Stuck in the In-Between — The Lexington Line

I started to feel it before anyone said anything. I think we all did.

Before the emails about commencement or the slow flood of “lasts” that people love to label and post and archive as if naming something makes it any easier to understand. It doesn’t. It just makes you more aware that something is happening and that you’re supposed to feel something about it.

The uneasiness was there when I woke up and didn’t immediately know what version of myself I was supposed to be that day, or when I realized halfway through a class that I would never sit in that classroom ever again.

Which all sounds a tad dramatic until you think about how long you’ve been sitting in classrooms and following instructions and building your entire life around a system that always told you what came next. Suddenly, there is no next step written down anywhere.

There is something kind of offensive about the finality of it all.

After years of moving from one grade to another, one school to another, one version of yourself to another, it ends. Someone many millennia ago decided that you’ve had enough structure and can now figure it out all on your own.

We like to pretend we are finally going to be given the freedom we once craved. This is the part where everything opens up, and you get to design your life exactly how you want it. But no one really talks about how exhausting it is to be in charge of all that space.

I look at a blank calendar and realize no syllabus or checkpoints are coming to save me. There is no reality in which, if I just follow directions, I will end up somewhere that makes perfect sense.

Routine used to be something I complained about. I often blamed it for feeling bored or uninspired, but it turns out routine was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in my day-to-day. It held everything together in ways I didn’t appreciate until I saw the final days of my education, or as I’ve been telling people, “my life,” right in front of me.

There was comfort in knowing that no matter how chaotic things felt, there was always a place I had to be at a certain time. Structure just existed.

Now it’s going to be optional, which sounds great until you realize that optional also means it’s your responsibility to create it, maintain it, and somehow stick to it without the threat of a grade hanging over your head…which is a lot harder than it sounds when no one is taking attendance.

It feels rude. The universe didn’t bother with a transition period because it assumed we would figure it out, and maybe we will. Still, right now it feels like going from a clearly marked path to an open field with no directions, and being told just to walk confidently and “be yourself.”

You go from checking your academic calendar and planning your week around assignments to being expected to think with your long-term goals and career trajectories in mind.

There is no ceremony for the last normal Tuesday, no recognition of the last time you casually complain about a reading you didn’t do; it all just stops, and you are left trying to remember when.

When did it happen? How did I disregard all this time that has gone by? Why didn’t I listen to everyone who told me to enjoy it while it lasts?

And a string of ceremonies is supposed to tie everything together. You’re praised for an ending, but no one actually addresses what that ending means.

The end of my childhood? The end of life as we know it?

I will wear my cap and gown, I will take pictures, I will smile at the right moments and say thank you to the people who helped me get here, and trust me, I will mean it. But I want to ask what exactly it is that we are celebrating, because all I feel is impending doom.

People keep asking if I am excited, and I am, in the way you are when something big and irreversible is about to happen, like cutting your hair too short. Excitement and dread feel easily interchangeable.

And then there is the job. I am grateful for it, truly, because I know how rare it is to have something lined up before you even graduate, but I don’t think gratitude cancels out the reality that a nine-to-five is different.

School always had an exit strategy built in, a sense that if things went badly, you could reset in a few months and try again. Starting a full-time position with a contract and a salary feels like stepping into a world where the weeks blend in a way that is harder to change or call a semester.

It is stable, which is good, but it is also relentless, and I am still trying to figure out how I will exist within it without losing whatever version of myself existed outside it.

At the same time, the relationships that defined this phase of my life are shifting in ways that feel both expected and unfair, because it turns out proximity was doing a lot of work too.

Friends who used to be part of my daily routine are going to become people I have to schedule time with, which immediately makes everything feel more fragile. It feels like the friendship will now depend on Google Calendar invites and mutual availability instead of shared spaces and accidental encounters.

There is something deeply unromantic about texting someone to plan a time to hang out two weeks from now when I used to be able to walk down into the Lexington Line office and see them. It seems like that is just what adulthood requires, a level of coordination that takes the spontaneity out of things.

And, of course, it doesn’t stop there. Nothing is automatic anymore, not even the people you thought would always feel automatic.

Like my mom: my rock, my first call, my best friend, the list goes on. It’s not about any physical distance, because we’ve already done that part. She has already been a phone call away, the person I update in pieces throughout the day, and the one who gets the unfiltered version of everything before I have had time to organize it into something more digestible. That part has been our norm for quite a while now.

What is changing is behavioral. It is me pausing before I call her because there’s this growing awareness that my days are starting to belong to me in a slightly different way, even if she is still the first person I want to tell everything to.

We still talk, constantly, if I am being honest, but it’s different. I am starting to notice the effort in a way I did not before. And the same thing is happening with my hometown friends, the ones who knew me before any of this started to feel like identity work.

There used to be this ease in seeing them, like no time had passed at all, even when it clearly had. We could just drop back into each other's lives without explanation. Now, there is inherently more catching up and more awareness that we are all living slightly different versions of life at the same time. That this will be the last time I see them for a little while.

I’ve started to realize that staying close doesn't just happen. It is something you have to choose actively, even when you are tired, busy, or the week gets away from you.

And all of that together, the shifting friendships, the changing rhythm of family, the loss of automatic structure, creates this low, constant weight that I did not really notice building until it was already stuck.

In moments like this, I notice I reach for things I have always reached for. Music has been my escape for as long as I can remember. It’s something I could slip into when everything else felt like too much. Lately, I find myself holding on to it more tightly, as if it were one of the only things that still knows how to make sense of what I am feeling. It encourages me to feel without asking me to explain or to elaborate.

There is a Shawn Mendes Album, “Shawn,” that has been on repeat more than I would like to admit out loud. It sits exactly in that space I keep trying to describe, the in-between of what I was and whatever I am becoming next. It doesn’t make reality disappear, but it makes it feel slightly less like I am the only one standing in it.

So yes, graduation is happening, and yes, it is important, and yes, I understand what it represents on paper, but there is still this disconnect between what it looks like from the outside and what it feels like from where I am standing inside of it. There will be photos and speeches, and it will be the version of closure we are all supposed to recognize as meaningful, and I will participate in all of it, fully, because I know it matters.

But underneath that, there is this other truth that things are not really resolving so much as they are shifting.

And I think that is the part no one really prepares you for. Things will end while you are still getting used to them.