By Gabby Sabia

I don’t remember my first day of college, but I do remember the first night after I moved out of my parent’s house. I stayed up until 3AM staring at Dixie Trail and writing a very melodramatic Lady Bird-esque notes app poem about missing my parents and my dog. I’ll spare the slant rhymes and Lorde references, but rereading three years later made me realize that some of these lines are annoyingly still true.

Something, something ‘I feel like I’m glued to the floor despite having one of the biggest cities in the state one flight of stairs away from me.’ It could stand a workshop or three, but in my defense I was between prescription refills and feeling terrified about a million things at once – will I make friends, will I figure out the WolfLine, will I get lost trying to find my classes, will I ever actually get a job with an English degree?

Here I am now, weeks away from graduation, and I’m still scared of the exact same things (I gave up on the buses a long time ago, though). I mean, I still don’t really know what to say when someone asks me what I want to do after I graduate – and that’s really the kicker. Everyone says that you’ll figure it out when you’re there but the reality is no amount of 18 credit semesters can teach you how to see the future. And no GPA point is gonna get you to not be scared of whatever will happen tomorrow.

Ironically, I kind of did find a weird-roundabout answer to that. In a tattoo shop of all places! It was sometime during junior year and I guess I suddenly became super in-touch with my emotions because I dumped every tortuous thought I had since the Dixie Trail poem on the artist.

“I’m scared I won’t figure all my shit out and the degree I’m going for is useless and I miss my dog,” I told them.

“If you’re making art, then none of that is ever gonna be useless,” they said. “Everyone needs art, even the scientists. Art is what everyone goes home to.”

Suddenly all of the stuff I thought was cheesy about Dead Poets Society made sense. Art, poetry, romance – these are the things to live for.

I want to make something that people can come home to. I want doctors and engineers to dump their shit at the door and find something that I made that will help them wake up in the morning. I want to write a story that social workers read when they’re drained and exhausted after a shift. Something that nurses talk about at the nurses station to distract themselves from whatever is going on in the hospital rooms.

If I’m being honest, what that tattoo artist told me as they were plunging needles into my arm is one of the most valuable things I’ve ever heard. It’s a mantra I tell to myself over and over again when I’m stressed and scared of things I’m too insecure to say out loud – don’t worry, Gabby, one day you’ll make a great homecoming.

I can’t wait for that day.