“The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, / loneliness is still time spent with the world.”
This small excerpt from Ocean Vuong’s poem “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” was my senior quote. In my first two weeks of college, I put up a photo wall by printing a bunch of pictures from CVS. I hung this quote alongside those photos.
Ocean Vuong’s poem depicts the ongoing, internal struggle of self-discovery. It’s an oath to himself, told from a wiser, more experienced version of who he is now. Throughout the poem, this version offers motivational words interspersed with slightly harsh reality checks. The poem illustrates the unresolved emotions, identity, and loneliness of Vuong, as well as exploring the brevity, beauty, and pain of a life. It asks questions I often found myself pondering through my first year of college: How do we make sense of our lives? How do we endure overwhelming uncertainty? And most importantly, what does any of this mean?
My first year at college wasn’t easy. I struggled to adjust to the newfound freedom, responsibility, and the unfamiliarity of the city. There were times I considered leaving and going back home to attend community college. This poem and the quote posted on my dorm bedroom wall helped get me through it. Some of my favorite lines I’ve attributed to specific events during my first year experience, moments that led up to my decision to stay.
“Don’t worry. Your father is only your father / until one of you forgets.”
I was never excited to go to college. Leaving home inevitably meant leaving behind the people I loved the most. How was I to navigate the world without the strict regime of my parents, without the sharp criticism of my sister, without the fresh air that they cleansed for me, simply by breathing in the same space?
And how would our relationship change under this distance? Would it strain the ties I had to them, which were so intrinsically woven into my identity? I was terrified at the thought of losing the close-knit bond I had with my family. I didn’t want to be one of those people who hardly talked to their dad or mom, simply because they couldn’t find the time. The inevitable part of growing up was loosening these ties, but I resisted my detachment. I wanted the closeness to remain the same: close as in one room away, not one phone call away.
“I wanted the closeness to remain the same: close as in one room away, not one phone call away.”
Kaytlyn Crawford
“Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not / a lifeboat.”
The transition was agonizing. I’m shy, I’m awkward, I tend to fold into myself, like an embarrassing note you’re passed in grade school that you quickly tuck away in your jeans pocket. I found it hard to open up to people, even to show up and put myself out there. Worst of all, I had the ugliest, most grotesque scar spanning across the bottom of my leg, and the summer in Berkeley was “just getting started.” I couldn’t dress comfortably without being reminded of my own failures.
For my last summer at home, with the freedom only a kid on the brink of adulthood could embody, I wanted to make the most of it. I wanted to swim in the river that I grew up next to, stay up late with the friends that carried me through the school years, and savor the familiarity of home before it all changed. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to do that. At the end of June, I fell down a 30 ft rock, breaking my right foot and tearing out a chunk of my leg right below my knee.
I remember the moment before jumping, toes gripping into the moss patches on the slight rock ledge, my thumb twirling around my index finger in anticipation, and the sweat drop forming on my forehead despite my cover from the sun. This wasn’t the highest jump I’d ever done, or even the most dangerous. But halfway down the hill stood a tree, its limbs branching out before me, that my friend told me I would have to jump through. When he counted me down, I hesitated.
I became fixated on the possibility of pain. Although a necessary part of my path, I couldn’t stand the thought of hitting the tree. I simply didn’t want to go through the stinging pain of switches, to deal later with the nuisance of itching scratches along my limbs. In my moment of doubt, I slipped and fell to my left, bouncing down the rock and collapsing into the river.
I got 17 stitches in my leg, was on crutches for the rest of the summer, and got cleared to walk two weeks before college move-in. When I look back to the moment, the feeling I remember most vividly isn’t physical pain, but the immense shame. Coming up from the water, my head light and buzzy, my lower half altogether numb, I profusely apologized to my friend as he swam-carried me across the river. My own hesitation humiliated me; it was as though that single moment of fear had exposed a deep failure within me. I carried the feeling into college: the belief that my own uncertainty and fragility defined me.
“Don’t be afraid, the gunfire / is only the sound of people / trying to live a little longer / & failing.”
Although the first semester put me through the wringer, I slowly but surely leaned into my own independence. Grocery shopping alone, studying without any outside reassurance, and speaking up in class discussions became the small but necessary obstacles I had to overcome every day. Berkeley was overwhelming; the concrete jungle was bustling, competitive, and intimidating. I felt so behind: intellectually, socially, physically. I needed to match the pace of the city, and with my right bottom half having been out for the season, I found this very challenging.
It was only the start of the second semester, after I’d formed deeper friendships, that I started to feel less alone. I started opening up more and being honest with myself. I remember hearing my friend, for the first time, confide in me fears I shared. She said she didn’t think she was smart enough to be here, that she was worried she wasn’t as good as she thought. Only then, did I feel comfortable enough to admit my own self-doubts. Once such horrors were out in the open, I realized they weren’t as monstrous as my mind had made them seem. Realizing that others faced the same failures I did and kept living despite them, helped me understand my anxieties as human flaws, rather than ones unique only to me.
“Realizing that others faced the same failures I did and kept living despite them, helped me understand my anxieties as human flaws,”
Kaytlyn Crawford
“I swear, you will wake — / & mistake these walls for skin.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still scared. I still get intimidated by the necessities of life, seeing them as antagonistic little branches that seem to have grown there just to hurt me. But I realize now that I mustn’t fret so much over little things.
No one cared about my scar as much as I thought they would. No one stared, gaped, or turned away in disgust when they saw it. The insecurities I thought were so glaringly obvious were only so to me. My family didn’t stop loving me because I moved away. The distance didn’t diminish the love, the bonds, the memories, but amplified them.
The failures I treasured as only my own were being shared by people around me. I hadn’t given myself enough grace, hadn’t taken the time to acknowledge the good I bring to the world. I mistook self-criticism for self-awareness.
But I’m here at college, trying new things, meeting new people, writing in new styles. I’m more capable and free than I’ve ever been, and I refuse to keep selling myself short. Hesitation is natural, but it shouldn’t be definitive. I can’t continue to be scared of obstacles, I need to fail in order to grow. I’m human, after all. I need to stop seeing my being as a limitation and instead work to embody the person I want to become. Which could, quite literally, be anything.
As Ocean Vuong reminds us: “The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed.”