Here we are. You and me. We're back together again. As always, I'm glad you're here and I'm excited to see what sort of treasures we can uncover today.
Every time I write a new entry on this site, I have one goal: vulnerability. Vulnerability is strength, and showing it empowers others while healing the self. But this story is different from the rest. This story will be my most vulnerable yet, and I hope you can find something to take from it. My most vulnerable story yet… if you've been here for a while, you know that's a bold guarantee.
In the first story on this site, I tested the waters of vulnerability, sharing all the details of my tumultuous freshman year of college in An Overwhelming Upheaval. Well… mostly all.
Five stories and nearly two years later, I waded into the waters a little more, telling all about why and how I closed my doors to you in Share Your Rollercoaster. Well… mostly all.
Last November, I tried to dive into the waters of vulnerability headfirst and tell all about my depression and anxiety in The Honesty Square. Well… mostly all.
I promised vulnerability, and I'm here to deliver it. You want vulnerability? Here it is: I haven't been as vulnerable as I could be. In these stories, I've beat around the bush more times than I can count. I've used metaphors to obfuscate the truth, and I've hidden more than I've shared. I'm done with that. I told you this story would be my most vulnerable yet, and that means one thing: it's my most triumphant story yet.
A story as triumphant as this demands vulnerability, because unless I am completely and brazenly honest about my past, you can't feel my triumph with me. If you've been kind enough to read every story I post on here, you may think you know my past. You may think you've felt my pain and my triumph with me at every step of the way, but I assure you there was always more. I shared… mostly all. Today? I'm sharing all.
I'm taking a cannonball deep into the waters of vulnerability and I'm not coming back onto the land until I'm soaked head to toe. I'm going to divulge as much as I possibly can about my past, and tell you why I wholeheartedly believe I'm stepping into the best phase of my entire life… right now.
About a week ago, I was talking to a close friend of mine about graduation, and they said something that caught me off-guard: "Graduation is a big deal, but at the same time, I always kind of knew I was going to graduate college. There was never any really doubt there." That's when it hit me: there was a time in my life where I had no idea whether or not I'd graduate college.
My freshman year, I faced an assault on all fronts. I was unprepared and life simply beat me to a pulp. I was accosted by people I trusted and loved. I joined an organization where I made the only friends I'd have the entire year, and I still felt like an overwhelming majority of them didn't like me. I was living away from home for the first time, and had declared that I wanted to become a dentist. I chose Nutritional Sciences as my major, and gained an ironic 30 pounds that year. I adopted an unhealthy nocturnal lifestyle, laying awake until the early hours of the morning and sleeping until the early hours of the evening. I skipped nearly every single class. I didn't make a single "A" all year. My first semester GPA was a 2.0. My second semester? 1.5.
There were many moments where I envisioned a thirty-something Preston wasting away in his parents' basement, growing morbidly obese with no ambition whatsoever. My entire life leading up to college, I'd grown used to breezing through my classes, making tons of friends with ease, and simply living carefree under the impression that life would figure itself out. And it did! Life figured itself out in every turn I took. But once the roles were flipped and I was the one figuring life out, I was beyond lost. I was hopeless.
If you know me, you're sure to know what happened next: nothing short of a miracle. I was accepted into the Disney College Program, scored my dream job and moved to sunny Orlando, Florida. My life was turned entirely upside-down. Wait. No. My life was turned entirely right-side-up. My time in Florida was nothing short of a dream come true. I was there for five months and had three bad days. Three. I counted them. I may not have even had three good days in my entire freshman year.
My life had been turned right-side-up, but it was more than happiness and glee. I didn't know it then, but it was a period of exponential growth and fast-tracked maturity. Anyone who knew me before fall 2018 and after fall 2018 will tell you I was an totally new person afterward. I found a community that challenged me in every way positive and loved me in every way possible. I found a job that demanded excellence and charisma, two things I'd simply lost in the year prior. I found a new way to view the world around me… and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with life. I fell in love with the same life I'd had no direction in just months ago. And then… I left.
Spring 2019, I rode the wave. The high I was on was not going to simply disappear. That semester, I made the best grades I'd made since elementary school and finally settled on a new major that I knew I'd thrive in: Sports Media. I hopped on my surfboard and rode that wave as long as I possibly could, but all was not as it seemed.
Slowly but surely, the wave I was riding crept closer to the shoreline. It wasn't going to last forever, no wave can. As summer 2019 came, the wave began to dissipate into a ripple. I was still in the same organization in which I'd felt largely unwelcome in beforehand. I was gaining weight again, this time another post-Disney 30 pounds. My sleep schedule was erratic and although I was trying to make new friends, it was a rocky road to do so. Suddenly, as my wave was rippling and summer 2019 was coming to a close, I saw another wave. I wasted zero time and hopped on.
You may be wondering what this new wave was. I'm not going to confuse you with metaphors again, so I'll cut to the chase! I met someone. I fell in love. Like, head over heels. For a while, it was the best feeling in the entire world. I was riding high, surfing the new wave with someone by my side. Needless to say, that feeling was incredibly short-lived.
For about three months, I was having the time of my life beside the love of my life. It was the realest magic I'd ever known, but what was real for me was not real for them. One fateful morning, my heart was shattered and my surfboard wiped out, only for me to discover I had been on the surfboard alone the entire time. In the next six months, I was repeatedly cheated on, lied to, and gaslighted. I spent countless nights wailing in desperation, trying to salvage something unsalvageable. I dealt with serious anxiety for the first time in my life and was made to feel wholly, completely worthless. I became a shell of myself. This wasn't a wave. It was a hurricane.
It took time, but I navigated my way out to the other side. Thanks to the steadfast loyalty of a handful of friends and family, I was able to find the strength to choose myself and my happiness over others'. Nevertheless, much of the damage was irreversible, and I had no idea what I was in store for next. None of us did.
As I finally navigated my way out of one hurricane, another hit. Except this time, it didn't just hit me. It hit you, too. The COVID-19 pandemic has been nothing short of an absolute calamity in all of our lives — there's simply no other way to put it. As a senior in college, I'd like to briefly take you through my experience with it.
Gone was the Oklahoma State I knew and loved. The campus, once a place of energy and community, had been emptied. Before my senior year, I hadn't missed a single OSU home football game that I was in town for. During my senior year, instead of getting a proper sendoff, I only went to one of the football games I'd known and loved for three years. During fall 2020, I was in interesting classes, but lost all motivation to attend them in-person or online once the university mandated more relaxed attendance policies. I stopped seeing my friends out of depression, began to feel anxiety creep back in, and above all of this… I was terrified of the future.
I was supposed to graduate college in a matter of months. The pandemic wasn't showing any signs of slowing down, so finding a job wasn't exactly appealing. At the same time, I knew it would be nearly impossible to make it into graduate school after my freshman year disaster. Since leaving Orlando, my goal had been to return to work for Disney World and do another college program to get my foot back in the door with the company. After the pandemic, that was no longer an option. I was determined to get out of Stillwater and didn't want to end up back in Amarillo. I wanted something fresh after the crazy hurricane I'd just escaped, but I was drawing a blank at every turn. What was I to do?
"Hang on Preston, I thought this was supposed to be a triumphant story." It is.
Because even in my darkest days, when the hopelessness is overwhelming and the hurricane won't let up, I never stopped dreaming. I always got back on the surfboard. Every single day, before I left, I saw the Walt Disney quote in my room: "If you can dream it, you can do it." Well, if anyone can dream it, it's me.
In the first week of December, I was at home, brainstorming options for my future with my mom. She asked me where I wanted to go. I said "I don't know," and proceeded to open up a map of the entire United States. Like I said, finding a job wasn't appealing, graduate school was unlikely, and I wanted something fresh. But the future was coming. I had to start somewhere, and the first step to starting somewhere is finding somewhere.
I'm looking at the map. Suddenly, I remember touring New York University in high school for fun. Even though I didn't see it as possible at the time, I enjoyed the tour and found myself immediately in love with the school. I decided to look up NYU's graduate school programs, because, why not? Let's at least look at their application requirements and deadline. Oh, no. Three letters of recommendation, two essays, and five writing samples, amongst other things. Also, I haven't studied or registered for the GRE yet. Oh, one last thing… the application was due in less than a month.
But I could dream it.
And that meant I could do it.
That very minute, I registered to take the GRE in a week. In one week, I crammed like never before, took the test, and scored in the 98th percentile on its writing portion. A week later, I reached out to three of my incredible professors to see if they'd be able to write a letter of recommendation for me by the deadline. All three were happy to do so. A week later was Christmas, where I spent time with my family and got to work on my essays. A week later, I had a planned trip to Orlando to visit my friends. I finalized and submitted my application at 2:00 a.m. in Disney's Polynesian Resort. I kept my hopes high, and my expectations low. After all, only about 120 students were in the entire journalism graduate school across all ten programs.
Sometimes, life catches you off-guard. In April, I was on the verge of another hurricane. With graduation in less than a month, I hadn't locked down any post-graduate plans yet. My anxiety over the future was at an all-time high, and I was once again, drawing a blank at every turn.
Suddenly, a splash in the right direction. To my great shock, I was invited to schedule an interview with NYU. The day after my interview, I received an email that I had been accepted to New York University's American Journalism M.A. program.
I dreamt it.
I did it.
Upon receiving the email, I burst into tears uncontrollably. I've never felt such unbridled joy and pride. For thirty minutes, I wept out of sheer emotion. After everything I'd gone through in the past four years, all the peaks and drops, all the waves and hurricanes, I had accomplished what I once thought impossible.
A few weeks later, I graduated Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor of Science in Sports Media, another thing I once thought impossible. While I'm certainly leaving a piece of my heart in Stillwater, I've tried to maintain the same mantra throughout my senior year: don't mourn the past, get excited for the future. I'm not just excited, though. I'm elated.
The best part of my graduate program is that it's entirely online, meaning for the next two years, I can live and venture anywhere in the entire country. And there's a certain place where I have unfinished business to take care of. Like I wrote in The Unclosable Door, I was forced to leave this place before I was quite ready.
After all the waves and hurricanes I've endured in the past two years, I know Orlando, Florida, won't be the same. In fact, I'm counting on it not being the same. Like I said, I need something fresh. But I left that door unclosed for a reason: to walk back through it.
This August, I intend to walk back through that door headfirst with new experiences under my belt and skills in my arsenal. I know the waters may not always be smooth sailing. I know surfing the wave won't always be easy. I may wipe out. I may get stuck on the shore. My waves may ripple. My waves may even be hurricanes in disguise.
But if I've learned anything in the past four years, it's how to dream when all the odds are against you. It's how to shoot for the moon no matter how impossible it may seem. It's how to surf in the midst of a hurricane.