I tend to hate getting my hair cut because I'm not good at literally placing control in someone else's hands in such an intimately impersonal way. But I love the feeling right after a haircut, a symbolic sense of shedding the unnecessary, what was in the way.
I had a late lunch with Joy, Sarah, and Michelle. We discovered we are all graduating the same day, despite there being three colleges represented among the four of us. As we all graduated together the last time this seemed fitting. Still it hit us, that somehow four years have passed since the last time we stood at this crossroads, that the very thing we were all looking ahead to then is nearly over now. We are not the same people we were then, but in so many of the ways that matter we have not changed at all.
If I am realistic I am forced to admit that it is unlikely that the four of us will still share this strange, hardy bond post graduation. It is probably amazing that we've made it this long. Truthfully, in high school, I was not tremendously close to Sarah or Michelle. It was only senior year that we got close at all. So much of that closeness was based on shared experiences and shared goals and inside jokes, the tenuous threads of a relationship easily broken by distance and time.
What made it last, what draws us together still, was an unspoken but mutual understanding that we all would still share in each other's lives when we could. Had that not happened I doubt I would have taken the initiative; it was only knowing that it was expected that we all reconnect during breaks that allowed me to pick up the phone and call to make plans. It is only knowing that that allows me still to call, not having spoken to any of them in months, and know I will be received happily.
Every time we meet up we are always new people filled with new stories and new experiences. But always I recognize my old friends in the small details: the way Joy will lose anything not attached to her body; the way Sarah uses a peculiar blend of insult and sentimentality to express her affection; the way Michelle hugs awkwardly but always says "I love you" like she means it.
It is nothing like what I have with L/E/N; I have lived with them and grown with them and cried with them and there is a depth to our relationship that is precious and hard-won. I could not even compare the two. But there is something indefinable about those old friends, what they mean - our every reunion tangibly bittersweet. No matter how we hug and play catch-up and mean it when we say I love you, there is no making up for lost time. Joy, Sarah, and Michelle exist in my present but they are firmly embedded in my past; whenever we speak I am speaking to what has been lost on the way. Conversations with the dead.
After graduation it is most likely I will head home, a temporary sojourn wherein I will study for LSATs, organize and pack up my every belonging, and prepare to relocate to a destination as yet not conclusively determined. In the meantime I will see my dear friends, we will share meals and drives to the beach and one last party. We will talk furiously of the future and of the past and try desperately to brush it all away. But it will end and I will leave. I will say goodbye one last time. I will certainly see them again, at Christmases, we will exchange the occasional email, but I will know in my deepest heart that it is truly ended, I will know it is time to exchange experience for precious memories and more experiences, someplace new.
I had a late lunch with Joy, Sarah, and Michelle. We discovered we are all graduating the same day, despite there being three colleges represented among the four of us. As we all graduated together the last time this seemed fitting. Still it hit us, that somehow four years have passed since the last time we stood at this crossroads, that the very thing we were all looking ahead to then is nearly over now. We are not the same people we were then, but in so many of the ways that matter we have not changed at all.
If I am realistic I am forced to admit that it is unlikely that the four of us will still share this strange, hardy bond post graduation. It is probably amazing that we've made it this long. Truthfully, in high school, I was not tremendously close to Sarah or Michelle. It was only senior year that we got close at all. So much of that closeness was based on shared experiences and shared goals and inside jokes, the tenuous threads of a relationship easily broken by distance and time.
What made it last, what draws us together still, was an unspoken but mutual understanding that we all would still share in each other's lives when we could. Had that not happened I doubt I would have taken the initiative; it was only knowing that it was expected that we all reconnect during breaks that allowed me to pick up the phone and call to make plans. It is only knowing that that allows me still to call, not having spoken to any of them in months, and know I will be received happily.
Every time we meet up we are always new people filled with new stories and new experiences. But always I recognize my old friends in the small details: the way Joy will lose anything not attached to her body; the way Sarah uses a peculiar blend of insult and sentimentality to express her affection; the way Michelle hugs awkwardly but always says "I love you" like she means it.
It is nothing like what I have with L/E/N; I have lived with them and grown with them and cried with them and there is a depth to our relationship that is precious and hard-won. I could not even compare the two. But there is something indefinable about those old friends, what they mean - our every reunion tangibly bittersweet. No matter how we hug and play catch-up and mean it when we say I love you, there is no making up for lost time. Joy, Sarah, and Michelle exist in my present but they are firmly embedded in my past; whenever we speak I am speaking to what has been lost on the way. Conversations with the dead.
After graduation it is most likely I will head home, a temporary sojourn wherein I will study for LSATs, organize and pack up my every belonging, and prepare to relocate to a destination as yet not conclusively determined. In the meantime I will see my dear friends, we will share meals and drives to the beach and one last party. We will talk furiously of the future and of the past and try desperately to brush it all away. But it will end and I will leave. I will say goodbye one last time. I will certainly see them again, at Christmases, we will exchange the occasional email, but I will know in my deepest heart that it is truly ended, I will know it is time to exchange experience for precious memories and more experiences, someplace new.
Current Music: stravinsky - chanson russe for violin and piano
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