The Exuvia

On arrival in September I had no idea what I was doing; as was natural given that condition, I found myself flailing. I made decisions that I wouldn’t make now, decisions that cast long shadows over my self – but the person I was then is not the person I am now. I could not have become who I have become without making those decisions. They brought me pain, but it was and is good pain; those decisions brought the kind of pain that forced me to change. The kind of pain that fuels, not the kind that retards.

I have been here for some months now, and I am starting to stabilize. The reason I am here is starting to come into focus, with all the deep and absurd obviousness that comes with a truth too-slowly comprehended: I am here to self-actualize. I am here in this environment to be surrounded by people who will help me to grow, and for whom I can do the same. I am here with the privilege of being surrounded by some of the greatest minds my age, with the logic that perhaps I will become the same.

Why did I come to a university, instead of going to work, or launching myself on my own? It is because I was and am a fledgling self. In some ways I have matured quickly, and for those I am grateful. Yet upon reflection on the condition of myself coming in, there were too many things I didn’t get. I was spotty, ill-constituted in some essential sense. I was afraid; I felt weak. The self-justifications I had used had begun to crumble, and as I grasped for new ones, I found only air. “I have learned to live! I have not wasted my time; I have developed!” – yes, my old life was not valueless. But it was far from what I made it out to be. I was not an impostor, to be sure, but simply a larva – sans carapace, but encased by a thick layer of dead skin waiting to be shed. In my iridescence it was not so clear from outside that my wings had not yet sprouted, yet I felt it deeply, and that was what mattered the most.

But the skin has begun to rupture, and the seams are opening up! I have begun to molt – what joyous terror! The seasons have changed, and with feverish, shallow comprehension I say I was simply of the summer species, not the spring. Anax imperator – his ecdysis is underway, with a breath of air and a pulse of haemolymph. Do not delude; there is no victory, not yet, nor soon, but there is a tear behind his head and a slow, deep pressure.