Today I realized that it's the first time in my entire life that no can tell me to "have a good summer." There's nothing to come back to, only things to step forward into. The long haul of formalized education via bureaucratic institution, whether or public or private has finally come to a close. Most people, I suppose, will not be surprised as I say this. Nevertheless, I surprise myself: I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm feeling at a loss.
Nine months ago, I was ready to leave, pack up and go and never look back. I decided to stay. Ride it out. Be brave. I can take it. Of course I can. I, of anyone, can take anything. But I made a promise to myself: if I stay, I make a genuine effort to pull myself up from the ground; I enjoy life; I make it worth it, I make it count, and I build friendships. I take chances.
I did all of these things.
People told me at the outset, way back four years ago, that this was the beginning of the rest of my life. It was a new chapter. I'd come out with the best friends I'll ever have. I'd keep them forever. They were wrong.
College, for me at least, was not another chapter, but merely a subsection. The path I am about to dig up a mountain, is. It will be long and hard and strenuous and I know there will rain. It will cause the inevitable mudslide and I'll slide down. But it will be worth it like the time I really dug a trail up a mountain and slid down in the rain. I'm not remembered for that trail, but the trail exists. I made my mark.
The past four years have been, if not the most wonderful, the most important. I have learned what it is to grow up. I have learned to stand on my own and I have learned to accept and be content, even happy sometimes, that people come and go and that the ones you love and trust the most are the ones who are the most spiteful and the ones who kill you from the inside out. I have learned how to forgive. I learned that forgetting is not part of that equation. Forgetting is not productive because the reason those people have the ability to destroy us, is because we let them. I have learned that to love something more anything else, it is inevitable that you hate it, too, because that love shows you truths about yourself you never wanted to know. Scorn makes you look yourself in the face and hate it, accept it, move on, love it all over again. "To be born again...first you have to die" (Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses).
I have died. I have been resurrected. I have learned not to wait, because Godot isn't coming. But I have to be surprised when I am on someone's list of priorities. I have learned quite recently that people tell the truth when you want them to tell a lie because it makes you feel good and they tell the lie when you want the truth. I have learned to my own inadequacy in the face of other people and I have decided, officially, concretely, that if people view me as insufficient, it's their problem. I do not change. I will not change. Not for anyone. Not if it compromises who I am in any essential way. I would rather be alone and real than false and deluded. It is a fair price. I am willing to pay it.
But I have dedicated four years of my life to this place. I love it to death. I can't wait to leave but it's killing me to see it go. Thus is life. I am my own best friend. No one gets that title anymore. The moment it's given, is the moment they abandon me and I'm tired of starting over like that. But make room for chances and I make room for love. Reciprocate and I open up the world to you.
I spent the day walking out in a chilly May rain. God knows why it's chilly. It's New England. I'm going back South where, if the climate is right for once, the air will be so thick with water I'll hardly be able to breathe. The storms will run like clockwork and I'll go hiking in the dark at the edge of a waterfall. What the hell, right? I'm already at the edge of the world. The air will be thick and hot, stifling, my limbs immovable like in the Egyptian's plague of darkness with all the light to goad me as to what I cannot reach. The world moves more slowly there. Another surprise: I miss it.
But it won't be long until I'm gone again and left to my own devices. Love is woven over distance if it's strong and I don't trust in anything unless it's strong. Time flows by and then it's gone. We all owe death a life. Let's make the most of it.
