Suti~Tooti Newsletter

How One Rose🌹 Saved My Life

"I remember when there wasn't a breeze. There was no rose. There was no peace."

No photo description available. — Me in the summer after my junior year of high school at a geology workshop

7 years ago, in late May of 2018, I was accompanied by applause across a bright auditorium stage to receive my high school diploma. For many people, each step across the stage is bittersweet -- a step away from friends & the romantic, dramatic teenage high school experience towards the daunting but promising, empowering realities of adulthood.

For me, the walk was bitter.

The tedium of school, the weight of family & colleagues' untamed expectations, the anxiety of looming-failing romantic relationships, the lack of authenticity & awareness of teens and the teachers that encouraged and perpetuated harmful behaviors, the physical & mental toll of being a track & field captain, a crippling God complex, a lack of purpose -- it's too easy to develop a sense of bitterness under such circumstances, a bitterness that develops into cynicism.

Cynicism that transforms into nihilism. Nihilism that perpetuates a feeling of helplessness. Helplessness that forms a deep depression.

A dark void.

"Loan me a hand through the misery, God. Come give me a lease"

Just a year prior, I was invited to a 2.5 week summer camp at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in the boonies of Terre Haute, IN (I'm from Naptown, so I can say that). Over the course of the camp, I coded a video-game from scratch with 2 teammates, scored 15 points in a loss to be eliminated from a 3v3 basketball tournament (games were to 21), laughed and cried tears of joys for hours with a band of guys aiming for the stars. It was at that camp that the void began to separate...a peephole of light becoming visible. A blurry, but rounded silhouette began to come into view. Foolishly, I began think

"What if it doesn't have to be this dark? What if it gets better than this?"

A few months later, I applied to the school, confident that I was wanted there but equally confident that a school with a $70k a year cost of admission was out of my reach without a scholarship...a full ride. My dad was a policeman (sheriff at the time) working 3 jobs to put 2 of my older siblings through school with minimal debt; this is after already successfully putting my oldest sister through, sleeping 3hrs a night on a good day, and often forgoing rest altogether.

My only way into the "land of hope" I so dearly yearned was a full ride scholarship, for fate to shine its light into the void. For God to give me a lease.

God gave me the lease.

"This is the reason I came to the forest"

Me (Suti~Tooti) playing the piano at Rose-Hulman's "White Chapel" on graduation day. Student center in the background.

4 years later, in late May of 2022, I was accompanied by applause across a bright auditorium stage to receive my college diploma. This time, the steps felt different. This time, I had met genuine souls, lovably-flawed people, experienced love and loss, faced near legal trouble (a story for another day) , spent countless sleepless nights in classrooms and common areas hooking up virtual wires and debugging confusingly written programs, cried with friends, run through abdominal tears, biked miles to physical therapy for said injuries...

Every foot lifted across that stage pressed the play button on a different memory in my head; the slamming of my foot ejected the tape, startling me as I realized I was 1 step closer to leaving this place.

Me at the top of the staircase between Blumberg Hall & the Apartments East/West dormitories

On my final step, I opened my eyes to a sight I once thought was impossible...mythical.

What was once a "peephole" in the void had become a sea of light. The cold hard gravel had been become a vast grassland. And in the center of that grassland was a young man with an afro and the graduation cap that had to be banded onto this head.

The young man was laying in a field of red & white roses, diploma in hand, enjoying the sun's rays before continuing his long journey into the grasslands.

Suddenly, he hears a rustle in the bushes & jumps up; his head darts 180 degrees to find...an old man. An old man with a spider-web's colored, disorganized tumbleweed on his head that only the most generous of people would call an afro. As a light breeze sweeps over the two gentlemen, the old man, wearing a polished platinum ring glistening on his left ring finger, leans in and asks the younger man a question.