A Reflection of My Four Years In Colorgaurd || April 2021

     There are a lot of other things I should be writing right now, honestly. 

    I have an essay due tomorrow night, and my camp NaNoWriMo word count to hit and it's literally 1:27 in the morning of Friday, April 16th, and I'm somehow compelled to write... this. 

    By this time tomorrow, I will be done with the program that- through thick and thin- I have called home for four years. Every summer, I spend my august out on a muggy field staring at the brick walls of my high school with sunglasses on and terrible tan lines. Every winter, I pull a vinyl tarp with a design on it and spin for a different kind of audience. 

    I've thought about what this moment would look like a couple of times throughout my high school color guard career. I thought about it in the Mercedes Benz Arena on the concrete floor as I stretched, freaking out that I wouldn't remember the work I was supposed to and I would screw everything up. I thought about it again when we claimed sixth in the nation my sophomore year and there were blue tears streaming down everyone's face from the makeup. I thought about it around this time last year when our championships got canceled because of covid. 

    And I thought about this moment in October when I cried on the very first field that I started on. 

    Every time, the moment has looked different for me as I've aged. How I would feel or what I would look like. Would I cry or would I be okay? How did I continue after leaving something that brought me the first feeling of a 'second home' that I'd ever get. Would I visit? Would there be any part of me that would crave that feeling again after leaving? 

    Those answers, even now, I don't have. Not even twelve hours before my final performance. I'm not sure what I would get by understanding what answers I would give to those questions yet, honestly. All I know is this: for all of its faults and all of my cries in my car, and all of my laughs until my ribs hurt or thunderstorms whilst Kylie and I waited for practice to start, the Wando High School Colorguard program has created such a profound and deep place within me that I'm not even so sure I knew it had until now. 

    I remember my mom asking me the week I brought home the application, "do you want to throw a gun or- Emalee do you see those swords going around their neck?" 

    My mother was being facetious. She didn't honestly think that I would actually like it or actually do it, and if I was her I wouldn't blame her. I honestly didn't think I would, either. After all, I wanted to cheer, not 'spin swords around my neck'. 

    We all know how that story, goes, though, considering I'm here and not there. 

    Anyways. 

    For the first time since I was a freshman, I feel anxious about tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's in anticipation for the end of anticipation for what it'll be like after it's gone. Colorguard has been there to experience a lot of things with me- my first high school friends, my first time driving, my first boyfriend, my first sock tan, and my first drive to actually be good at something. 

    You don't realize how much you change until you're looking back on it later and see the pictures you have or the videos in which your voice is still high-pitched and awkward. Color guard has watched me grow up. 

    I try not to think about what my senior season would have looked like if this was normal, just because I know it'll do me much more harm than good. It's not ever what I would have pictured- what this year is- or what I would have ever wished, but nonetheless, it's still here. 

    I'm not even sure that any of this even makes sense if I'm being honest with you. I'm just writing what I'm feeling because I feel like somewhere this needs to be documented and somewhere I need to know what it was like to be a part of this program- what it felt like, and why it mattered. 

    Linked below is a picture from me about four years ago next to a picture of me now. It's hard to believe that the picture on the left was the photo I submitted as my audition photo- what I looked like when I joined, sitting side by side to a captain with four years under her belt. 

    They tell you to enjoy things because you only live once, but I don't think it makes it any easier here in the end. Colorguard is such a specific and niche activity, there's nothing quite like it. If you blink, you might miss it. 

    But I'm so lucky that I didn't blink, that I didn't miss it. Because I'm not so sure what kind of person I'd be without it.