Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Art
Kate Jane Villanueva
Media Staff

As the leaves change color – gently falling in the late summer breeze, clinging to the humid days of August – and classes start to begin again, I’ve come back to UVA this year intending to make Charlottesville my own. While I enjoyed my summer, learned new skills in my internship, and had fun with friends from home, some small part of me was still waiting for the thrill of that last week in August to come once more. 

Now that I’m back, walking on Grounds – taking the time to imagine I’m on the long walks Elizabeth Bennett would take to Netherfield – I’m occasionally drawn out of my thoughts or conversations with friends when I notice, out of the throngs of students crossing McCormick Road on their way to class, the first-years. I hear snippets of their conversations, anecdotes about high school, first-year dorms, or plans for a major they have in mind, and it brings me back to my first year – when I, too, donned the bright orange Virginia t-shirt, excited about the newness of college.

It brings me back to my first year – when I, too, donned the bright orange Virginia t-shirt, excited about the newness of college.

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The other day I was catching up with a friend, reflecting on the differences we’ve recognized between first and second year. No more dining hall and dorm life; now we manage the trials of groceries, cooking, and apartment living. My friend said she almost wished for the blank slate of first year, and that she wanted to give her first-year self a hug because of how hard the transition had been. I murmured my agreement, processing the surprising fact that last fall had been hard for her, too. It hadn’t always looked like that, from the outside. I sank into that realization, its salient weight simultaneously grounding me and freeing me. It was like those golden, glorious rays of sunlight piercing cumulus clouds dense with water vapor, etching threads in the soaring tapestry of our atmosphere: I wasn’t alone in thinking that my first semester had been more difficult than I’d anticipated. 

It all hit me again, how it felt that first year – the vastness of a new environment, feeling alone even though there were seemingly happy people everywhere. All of a sudden, I, too, felt empathy for first-year me, that nervous, excited, determined, yet scared 18-year old trying to carve out a place at UVA. 

It all hit me again, how it felt that first year – the vastness of a new environment, feeling alone even though there were seemingly happy people everywhere.

If I could, I would give first-year Miriella a hug, and ask her: Do you remember in early November, on a routine FaceTime call with Mom, feeling confused and trying to understand this unfamiliar ache in your heart?  

I was genuinely enjoying my time at UVA as a newly minted first-year. When my suitemates wanted to go home on the weekends, I always wanted to stay. I loved the crisp freshness of this new chapter, as satisfying as opening to a blank page in my journal. Club meetings, movie nights, parties, and football games. Bonding with new friends over our distaste for dining hall dinners. The intellectual challenge and rigor of college classes. Early morning walks to yoga, when the sun was still rising, illuminating the sky with an explosion of soft rosy light, the birds’ patterned chorus accompanying the swift flight of Aurora's chariot. 

This was College. 

And now, this was Me. 

Yet how could I ever truly claim that blue and orange V-shaped banner hanging proudly on my wall – when part of me was left behind, forgotten and hurriedly stashed away in my childhood bedroom amidst the remaining piles of books, posters, and stuffed animals.  

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There was a dissonance within my newfound university life. 

I was caught in the ether, betwixt home and here. 

 

I was caught in the ether, betwixt home and here. 

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At first, there was no clear reason behind why I was crying so much in that dim-lit dorm room, tissues crumpled around me and falling from my lofted bed onto the floor. My eyes burning with tears, and throat tightening, I was desperately trying to rationalize to my mom why I was so upset. My soft comforter with a flower design was all tucked up around me; tears traced lines down my cheeks because I was too tired to wipe them away, exhausted from the tension wracking my heart and mind. Then my mom said something remarkable, freeing my heartsore chest. It went a little like this: 

“Baby, you’re growing, and you don’t have to forget or disregard the previous chapter of life in order to build this new one. You have to keep going without falsely thinking you must abandon who you were then. Every stage of life builds on each other, supporting the transitions, as the seasons change and the winds blow. Like a butterfly, who relies on first walking as a caterpillar, then enshrining itself in a cocoon to emerge newly forged, no longer inching along, but soaring high. The success of a butterfly’s flight can’t exclude the walking that came before it.” 

Every stage of life builds on each other, supporting the transitions, as the seasons change and the winds blow.

I needed to embrace impermanence, not attach myself and my identity to any specific chapters of my journey in life. Everything builds on top of each other. I’ve learned that no matter how it looks from the outside, we are all in the process of change. 

Our growth ebbs and flows, like the tides crashing along the sand. Trust that somehow it will place you right where you need to be.