Year 1 done. Woah.
As the laughter has faded and I have chosen to be a recluse after leaving the halls. I find myself wondering why. Why on the eve of their departures do I turn to this form of storytelling.
What story do I have to tell? It’s this one.
I decided to leave home early, eager to jump into a new life amongst new people who really didn’t know who I was. We shared memes, we picked chicken nugget or noodle and we had no idea what was going to become of us once we all arrived on campus. At least I didn’t. Not knowing was powerful because there was so much freedom for them to exist without me really knowing who they were. All I really knew at the time is that we were a talented group for getting selected to be a part of this program.
A journal entry from August 23, 2023.
It will get easier because I will meet my cohort and I already feel we’ll get along swimmingly.
And did we swim. Like fish. One fish, two fish… And we kept swimming together through this year. When I got here, everyone was telling me to reach out to the ones here in Seattle, but I was terrified. I was sooo scared to meet them. I was so nervous because first impressions are important and even more so when you’re about to spend the next 3 years with these people. Every opportunity I was presented to meet them, I hid away like a recluse. I waited until our first day of events. It was getting measurements and touring the costume shop. After that, we went to lunch and really the rest is history. Or our history so far, because we’ll be with each other for the next 2 years.
Sitting and listening to these people has been one of my favorite things. Something that I would add to the playlist of my life: this cohort. Them telling their ridiculous stories, jokes and wisdom. The way they light up with joy, their cackles, the tears shared. As I continue to document this experience, I wrote during Quarter 1 that we already knew too much about each other. And I wouldn’t want to share that with any other group of people. We are so generous. The art and creativity we share is something special. In our copious amounts of free time, we sang together, danced and saw so much theater together.
In the midst of all the craziness, we would find joy in sitting outside in the sun, eating our lunches and snacks together. We made sure to let the sunshine hit our faces when we could because when it’s cloudy and you spend a lot of time in a theater, it can feel like you don’t see much sun. Even though the sun consumption was a huge difference from Denver, it was never actually dim. My days were brightened by this group.
