The end of one thing always marks the beginning of another, and my first year at Stanford is no different. As freshman year swings to a close, I can’t help sniffle as I read through old journal entries, pull down wall collages and slowly take apart the identity I have crafted during this first year at Stanford. My journal entries reflect an evolving sense of self whose interaction with the world oscillate between wonder and apathy.
Sept. 30, 2015: Being surrounded by strangers prompts a certain type of loneliness. The feeling of crossing the street in the midst of a crowd, being carried up and away by a forward moving motion but unable to see quite where you are heading. I feel trapped in mind and body. Mom and Dad dropped me off with tears and cupcakes, and I proceeded to crawl under my newly washed and unfamiliar sheets and count the number of years we had lived together. At first it felt like far too many, but as minutes turned to hours, memories crowded out thoughts of independence. The trip to Universal Studios where Grandpa spontaneously rented a limo to pick us up from the airport and I threw up my airplane food in the aisle. Our annual Broderick Halloween party complete with a screaming contest, a cotton candy machine and a haunted garage. My first day of high school, in which I agonized between two pairs of identical jeans and toyed with truancy. I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to form memories without my parents, since I could hardly name any in which they hadn’t played some sort of role.
Nov. 12, 2015: Naps always leave me drowsy and unsettled. I woke up from a four hour nap today and felt like the bottom had dropped off of my life. I proceeded to write a midterm paper I wasn’t proud of, spend far too long putting on make up and go out when I should really have stayed in. Perhaps I am being too hard on myself. But I feel unstable. I am tired of inhabiting my body and wish I could put it down for awhile. For a few days at least. Perhaps that is the purpose of sleep? And yet, sleep feels like a passive consumption of time, an unmemorable waste of precious sight and sensation. Glorious as dreaming is, I have to try harder to fight its pull. There is just far too much to experience outside of the realm of closed eyes and even breathing.
Feb. 26, 2016: The groundwork of today was glorious before it even began, seeing as it was a Friday. But as if that wasn’t enough, the realization of the day was equally magical. I forget how stimulating this environment can be as I move from commitment to commitment, from meal to meal. If only I had the discipline to stop and look around more often, to reflect and remark, if not to other people, then at least to myself. These and all our days are the glory days, and to be a part of them is to feel the full scope of human joy. The day was full of unexpected discoveries, beginning with a letter from an old friend stuffed in the bottom of my high school backpack, continuing with a pot of loose-leaf earl grey tea in the church, moving to an armful of checked out books from the library and ending with a three-hour-long game of Catan in which I relied upon development cards to clinch the victory.
April 7, 2016: Journals are full of starts and stops. They’re resolutions to write more consistently, to reflect with greater regularity and to vent more healthily. This journal is no exception, containing many sentences from many different days across the span of one life. Can you believe we get one life at all? Precious thing that it is. I long for so many things in this life. To be strong, physically and emotionally. To be moral. To be quirky. To be elegant. To be tough. To be aggressive. To be assertive. I aspire to be these things, and perhaps aspiration is a good first step. But it is by no means the final step, and this is what I need to remind myself of. It is no use wishing for things. We, as humans, are granted an astounding amount of control and agency to go after the things we desire in our lives. And herein lies my discomfort with prayer. Why pray for something to happen when we could go out and make it happen through the toil of our bodies or the exertion of our minds?
May 20, 2016: Today is a beautiful day in the Stanford bubble. The Beyonce concert has inspired me to start eating breakfast again, so dining hall smoothies and tater tots are just the ticket. Today was full of class conversations on Adrienne Rich, barefoot yoga in the sun, a shift at the art gallery in which I spoke to a plant, the beginning of final presentations in tea ceremony class complete with matcha wafers and takoyaki, monkey bread and sofas at Coho, finally completing the yellow course at the rock wall and music turned up far too loud. In other words, spring quarter has my vote as the hands down best part of the year. I am tickled to be as much apart of life as I chose, to interact with sunlight and friends under the guise of education, a full and complete life to be lived if I so desire.
May 28, 2016: What a day. What a day. The day began as many of them have begun lately – quite early. And by quite early I mean at 9:30, so really nothing too dramatic. Driving into San Francisco with friends, I was reminded again of the immense importance of spending time with people you love. Making memories is the most wonderful use of time, as these pieces of life are the ones that will remain when all else has rusted and faded away. San Francisco has so much to offer in terms of memory making, and the girls and I made sure to take advantage. Strolling through the sunlight, we treated ourselves to dim sum, during which time a photoshoot of a chubby-cheeked baby ensued, and pig-tails were worn. After a fully satisfying meal in which we were sneakily charged for tea, the four of us wandered over to the Haight, an iconic neighborhood chock full of thrift stores and fruit markets we painted the town cheap and filled reusable bags with reusable clothes. Laughing all the while, we settled into the comfortable rhythm of a summer not yet dawned. It is impossible not to feel alive when the world is so complex and colorful.
Going through these entries is a meditation in unto itself. The tone, pen type and emotion of my writings reflects the self-centered and preoccupied musings of a very young child. Having a record of these experiences will never cease to remind me of the passions, inclinations and composition of my college freshman year self, the self that will always exist within the person that I am becoming. There is no such thing as either a starting point nor a stopping point. We are all a cresting wave of personality flowing fully, freely and constantly.
Contact Hannah Broderick at inbloom ‘at’ stanford.edu