The End

Illustration by Anthony Liang.

Well, this is it.

Welcome to my last piece, behold the final drops of ink to be spilled by me for MUSE.

First of all, I’d like to say thanks to my editors, to the directors I’ve been so lucky to work with, and to you, the reader, for taking the time to read my rambling words.

Four years ago, on a sweltering September day, I moved into Victoria Hall and started my first year at Queen’s. In a month's time, I will sit, faceless in a sea of graduation gowns, my name will be called, one of many in a long procession, and I will walk across the stage, I will shake the appropriate hands, and then I will be gone.

I dream of birds often, wings whistling on jet streams, and shimmering bodies carried on convection cells. I dream of my fingers spreading out and becoming wings, the hairs on my arms turning to feathers, and a swan song growing in my throat waiting for death to come and set it free.

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking back. I’ve been thinking of those students who were in fourth year when I started. I wonder who looks at me now, do they look at me the same way I looked at those seniors? I think back on the impact my elder peers had on me, and I hope I’ve touched others' lives in the same way.

I’m no swan; there is no great song to hear from me, not yet anyway, not here. My puddle of prose has dried up, and all that's left is this, this small honest piece. I stand alone at parties these days; younger people buzz around me, and I try to help them where I can. I wonder if this is what it feels like to die old. Watching the new guard come in, watching someone else live through the life that you once did. I watch the same heartbreaks, heartaches, and drunken mistakes that I once made, and I can hear the rhymes in our stories, how we sing our songs, all slightly different, but all belonging to the same hymn sung by the great human choir.

It’s a beautiful thing to watch, and to feel time pass through you.

I feel older these days, I feel more like myself, more like the man I want to be. But that’s not the only thing I’ve been feeling.

I tell myself it’s all beautiful–and it is, but it’s also petrifying.

The truth is: I’m tired, and I’m afraid. Convocation has been a long time coming. All those years ago, in the September heat, I told myself that Queen’s was only a detour in my life, that the moment I graduated, my real life would resume, and I would get back to living the way that I want.

Now, though, I stand at the gates of the future, staring down the rest of my life, and I’m scared. I’m scared I’m going to fuck it all up, that given the freedom I’ve been craving for the last four years I’m going to waste it, ignorant of the gift I’ve been given.

I’m afraid that I’m going to live a life full of unfulfilled promises, with dreams that lay rotting in my head.

I’m afraid that on my deathbed, my only company will be the endless questions of what could have been.

I’m afraid.

The fear sits in my chest, and although it fights to rise up through my throat, I choke it down.

One foot follows the other, and I keep walking, keep moving forward, because it’s all that I can do.

The only surefire way to a life unlived is to live it in fear, so I persist. With my heart pounding and with the taste of blood in my mouth, I just have to keep moving, and I pray that when the time comes,

I can die a good death.

…

There's a small cafe in Sauble Beach. I'm sitting here now writing this on that white porch. Big grey clouds are gathering over the water, and I can see the storm brewing in their breast. The smell of ozone is high on the spring breeze.

The birds are all tucked away in their shelters, awaiting the rain.

I will join them soon, but for now I am happy, at this moment, on this porch.

…

With the falling of the first raindrops, I must wish you goodbye.

Cheers,

Ben Linton