a super corny type up from a coffee afternoon yesterday.
College -- well, living there -- is a truly a unique experience that should be given to all. It has it’s ups and downs and screaming roommates at 6 AM and deep drunk conversations in the middle of the afternoon. But it really is beautiful. It is undeniably more than just a party and an education. It’s a temporary, ever-changing version of home. It’s a second family that you learn to get along with and you learn to rely on. A second family that you love (but you don’t have to learn that part).
It’s the end & I’m sitting in the dining room. I’m not the only one left, but I’m the only one here. This isn’t truly the end -- we have two more years. But it feels like its own end because no year will ever be just like this one. No year will ever be like last year or next year either.
These things only happen once. Each of these walls holds a memory of a poster outline or a splash of wine flown from a glass. I’m pretty sure the chair I’m sitting in was fucked on by one of my roommates. The table in the living room is moved out of the way, but the indents in the carpet from where it stood haven’t yet bounced back. This place is lived in. This place was our’s.
Initially, we didn’t know each other very well. We did a mismatched attempt at making the bland walls homey and taking turns scrubbing the toilet. We laughed & cried here, over everything and nothing. We screamed at each other a decent amount over dishes or drunk anger rants. We cuddled for movie nights, crying together when the dad character died and sitting in amazement as a poor teenage girl trapped in the TV gets a condom stuck inside her. We had tea time in our living room, which had been feng shui-ed at least three times over.
In the end, everything has changed -- or so it feels like. But sitting in this empty apartment, I know nothing changed here. This room is exactly as it was when we arrived, excitedly rushing to cover these walls. But we changed. We’ve been changing ever day.
Sam said the current state of her room made her wish things would just be “in their place.” Soon, all these things will have a new place. For some, it’s Thailand. For others, it’s Africa or Belgium or Maryland or Brooklyn. These things may never again reconvene in the same place, as they’ve sat together all year.
But we will. We came in as a loosely tied group of friends, but we’re driving away in our tightly packed cars as a family. The approaching rain is fitting for the moment -- melancholy spirit, but with perfect timing.
Each red or blonde or brown or purpler-haired head to bob out the door today will probably never come back to this room again, but we’ll come back to each other.
Chugging ranch bottles, carrying heels from the walk of shame, family dinners crammed in the dining room, gathered around the TV to watch riots on the news, out bar-dancing for birthdays, getting fucked up in 505, tallying our boys counts on a chart on the fridge, counting up our bottles, family visit to Poe’s grave. Rushing around on move-in day to put our colorful placemats in order and take family pictures around the chest.
We are the Dunbars and we will always be the Dunbars.