THE LIMINAL YEAR

Riding the high of my decision to stop school, I burst my head through the car sunroof. A gust of air transcended through me and my eyes welled to brace the change. Wind ripped at my hair as streetlights straddled our car, pulsing to the beat of Frank Ocean’s Pyramids. Harmonized howls rippled off orange-lit tunnel walls and into the pinhole night of stars. Like crops set ablaze, I believe that when you have nothing you can have everything. Your potential is limitless, uncharted and hungry.

Spring of my junior year, I experienced the full definition of jaded. Imposter syndrome took attendance for me during Zoom university, as I battled through online courses like Communication Law and Japanese - courses that would’ve clicked if in-person were an option. Isolated, I struggled to feel a genuine connection to my peers and the material. I felt as if I was fumbling clumsily through classes, with no connection to clubs, or mentors. No direction after the imminent graduation in the coming year either. Time escaping, I felt unprepared and underdeveloped, losing out on opportunities that went to my peers due to lack of awareness and finesse. On autopilot, I struggled to identify the frustration as one of my own makings, or that of my circumstances as a first-generation college student.

Feeling like I was lacking in every respect and with permission of my scholarship, I withdrew for the fall term. A decision that blew into a year away from classes. After signing a lease the winter prior, I was stuck to Eugene. Yet, it wasn’t a town, I witnessed the mental gymnastics of my friends graduating: hunting for cheap apartments in cities, massaging them through thesis papers and filling in Harvard resume templates. I indulged them in cruising of Eugene’s grandest neighborhoods, midnight sprints up one-way streets and sob-sessions about the pressure and eventual release of school. It sent me down a spiral of my own to observe the people I’d grown so much with finish an iconic era and move on. Their feelings grounded me to come back to university rigor and finish my own chapter. Learning beside my friends, I got to figure out who I was as an adult and who I wanted to be, rather than try to figure out how to adult in my childhood home.

Post-pause euphoria, I felt immense guilt, as my hardworking parents did not understand the burnout. Without any money saved up to fly anywhere and no path routed, I threw myself into odds and ends jobs. I drove up to Portland for photoshoots, donated plasma and delivered pizzas. I replayed familial patterns of struggle my parents entrusted me to break. In these curious gigs I idealized dream ways of making money, not recognizing at the time how my skills as a server translated into business to consumer communications as a PR specialist.

Cocooned from academia, I learned with leisure and without the pressure to succeed. I awakened passion projects of astrology newsletters and wrote short stories. I studied the energetic presences of friends, and did rituals to bring out their highest potential from a spiritual awakening. I rediscovered my worth as an individual. I gave people time to reveal their influence on me. I learned how to validate myself instead of outsourcing that trust to others. I meditated during daily postworkout stretches. I got back into reading. I found a therapist to properly aid my cocktail of illnesses for the upcoming academic year. In that order, I nurtured myself into full bloom and returned to school this past fall.

Though an unprecedented break, it was essential to the reformation of who I want to become. A period of imploring daydreams and gathering life experiences that not only made my odyssey more enticing, but also gave me clarity of how I envision the happiest, highest version of myself. Surely a version of her exists on an Italian beach, shooting an espresso on her way to the office. Like flying a kite, I remain here, grounded to those dreams in Eugene.

Through this liminal year, I found that change is not dependent on a place, but rather the initiative to find the feeling. I found fulfillment by surrendering to my body over getting lost among the hustle. For 15 years straight I’d been a student, and it was due time to just be. By allowing myself space to breathe, I resigned from a survivalist mindset and ushered in a mindset of abundance. For a survivalist, the effort they make stems from scarcity: a fear of losing opportunities or scaring them off. To be abundantly aligned means to believe: if it doesn’t work out now, it doesn’t mean that it won’t work out later. Bloom in another environment or wait until a newseason. But it stems from the optimistic hope of blessings coming in their due time. Levitating out of school, I wasn’t attached to any outcome, but it doesn’t mean I was aimless. High ideals behind the wheel, I trust that my best outcomes are already on their way to me.

WRITTEN BY PAITRA DANIELS

ART DIRECTOR TATUM MUNDY

PHOTOGRAPHED BY EVAN SUSSWOOD MODEL

DANA SYLVESTER

PLAYLIST

CONNOISSEUR BRYNLI NELSON

DESIGNER

SOPHIE BRYAN

PLAYLIST CONNOISSEUR AMANDA PARK & CHEYENNE COOPER COOPER

ILLUSTRATED BY KAITLYN CAFARELLI

WRITTEN BY MADISON DOOHEN