My Bell Curve

What does it mean to come of age at the end of nature? Well, like all things, I suppose it depends on the context. Adding emphasis to particular segments of the sentence as you read it would provoke a different response each time. What does it mean to come of age? The end of who’s nature? What is nature without human beings around to classify it as such anyway? Personally, it’s inherently subjective and directionless to examine. When I think of these types of questions I prefer to view our individual experiences as vignettes; not comparable by measure but relatable in our humanness.

My coming of age experience actually did occur at the end of nature, in the sense that the dismantling of my ideologies surrounding what nature was took me on an unexpected wild ride back to myself. In previous writing I’ve done, including my positionality essay, I frequently state that I feel the absence of an origin. That suspicion came from my premature inability to understand the power of intuitive knowing. I don’t perceive the world the way the dominant discourse wants me to and that impacted me negatively up until the regime of truth hiding behind that curtain of social constructions fell away.

There is peace in knowing we are as interwoven with the natural world as a dove, a canyon, an earthquake, and a table... Because my perspective has shifted I can now accept the unfavored tendencies we possess as well as our awe coinciding on every corner. The journey to myself, or my coming of age, was much like a bell curve. It is hard to look injustice in the eyes and not cry. Last semester I peaked in my despair. It is profound to reach a goal you’ve been working towards but it justifiably felt sadistic.

Today, I feel a hope that is transformative. A professor I had in my first semester at Humboldt State University said repetitively, “wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.” I see that now, in the small victories not present in the mainstream media. The same way that I didn’t fit into the dominant discourse, neither do victory stories. They must be sought out and spread amongst each other.