...But Your Enemies Closer

Post High School - Emily Frazier

I had no idea how much I had truly been oppressed until I started college. There was a definite idea of how bad it was between home and school, but strolling along the campus and breathing the fresh air without a care in the world – or anyone to tell me what to do – was the most freeing feeling I had ever experienced in my life. Sure, I had classes to go to, but I didn't have to if I didn't want to. That would definitely upset my potential future if I didn't, but that was my choice to make now.

There had never been a time in my life where anything was my choice and now everything was up to me. What classes I took, what places I visited and what people I gave the time of day to. All of it was wonderful – simply and truly wonderful.

It was incredible – and admittedly scary – to realize that surviving high school had all been a test to see where the rest of my life would go. If I would have let Becca Knox and her idiot bitchy friends get to me, I would have never been able to experience the crazy, chaotic life that was college. Still, it was my choice to embrace this crazy and chaotic life.

That's not to say that it was all sunshine and roses of course. The classes were difficult and the study hours were horrendous. Most of the professors had a stick up their ass that had been lodged deep since the eighties, which gave them a pretentious air to the likes that I had never known before. However, despite all of this, I didn't have to share that little bit of hell with the likes of my neglectful parents or my high school tormentors. The good evened out the bad for the first time in my life – and after the bad winning by a landslide for the past four years or so, I could deal with a couple of stuck up assholes and long nights cracking books.

So college was good for life and surprisingly it was good at getting me out of the shell that I had encased myself in for so long. Before I knew it, I was actually socializing with people and having a good time at that. I was invited to my first party without it being the butt end of a joke. People wanted me around for once.

I never let anyone in though. The scars of my past and the people that had laid them into my soul, never disappeared. So even though I had friends, none of them really knew me. I couldn't ever let them get too close.

It wasn't until my second year of college that I finally let someone into the steel walls that surrounded my heart without even being aware of the fact – and her name was Hayley.

Generally, you met new people in one of two ways during the college experience. There's classes, which always led to longer, stronger friendships because of the mutual interests or there's the old 'a friend of a friend whose second cousin was my old roommate' routine. I met Hayley through the first avenue thankfully.

I had finally narrowed down my career options away from the 'traditional' art route to focus on advertising instead. I had always known that I was quite business savvy when I put my mind to it and figured I could kill two birds with one stone by going down this way instead of trying to sell my work in a gallery and living out the whole starving artist thing. It didn't stop me from taking way more classes for art in general than was necessary though – I did still love the rush I got from drawing after all.

Hayley and I became acquainted in one of the advanced classes I was taking. She was an incredible artist that specialized in paintings and unlike me, she was more than happy to live the lifestyle of starving artist – in fact, she embraced it like it was her destiny. The whole concept was very romantic to her. It was as if her soul was stuck in the bohemian revolution or the Renaissance.

That was what I found very appealing about her however. She wasn't like most of the people I had met in my college experience. She wasn't in it for the money or the prestige, she simply wanted to create great work and reinvent the way people looked at art in general. A lofty goal, but one that was worth stretching for in my opinion.