The metal feels cold against my ear, then before I know it. Click. The blonde woman steps back, admiring her work. Two shiny new studs have found their home on my earlobes. $50 poorer, I climb into Krissy’s black Corolla, my stomach full of knots at the thought of what my parents will say about my new piercings. Fifteen-thousand dollars a year and you still haven’t learned a damn thing. I can already hear my mother’s lecture voice. All this for what – a show of independence, that I’m no longer the little boy who would ask his father to carry him from bed? No, I’m a man now, a man who wants to walk on his own two feet but doesn’t have a car yet. No, I’m a man who still calls his mother when he has a bad day. No, I’m a provider who makes minimum wage working two hours a week for the school newspaper.
I’m no man. Just a twenty-year-old kid playing dress-up.
The thought is drowned out by Ariana Grande’s voice blaring over the speakers. One wrong note at a time, I sing away my troubles, and by the time I’m home, I’m ready to feel like a child again.
I didn’t quite know where home was around this time last year. To be honest, I still haven’t found it yet. Home feels like the green paint splashed against the walls of my living room and sometimes, it sounds like my mother’s Vietnamese voice on Saturday morning asking if I want coffee and che. Other times, it sounds like the broken bass in Ester’s car. It feels like the space across from my father’s waves as I leave for school on Sundays. And other times it feels like the soft nuzzle of the bean bags in South Hall. It tastes like the Chick-fil-A my friends and I have when we should be sleeping because we all have 8 a.m. classes the next day. But what is college if not bad decisions, right? Otherwise, what’s it all for?
That extra ounce of independence I fight for, those tattoos and piercings I talk about getting, those places I talk about going to, all that talk just to feel like the man I think I should be. Part of me wants to figure out who I am, but the other part of me is scared to death. Because what if that means I have to leave this all behind – all this false rebelliousness with the safety net of home, wherever that is? What if it means I have to start making decisions for 8 a.m. tomorrow instead of thinking about tonight?
I’m scared of losing what I have right now.
I’m torn between today and tomorrow. But what if I don’t need to let go of what I have today? After all, there’s no tomorrow, like Apollo said. So for now, I’ll just live for today until someday I realize I’ve figured it all out. I don’t want to run toward maturity, I want it to run alongside me. I want it to run alongside all the successes and happy moments, the tears and frustrations and the mistakes along the way. I want it to guide me when I’m lost and accompany me when I’m alone. I want to learn all the hurt it has in store for me. And maybe one day, I’ll still be someone I’m proud of.
—Eddie Nguyen, Class of 2026: Biology/Pre-medicine