the one where haleigh graduates university

I had one guitar lesson ever in my life. He was a strange man with long hair and smelled like cigarettes and honestly, I was always better at piano so, needless to say, uninterested.

 

He said one thing I remember though: “don’t look at your fingers when you’re playing a chord, focus on how it feels. Close your eyes if you have to.”

 

He was trying to explain that feeling the chords out helps to make everything sound smoother, and it’s easier for your hand to memorize where to go.

 

I can’t look at the guitar when I play anymore. And so many other things. So many things I was doing out of desperate need for order, complete exaction. Routines and plans and everything else. Doing things because I was used to doing them, looking at the strings and knowing this how they’re supposed to be played.

 

But how does it feel? Is this even a good song?

 

Wondering how many times I’ve turned down this street and not known it’s name. How many times I had learned to like a song, or an activity. How many grades I fought for. Or how many times I’ve left the house after only seeing myself in the mirror and not knowing how this outfit made me feel, on my skin and stuff. How I felt torn apart after getting my hopes up about an idea I created in my head that I didn’t even want to exist. So focused on outcomes that perhaps wouldn’t even manifest at all.

 

I could never ever ever pull my eyes off of it long enough to notice. Notice the stories of drunk nights out and how they’re not even embarrassing just mostly funny. Notice how my mom likes the oven light on so she can watch the muffins rise. Notice the pretty girl from cultural studies 200 becoming my friend. Notice the long drives through traffic on a summer day. Notice laughing while rolling cutlery at the end of a long shift. Realizing I’ll miss all the people I’ll never see again, and that I need to enjoy them while they’re here.

 

You miss these things if you’re always looking too close.

 

So that’s how this happened, I guess, four years just like that.

 

If I could tell some things to younger me, me who was packing art supplies in a Tupperware nights before moving into my first apartment at 17, it would be this:

 

You will meet the best friends of your life. Long walks to class will never be lonely, you’ll love new genres of music. You’ll learn how to take a jager bomb, you’ll meet friends of friends of friends.

 

Don’t be scared, don’t be judgy, just be open to trying anything.

 

You’ll have the hardest times of your life. You’ll have an accident that changes everything. You’ll meet people from big cities who call this big city small. You’ll do laundry in a broken communal machine. You’ll never get good at math (but you’ll try). You will dance and drink and sing and have sleepovers, meet best friends that you’ll never lose touch with.

 

You will achieve so many things.

 

For a moment, you’ll want to quit. Everything will fall apart all at once. You’ll push through it even though you’re tired and broken and overwhelmed. You’ll start writing about your experiences and it will become big and important.

 

You’ll take pictures, go on hikes, have bachelor nights, get a new car, work a hundred jobs, volunteer, speak in public, win a competition, lose another. Meet presenters and doctors, learn about cultures.

 

You’ll live through a global pandemic, that shuts the world down and brings grief on billions of us. You will love your friends even more than you thought you could.

 

You’ll need a few calls to mom and dad for some extra cash “just until next paycheque.” You’ll need friends who take you on drives when you back your car into a truck. You’ll need secret recipes and life hacks.

 

You will walk off campus one day and you will never walk back on.

I would tell myself that 21 year old me would be sitting back in her parents basement, still fighting a pandemic that never seems to end, on the millionth lockdown cycle, finishing her final semester alone at last, and that writing this right now would make her finally notice how it all came together.

 

How it really felt all along.

 

How much she will miss it looking back, because no amount of bad times ever outweighed the good.

 

I think 17 year old haleigh did just fine, given the present state of me.

 

So I guess this is it, over at last. A university graduate. Rip to the student discounts.

 

I can’t wait to see how big and beautiful my life becomes.

 

If you’ve made it all the way through my nostalgic little rant, I encourage you to close your eyes and notice. Notice where you really are. Feel how you really feel. Love who you really love. Do things you really want to do. Notice yourself and notice others. Listen to what the song sounds like and ask yourself if you really like it.

 

And to the other graduates of 2021, we did it. We did it, even when all of the odds said we couldn’t. Notice that.

 

Congrats,

Xoxo

Haleigh

correlieu secondary school, 2017

university of british columbia okanagan, 2021