe it allows me to create abstractions of that past in an interesting and novel way. One such novel perspective is the idea of a finite supply of themes in the human experience. As it turns out, the human experience across time has repeating archetypical elements. And there are times in our lives, where introspection and reflection can lead us to the revelation that we're living and actively participating in a fundamental experiential archetype. This zeitgeist elevates our conscious experience to a level of profundity whereby we're able to connect to poetry, literature, music, and art, all of which are mediums for expressing some archetypal experience from the finite selection. Junior year of college was the year I understood the archetype of heartbreak, and it was one of many years of rebirth. 

August - October

When I returned to Gainesville for fall semester, things with Sam were rocky, but in an implicit way, as if the tether holding us together was thinning before my very eyes. Mention of it was preposterous. It was during this time that I considered myself to possess all variety of mental delusion. I attempted to rationalize my gut instinct away with ideas of personal fault, whilst my gut was on target all along. Weeks after my birthday, the news broke that we were done. The signs were there all along, two breaks in one year and a shadowy figure whom I suspected had captured the heart of my once lover (again, intuition was right here). I found myself in a deep, dark hole. I drove through a hurricane to be home with my parents. Like a child, I needed to be home. But there are times in a young man's life in which he must revisit the comforts of youth in order to transcend their necessity. Two days after the news, I was conjuring up plans to win her back, rationalizations to explain her behavior. I was a guizer, spewing a stream of consciousness to my parental captive audience. Then my Dad said, "do not grovel, get ahold of yourself, move on," in the stern way that a father does. And it was that moment, seeing the seriousness in his eyes, that I never turned back. I would return to Gainesville a day later, somber, weak, and insecure, but stoic and self-respecting. 

All around me were blessings, my roommate Zach and I weren't as close as I would have liked, given our relatively new domestic living situation and friendship, but he was there for me during that time. I would study in the living room so I didn't feel so alone, and he would keep his door open, ever so often making his way to the kitchen for a quick chat with me. He'd listen to my ramblings and nod his head, giving his attention to a depressing and energy sucking topic. I'll be grateful to him for that until the day I die. For a young man, heartbreak is earth shattering, and he was there to help me pick up the pieces. On the health front, I was the healthiest I'd ever been, in what could be considered a partial remission. On the school front, I'd begun the case competition class. On the work front, I'd started a new job at the pool teaching kids how to swim. And on one random day in October, Daniel and I ran into each other at the gym, him having freshly moved to Gainesville. He asked if he could "get in on a set of chest press." And the rest was history, it was weeks later I introduced him to Zach and we began to grow a three-way friendship. 

It's fascinating that once you're liberated from a bad situation, how much the world opens up to you. When your baseline is as low as it can go, when you're at the bottom of the hole, it's incredible how much you start to see as positive. 

November - January

By November, the rebirth had started. I was in the gym twice a day, taking full advantage of my newfound (and temporary) good health. I was crushing it in case class, making quite a name for myself amidst some very high performing business students. I was contacted by my old mentor about working at Amazon. Life was improving rapidly, juxtaposing the persistent lonely nights. 

In December, I was invited to participate in the first ever University of Alberta business case competition in Jasper, Canada. I was one of two first semester juniors ever to get the honor of representing the college at a case competition and I took it as a win. I was being offered a Willy Wonka golden ticket and all I had to do was reach out and grab it. Those next weeks were incredible. Alberta was intoxicating, the experience was riveting. The responsibility of doing my best in a very challenging, high performing environment to uphold the reputation of The University of Florida, alongside the feared and mysterious Business Finance professor, was life altering. I'll never forget the 36 hours period on the final stretch of the trip that I stayed awake. My team was given the case at hour 0, and we had 24 hours to complete the case and prepare a presentation, of which we used all 24 hours, uninterrupted by sleep. The next 6 hours were presentations, ceremonies and final day festivities. Most everyone's day wrapped up with a final sleep before the busses arrived in the morning to take us back through the mountains to Edmonton, but I was absent until the last minute, for a very important rebound.  

When I returned to Florida I felt like a hero. There was a lot of intrigue about my time abroad, but in actuality, things mostly returned to normal. But I was different, more confident due to a variety of factors including the rebound, the health, the friendship, and the success. It was a palpable difference. I recall the NYE party at Ben's house we had that winter and the attention I received from a new female friend group. 

February - March

After Christmas break it was back to the grind. I spent the next two months making a ton of progress in life. Zach, Daniel and I's friendship had reached a new level, which was unlocking conversations and concepts I'd never considered. I was enriched by our less than sober evenings, filled with deep laughs and fascinating ponderings. I took multiple trips to FSU and Tampa to see friends, date women, and experience a life I'd been closed off to in my relationship. I'd made it on the business case team and was now running mock business cases on a weekly basis, honing in on a skillset that few other's possessed. 

I'd found deep meaning and satisfaction at the pool, with Mrs. Jill, Jess, Erica and the children I got to see every day. It was exactly the environment I needed to be in. From happy hours at Bonefish with the team to sushi dates with Jess, I'd found something I desperately needed, a home away from home. But it wasn't long before the sparks of a once lit love, were re-lit. Sparing myself the details of remembering to a tee the events which transpired, the long story short is, Sam came back into my life. Those were fascinating days, where I leaned on my friends for their confirmation of my cautiousness. I spent the next month, trying to contain a fire which did everything in it's power to grow in intensity and spread. 

April 

April was a pretty wild month. I remember it like it was yesterday. The expression, when it rains it pours, couldn't be any more representative of life. About a half mile from our apartment was a small movie theatre, that no one attended. For Zach, Daniel and I it was the perfect place to take our tired, intoxicated brains to imbibe in science fiction on any given Thursday night. One night in April at the movies, I get a call while sitting in the theatre, it was Amazon. I hurried to the bathroom to learn that I'd been given the internship for that summer, a huge moment and a potential turning point for my directionlessness when it came career aspirations. Minutes later, I have a strange urgency to use the restroom, one that I hadn't felt in about 9 months, and it was in seconds that followed that I learned I was no longer in partial remission, a huge blow, and ultimately an equal and opposite reaction in the negative direction to the positive news I'd just received. 

Weeks later, navigating the fresh news, both positive and negative, Sam and I ended things once more. I'd seen her a few weeks earlier with the shadowy figure I mentioned, whom she'd been engaged in a full fledged relationship with the past 9 months, and it was time for a conversation as I prepared to move to South Carolina for the summer to pursue Amazon. I expressed my adoration for her and my ongoing desire to be with her. With tears in her eyes, she told me the following, "I just don't understand myself, everyone I talk to says I should be with you. On paper you look perfect, but I just don't feel it anymore." It was shocking but it was honest. The words of my father echoed loudly in my cranium, "do not grovel, get ahold of yourself." So I employed my newfound strength and resolve, "Sam I take it you're not in love with me anymore. If I walk out this door, we're done, for good, there's no third chances." I left. And she did not follow. 

May - July

In May I packed my car and left for Spartanburg, SC. There was much to look forward to on the horizon: Zach, Daniel and I had decided to live together our Senior Year, I'd accepted another cool job at the school, I had a few cabin trips planned, I was likely going to travel with the case team again in Fall, I was an hour and half from Connor in Charlotte for the summer, and I was about to make some real money. But despite all that, I was bitter and resentful at life. I'd lost the girl again, and my health had deteriorated. It seemed like one step forward and two steps back. I went monk mode that summer - limited communication with the outside world, diving into my internship and my fitness. I used my anger as fuel for progress.

When it was all said and done, it was a really productive summer, albeit difficult and lonely at times. But that is the masculine journey in many ways. Per aspera ad astra (through struggle, to the stars). I learned a lot about myself that summer. I spent time reading books on health and diet, watching videos on weightlifting, trying new exercises, absorbing new music and spending weekends with friends and family. It went by in a flash and I was satiated when it was over. 

I'd pushed through the dark times that year to find much success and growth. It was a year of rebirth, reinventing myself and then testing that 2.0 against yet another wave of challenge and struggle. Ultimately it was the friendship of Zach and Daniel, the companionship of Jess, the motherly nature of Mrs. Jill and the support of my family that kept me grounded and fulfilled day to day, month to month, when life presented new problems to be solved and new issues to contend with. I'd learned a valuable lesson for the future.