I was supposed to go home for Fall Break this evening at 6:00... and then dorm shenanigans tempted me to stay on campus until tomorrow morning... amazing that dorm life still has the power to captivate me after three and a half years. I even paid an extra $10 to postpone my bus ticket. Because this is not only my last Fall Break--it is the last school break of any kind I will have.
Montessori Moppet? check River Woods Elementary School? check Madison Junior High School? check Naperville Central High School? check University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign? check (Sidenote: ohmygod I just learned that "moppet" is a real word and that it means "a small endearingly sweet child" and my heart is so full right now <3) And I'm sitting here, on my laptop, in a room full of my peers (and a few friends) and I don't mind not actually playing games with them. There are days that I feel like playing and yelling and laughing until I cry at something stupid and then there are days where I just like to be the grandma who watches everybody else do those things. Sitting the atmosphere and absorbing the energy is just what makes me happiest sometimes. I always knew that my graduating friends were feeling much different than me about the impending separation that comes with the end of another school year. I knew that their perspective, as the graduate, was filled with far more elation than was my perspective. Mine was tainted with the sorrow of being left behind, of being the one left to wander familiar hallways that were now missing familiar faces. The thing about nostalgia is that... it's imbued in the fundamental, in the ordinary. Big events, anything showy, or anything that was special to begin with are already too full of "stuff" to be able to hold any significant portion of extra sentimentality or nostalgia. It's the sight of that weird stain on the wall (you know, the one that we accidentally left behind after that one dinner?) that fills me with memories. It's that one song that was on that one playlist that I played too many times while doing chemistry that I can't listen to anymore because my mind automatically associates it with electrochemistry, acid/base stuff, thermochemistry, and long hours in the ACES library. Nostalgia is opening a door and being hit with a smell that never had a name or a clear source (and still doesn't) but that brings you straight back to 8:31pm on that one Wednesday during last April. (Even more curious to think about where the smells originates, considering that the inhabitants living around that space have experienced no less than three complete turnovers in just as many years... and yet that same lived-in smell persists. How can different groups of people possibly produce the same hallway smell?) Nostalgia is realizing that at this time on this date last year everything was different. Everything was different and you don't know when or how it all changed but you're grateful that it did and even though it's scary to think about how fast that year passed you by, there's a comfort in knowing (and having proof) that whatever/whoever you are currently is not your final form. Some chapters of our lives do not have a chapter until much later. This chapter of my life is currently looking a lot more like a shitty first draft... but I always add the title at the very end and it's nice to know that I don't yet need to know what's going on. I just have to go with the flow. Revisions will come later. Clarity will come later. Appreciation will come later.
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Authormy mind is full of gibberish and this space will keep me sane. we have a love-hate relationship. Archives
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