GOING BACK TO COLLEGE:
a goldstargirl kind of essay
there’s been times where I’ve missed my substack and goldstargirl but never as much as now. I’m going back to college in a little over a week from today and I have feelings galore. But I kind of lost my passion for my substack and picked up different things (like working on this website). My big hope is that I can continue to write for myself on here and maybe far, far in the distant future, I would start back with goldstargirl. Even then maybe not?? idk I guess I just feel very nostalgic for the era.
Unintentionally, I’ve found myself having taken a MASSIVE break from writing. I’ve barely written at all this summer (besides my journal but thats not the kind of writing I’m talking about). When I finally did pick up my pen, it was to try to flesh out a story that I had churned out a few months ago to submit to this really cool magazine that I want to have my work in someday. I think no matter if the magazine takes the story or reject it, I’ll share it with the void. I would be curious to know what you all think of it.
At one point in the summer I felt like I was looking at months and months before leaving and now, I’m looking at mere days. The summer at home after a year away at college was just as I knew it would be: different. Even before I left, I felt like I was too big for my Georgia suburb’s britches and this summer really proved me right. Did I gain my footing and enjoy being here: yes. But was it a little bit of a struggle: also yes. I think it was hard being a semi-closeted* Black queer girl before I left, but when I came back from really having the freedom to be that a version of me (the most free, most queer, most artsy version), things at home all felt kind of weird in the beginning. It was like trying to reconcile an old and familiar place with a new-feeling but also old and familiar self?
✰
When I left Georgia for college i was itching for something. I didn’t know exactly what that ‘something’ was, but I knew that I couldn’t find it while I was still at home. But i do think that being at home during this summer was what allowed me to slow down enough to realize that I can’t live without art and that I love being surrounded by it. This fact has been right in front of my face my whole life, but I’ve been so consumed with the life stuff that I never was able to see it. I started with cyanotyping which turned into a real passion, which I put on pause so I could focus on ceramics. I tackled handbuilding which turned out to be way more my speed than I thought, and I started a sketchbook and committed myself to improving my art and developing a style. Also I overcame my anxiety around driving!!!
As I think of going back to school this year, I’m not flooded with all the angst I felt last year (thank god!). I’m pretty moderately excited-- which makes it sound like I’m not very excited at all-- but in truth I am really excited!! I have truly missed Montreal so much. It’s just a different kind of excitement because it isn’t fueled with anxiety and worry so much. I wrote on High Fidelity and Zoe Kravitz on my old blog** around this time last year (you know you want to read it so go ahead and do that and I’ll wait for you to come back) and I’ve decided to give High Fidelity another go. By now I’ve seen this show 50 ways to Sunday, but something about it makes me feel the same anticipation of college that I felt last year and maybe I want to fold a little of that into my life.
Here, I’ll plop in a little list of shows/movies/youtube channels that I’ll be watching in anticipation of my second year of uni. HELL I’ll even throw in some music I’ve been loving:
- High Fidelity
- JESYCU on Youtube (she’s weird/funny and I like)
- Normal People (only if I have the mental fortitude)
- Cupid Deluxe by Blood Orange like always
- THAT DAMN CLAIRO ALBUM-- I need Juna injected in my veins.
- True (EP) by Solange***
- Upstairs Neighbors Podcast (I don’t even like podcasts fr but I love these ladies down)
- if you email me, I will send you the link to my apple music
❥
I finished my very last day of work yesterday which is like whatttt. Though I don’t really regret working 6 days a week this summer, in hindsight it was a bitttt overkill. I loved my jobs; they were so fulfilling and amazing, but a small part of me wishes that I had set aside a bit more time for intentional leisure.
So now I leave for Montreal in five days, I’ve started packing today and I feel so like incredulous about the whole thing. I think I’m starting to consider my life in a more round way; less segmented by university terms or geography. I’m just as alive and vibrant and capable of flourishing here in Georgia as I am in Montreal. What a stunning and beautiful realization. So I guess that’s why going to Montreal this year feels different. I’m absolutely jazzed (a silly word choice but it’s quirky so I’m keeping it) about this semester and year and all the possibilities that it holds, but not putting all the pressure on my experience in Montreal to give me the key that will unlock myself. I will find that key in my own time.
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I recall what it felt like when I first got home and I felt like the summertime was stretching far, far out into the horizon. So far that I couldn’t see past it; so far that all I could do was try to fill my time. Now I’m writing to you from the other side of the horizon in my new apartment on my new red couch. I’m listening to Pictures of You by the Cure, but I just changed it to Femme Fatale by Nico. I’m feeling introspective (aren’t I always?) and in awe of time. How does it do that?
I really like the idea of having the same writing/story being on gsg and the void but they’re slightly different... LIKE I LOVE THAT. Anyway I ought to go. I’ve been in writer’s flow and I’m starving now.
index of added thoughts:
*I wasn’t reallyyyyyyyy closeted because I was out to pretty much everyone who mattered to me. BUT I wasn’t out to like most people ? I was closeted in the sense that I wasn’t FULLY comfortable with that side of myself and didn’t advertise it.
**even now saying old blog sounds crazy!!! it was so easy to part with goldstargirl when I wasn’t writing so much anymore... but with my immenent return to writing looming on the horizon I struggle to see a version of my writing self that doesn’t have a designated place to bear her soul on the internet. is it possible to do soul-bearing without everyone knowing all your business? (short answer is no) Maybe if I wrote literature??? I feel like I’m in a catch-22. Also, obviously I haven’t put goldstargirl aside forever... only that I thought I did at the beginning of this summer (confused shoulder shrug >_<)
***THIS EP!!!!! I was recently enlightened (thanks to Stella) that this EP was produced with BLOOD ORANGE. It has his fingerprints all over it. Some songs have his bars/flow in it... Losing You, Don’t Let Me Down, and Bad Girls (Verdine Version) sounds like a Blood Orange song but with Solange singing. My two favorite artists combining = worlds colliding and minds blowing.