an account / testimony of life after college

Dear friends,

Today I found out that I didn't get the graduate fellowship I was wait-listed for, and had wanted so badly.  Of course I am terribly disappointed, but I know it's going to be okay.  I'm glad, at least, that the waiting is over.  I've been an anxious wreck over this, and while this is somewhat understandable, it is also completely ridiculous.  I apologize for all the times I obsessively talked/wrote about it over these past two months, and thank you very much for tolerating that, for listening/reading, commiserating, and praying.

It's never exactly easy to trust God at times like this, but He is helping me and teaching me to do it.  In this situation I can already perceive the briefest glimpse of why this might not have been the best thing for me, why all the waiting was necessary, and even what progress I've made, though it seems very small.

I'll confess this, though some of you already know:

Tulsa has grown on me and I love living here, but it feels like I just got stuck here because I couldn't get my act together after I graduated.   I felt like only person from our group who was still here, with nothing much to show for it except my apparent failure at all the grown-up things.   I couldn't sustain that one real, serious relationship I had, much less get married and have children.  I didn't go to grad school, or find a suitable career, or move to someplace cool like Chicago or New York.  I've stayed here watching my peers do all these things and more, and I've been deeply ashamed that I couldn't measure up.  It's unclear what exactly I was failing at, because life isn't really about "keeping up" with other people, is it?  Well, if it is a contest, I admit I've lost, many times over: gratuitously, spectacularly, almost flamboyantly.  Okay, now that I've withdrawn again from the blind, pointless striving, I might as well go enjoy the world arrayed in all its present springtime glory.

It's just that simple, and yet it isn't.  I knew how to write, but not how to find a great full-time job in 2009, so for a year I waited tables at a horrible place, drank a lot, and pursued only the kind of relationships that allowed me to be alone.  Sadly, I lost some dear friends in the process.  I felt immensely guilty for not being a good friend to them, and thus undeserving of their friendship, so I pushed them away until they finally left me alone.  In retrospect I'm glad I was continually broke, because if I'd ever saved enough to move away, it would have been disastrous.  Although I had strong wanderlust, I just wanted to pursue complete isolation and anonymity, rather than to enjoy this wild and beautiful world, and more of the people in it.   I didn't think there was any hope for all the relationships I wrecked, so that felt like even more reason to run away and start over somewhere else.  But I was stuck, and I stayed.  I was lonely for a long time, but at least that meant I knew I needed people. 

Things got better very slowly. I finished my senior thesis (over a year late, but better for it).  I found a stable job with a better work environment.  I did briefly visit Chicago alone, and it was probably one of the best things I've ever done in my life.  Instead of hellish isolation, I found respite, and some perspective, and a chance to miss home a little bit.  I enjoyed some good art, food, and the energy of Michigan Ave. at night.  I came back to Tulsa.  Eventually I saw some truly miraculous restoration in some of those broken relationships.  I even found new friends at times when I least expected it, and this time, I was better able to appreciate them.

So what?  That could have been the story of a million other people - young writers and artists stumbling lost, drunk, and alone through big cities, with an ironic pride in their oh-so-useful liberal arts degrees - some have even made a glamorous career of it.  What's the point of intervening in that? 

Well, I don't know.  Only God knows why He loves anyone enough to put up with that, enough to sacrificially make it all right.  He even persists against an individual person's perverse will to change him or her from the inside out.  He brings the wretched slave into glorious freedom, and the hated outcast into the same ease of belonging as a beloved child.

God loves me. I love God.  Even now, a tiny whisper scoffs a sarcastic remark that I should be swilling a glass of Victory Gin right now and listening for the gunshot.  It's a process, but voices like these grow ever fainter.

That's likely a lot more than you ever wanted to know about me.  If you're still reading, thanks.  So, you might be wondering what I'm going to do now that I don't have funding for school.  I'm honestly not too worried about it anymore.  The waiting had been making me crazy, but that's over now.  I've got the rough outlines of a plan, and if God wants to revise it, that's fine with me.   I recently started the first job I've ever genuinely liked, so I'll keep working at Whole Foods, defer the TU admission for a year, work on the GRE scores, reapply for the same graduate fellowship (since I was so close this time, why not?), and apply to some other schools for more options.  It would have been very difficult to plunge into a masters-level program in a field I've never studied, so now I get the chance to ease into it more naturally, and this way I may be more likely to succeed.  If the logistics work out right, I may audit the one semester of undergrad prerequisites this fall, do some paid tutoring on campus, maybe babysit some kids, and work on the weekends.  More importantly, I'll ride my bike down Riverside, collaborate with people on my strange writing projects, laugh, cook good food for friends, drink coffee, see concerts, take pictures, and love God and people.  

Now that you understand how much it means that I'm able to say this -- I love you all.

--Crystal