Felicity, Days 2 and 3

I felt quite like Felicity as I wandered around the campus areas close to NYU. Of course, I started out college as a pre-med but wound up majoring in studio art and French. I tried to keep my wary parents on-board with my decision. But, unlike Felicity, I didn't have two attractive boys pining away after me. I only had the old man at the cafe where I met Mary Hammon plead with me not to leave. I only had the man, on one of my many strolls, yelling at me on the street, "You're beautiful!" when I kept my eyes glued to the ground.
I did have a revelation at the Bonnard exhibit where as my personal growth feedback inventory forms would report, I felt alive. I was able to think of who I was, in college, how much I gained from staring at Bonnard's paintings and seeing the world from his vantage point, jumbled as it was. And who I am now, 3 years later, still able to contact that person that I was then, though she once again needs her creative energies awakened.
I felt similarly renewed when I was at the Strand Bookstore, paging through the miles and miles of books, thankful to leave my heavy bags at the holds desk. Somewhere in the basement I got lost in the education section, thinking that's where I should be if I want to be a teacher, but also getting mixed up in the popular fiction, psychology, parenting, religion and new arrivals. I wanted to be as literary hungry as I had been for a long time in high school, devouring every new text in front of me. I found that same person, able to read an almost 400 page book in 3 days, capturing my attention amidst the quiet of my house's guest room.
And I felt thankful to see friends, some of whom have quietly exited my life and now re-entered. I was encouraged, that thankfully, we were all going through the same process of finding ourselves and becoming real with the person that we were trying to nurture during college. We've moved to cities from our suburbias, convinced that we will have a better chance of succeeding there and knowing that social and cultural opportunities abound. I found out that my sister-like, vegetarian friend from Camp Hollymont had gotten engaged. I commiserated with others who are striving to figure out now that the world we had dreamed up when we were 6 and then 18 and now 25 isn't the same as we had originally envisioned.
I guess that I still don't possess the same innocence and naivete that Felicity's original character embodied. Keri Russell never became jaded by her relationships and in the end, she embraced the person she knew she had to become and go back to med school. I, on the other hand, struggle daily with my career and now school choices, my relationships, and myself. I want to end on a spirit of optimism, since I felt like my trip home meant exactly that. It's helpful knowing that I have my parents' and friends' unconditional, and at times, mildly reproachful, support on the journey ahead. Even though it may not be exactly what I had in mind for myself.