Night Changes

Most of my favorite people (Maine, August 2022)

When I returned from school in June I wanted to write. I wanted to reflect on everything that happened over the past four years and begin to process the cacophony of emotions that spun like a top in the back of my mind. I found an unused composition notebook from 3rd grade reading that I have since written countless entries into. I never imagined that the first time I wrote in that journal would be after my college graduation. When I was in third grade, I remember thinking that 16 was incomprehensibly old. I couldn’t begin to fathom being in my twenties.

My third grade composition notebook

While the notebook remained empty, in my family’s arts and crafts closet, I grew up, through ages I never thought I would be old enough to experience. I was the eighth grader confidently breezing through the middle school hallways. I was the high schooler holding her first pair of keys, and the varsity captain leading her team through playoffs. Then I was the college student who listened to the younger version of herself and left her comfort zone for college. I was the student who led with intention and belief in others, and who graduated with even bigger ambitions than when she began.

As I reflect on my college experience and the new realm of possibilities the world holds for me, I write this to the third-grader, with dreams bigger than her little body.

I’m not surprised that I didn’t write anything in that reading notebook. I rarely held my attention long enough to read much of anything, much less to write notes about any of it. I did, however, love stories. I loved immersing myself in a realm of unknown characters with familiar feelings.

Tim, Luke, Me, and Rosie (Maine, Summer 2022)

Over the years I've come to realize that shared experience itself doesn’t evoke universal human connection but rather shared emotions derived from tangible experiences. We foster connection by dissolving and applying deep-seated emotions to our individual vaults of experience.

Emotions challenge many of us, because the only way they can be communicated, linguistically, is through the lens of events, that we may not all share. But emotions, for me, are felt through passive glances and innocent gestures.

Rosie and I (Santa Monica, CA, May 2022)

In May, I sat in the back seat on a drive from Joshua Tree to Palm springs. I was compelled to reach toward Rosie––my best friend of nearly four years, biggest fan, peppiest supporter, loudest cheerleader, most honest critic, and best motivator––, who sat silently in the passenger seat. I reached forward for her hand. Without exchanging any words, we both began weeping. We wept for the time that seamlessly slipped through our fingertips that were now gripping one another firmly; it was as if our grasp, at that moment would preserve time and keep us from the looming separation we faced. We wept for the knowledge that our time living in the immediate vicinity of one another would quickly draw to a close. We didn’t weep because we regretted how we spent our time, but rather because of the realization that the time we thought was infinite was quickly waning.

One direction has a song that asks “Does it ever drive you crazy, just how fast the night changes?” While I was never a staunch ‘Directioner’ these words held an unexpected weight during the last week of school. I watched two sunrises that week, and yes, it drove me crazy just how fast the night changed. Crazy because the lustfulness of the night fled before my eyes to reveal a reality that I wasn’t ready to face––the inevitability that my time in California was limited and that my decision to do the scariest thing I could think of was on the horizon.

Rosie and I (Fenway Park, July 2022)

There is so much more that I have to learn, and while pure jubilation and the energy radiating from every pour of my body were real, it’s also how I know that I am ready. The love I feel from everyone around me: unadulterated, unequivocal, wholehearted love––that I honestly did not know was possible––gives me the conviction that it is time to move forward. I am ready to rebuild my life in a new place with new people because I developed the tools to do so.

Maybe that makes it easier to leave it all behind. To cope with the loss that I am feeling and to internalize my own struggle. But I remain caught in the parity of how lucky I feel to have people who make saying goodbye so hard.