I keep wondering if this is really happening.
I graduate in 18 days--which is now closer to two weeks than three--and in just over one month I am getting on a plane and flying to another country and staying there for some time. I'll have a job and no homework. I'll have an apartment and no roommate. I'll be 22. There will be snow on the ground and I'll be much more than an hour and a half from an ocean. I will primarily be speaking a language that my parents don't understand more than five words of. I will pay for things in Euros (and I will want to cry when I think about how many dollars each one is worth). When I walk out of my room in the morning there won't be these people around me that have been there for the last two/four/seven/twenty years. I'll have to find a new coffee shop to hang out in--if there even is a coffee shop to hang out in. Will I sit in a bar instead? In a church? In a museum?
On the one hand I'm grateful to be able to leave all the things I've been bitching about for as long as I can remember--can we talk about the fact that it's almost December and I can still wear short sleeves outside?--I'm glad the break will be complete. I won't have to walk that line between being a graduate and still wishing I could go to college parties or worrying about bumping into people in five points who will ask "Wait, I thought you graduated?" I've been watching my friends who finished last spring (and those who should've finished years ago but still haven't) sit around, unable to get real jobs with their liberal arts Bachelor degrees and I'm glad I don't have to do that, to walk into a temp agency just to pay the rent. But they're all still here, in Columbia, together, trying to make it work and to figure out what it means that there's no more papers or tests or projects to do. Will I have to do that on my own? When I call home on Wednesday nights at 10 pm, will my Preston friends be too busy eating cereal to answer? Will they understand that I know exactly what time it is and yeah, that's why I called from my quiet apartment where I can't eat Lucky Charms because Germans believe in healthy breakfasts? Will they think about me over spring break in their flip flops and sun dresses and laugh because they know I'm still wearing my parka?
This post feels self-indulgent and I'm sorry. I think I thought it was some kind of game until now. That I would wake up one morning and we would all look at each other and go "PSYCH!" and laugh because, no, of course I'm not leaving, we'll be together forever... The truth is, all I've ever been is a student. All I've ever known is eating dinner with the same people every night, ordering the same coffee every day, climbing to the third floor of the same building for the last three years. I'm worried I won't be able to forget all those things I wish I could be doing. Maybe I'm more worried someone else will too easily forget that I did those things with them.
