“So much of life is just things ending,” I told someone last week.
I said it last week, but I said it a few months ago, too. And I thought about it last night, and three mornings before that.
And I also thought about it a lot last year. I said it aloud to everyone about four years ago, when we were graduating high school, heading into the void, the group of us who had been thrown together since kindergarten and were now, somewhat suddenly, being separated forever.
“Guys, I think it’s our last first Monday of April at high school,” I announced to the AP Physics classroom.
“Kate, we get it,” they groaned collectively, fed up with my fixation on the passage of time, on nostalgia, on the endings of things.
But it’s true — endings are a constant in life. You get settled for a bit, and then time’s up. Move on to the next era of life. Whether you want to or not is often irrelevant.
A more optimistic person would immediately focus on the inevitability of endings beckoning the equal inevitability of fresh beginnings. And while there is truth in that outlook (as much truth as there is mine, the one that makes people groan and ache), there’s something about endings that beginnings don’t possess — there’s something that makes endings stick around in our hearts for a bit longer.
And I think that something is a sharp pain in my gut, and a dull, throbbing ache in my chest, and a squeezing hug with a level of desperation, and a lump in the throat and all the other physical clichés that creep on us when our bodies don’t know how to react to goodbyes.
Beginnings are quick; we jump into something new, and then the beginning is over. It ended. Endings and beginnings blur together, fighting for space, battling out the emotions between nostalgia and newness, between aches and hope, and the fine line is sometimes more that I can handle.
***
It’s funny when I think about it now — the way I felt when I first came here. Everyone told me how fantastic Penn State was, and I was skeptically optimistic. But that first year, I felt like I was looking through a window at everyone else’s happiness, feeling unable to take part in any of it. It was talks on the phone with Mom, and lonely walks and a rising panic in feeling like I wasn’t feeling how I was supposed to be feeling, not at all.
But then it became everything. When I look back on college now, I’ll think only a little bit about those lonely days. In fact, I don’t want to forget them at all. They remind me of how sometimes change can be for the better, and how things do get better. Really, they do. But now I’ll think about Apartment 11 and my favorite seat in the library and seeing my name published in the newspaper and sending lots of emails, and drinking with friends, and dancing with friends and screaming when one of “our” songs came on at the bar. And maybe I’ll remember the bit of panic we all had in this final month, how we said yes to everything and how we weren’t quite ready to let go.
A big ending is coming. And although I feel the familiar sadness creeping on me as I stare at my cap and gown, I’m trying to keep my eyes wide open for the next month. I’m using a little mind camera to remember exactly how my friend leans over when we’re laughing so hard we can’t breathe. I’m capturing the way it feels to spend a whole afternoon in the library, drinking coffee and writing. I don’t want to forget how it feels to put on makeup with my roommate in our tiny shared bedroom, or how it feels to receive a text from my friends on a sunny weekday, asking me to meet them at a Cafe. I loved walking to my Tuesday and Thursday class last spring; I would get coffee, and walk to class in the sharp sunshine, and I always enjoyed that. I was always listening to “Strangers,” by Mt. Joy, and I know that song will make me think of last spring for the rest of my life.
I’m clinging to the little things — the laughing, and our favorite bars, and singing the songs that have defined the last two years and raising my hand in class to discuss something interesting for possibly the last time ever. Click, my mind camera goes every few moments. Click.
A big ending is coming, and a new beginning is, too. I know that. I do. But right now, I’m storing away the feelings, the images, the places, the songs, the routines, the books, the people that have built out the last two years.
I just love when we’re telling a story at the bar, and we start laughing so hard that we can’t finish it. I love that. I hope that feeling doesn’t end with my days here.
Kate is a senior majoring in public relations and minoring in English, history and digital media trends and analytics. She has had a love for words from a very young age. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys having dance parties with her friends, exercising, talking about the swift passage of time and listening to a wide variety of music.