Time is officially running out
You get up to a lot of naughty things at boarding school.
Actually, you get up to a lot of things period at boarding school.
Sometimes those adventures seem like they only just happened, particularly when you suddenly reconnect with your boarding school friends and roomates - some of whom you haven't spoken to since you left seven years ago.
But most of the time they seem really far away, and it's strange to think that you were once that person who did those things with those other people, who were so close to you and are now scattered around the globe. It's strange to go back to that school, years after graduation, and look at where you lived - to think, I was standing right in that spot when this happened, when that happened. That's where I stood when I thought for the first time that I owned the world - and that hallway is where I was when for the first time I was really and truly scared, when my unquestioning belief in happy endings fell away. I was sitting right here when I fell in love and standing by this tree when my heart got broken. I made a major decision which changed the course of my life while sitting on this very bed. You get the picture.
It's strange to look at that physical space and know you once occupied it, that once upon a time it formed the borders of your world.
But what's even stranger is to be aware of that feeling BEFORE you've moved on from a place - when, because you've already experienced it so many times, you know it's going to happen again. When you can visualise it happening even while you're still a part of what you're about to leave. It happens at university, as you study the snow's purple glitter at night; it happens in Havana as you watch hip hop artists freestyling in your living room; it happens somewhere between Honolulu and San Francisco as you cling to a line in a night-time gale and your entire purpose of being narrows to don't let go.
Now, you answer your phone at the office where you've had so many mind-blowing conversations, knowing full well that at some point, months from now, you'll be standing there watching someone else answer that phone. Someone important compliments you, and even as he's saying it you have a flash of yourself in some distant future looking at the chair you were sitting in. You leave the office at 2am when the next day's edition is already coming off the presses and know that one day, months or years from now, you'll pick up a copy of the newspaper in a store somewhere and feel forsaken, because you're not a part of it anymore.
Everything you do becomes a string of moments, and you keep thinking, I will look back and remember this. I will remember this. And this. This is not a new feeling for me, I'm used to feeling homesick for places I haven't even left yet. But that doesn't make the feeling any less evocative.
It's the end of something. I know this has to end for something new and exciting to begin, but that doesn't mean I want this to end and that I won't always regret that somehow I couldn't have managed the new while staying in the old - all the old worlds I've lived in.
I just hate endings.
Actually, you get up to a lot of things period at boarding school.
Sometimes those adventures seem like they only just happened, particularly when you suddenly reconnect with your boarding school friends and roomates - some of whom you haven't spoken to since you left seven years ago.
But most of the time they seem really far away, and it's strange to think that you were once that person who did those things with those other people, who were so close to you and are now scattered around the globe. It's strange to go back to that school, years after graduation, and look at where you lived - to think, I was standing right in that spot when this happened, when that happened. That's where I stood when I thought for the first time that I owned the world - and that hallway is where I was when for the first time I was really and truly scared, when my unquestioning belief in happy endings fell away. I was sitting right here when I fell in love and standing by this tree when my heart got broken. I made a major decision which changed the course of my life while sitting on this very bed. You get the picture.
It's strange to look at that physical space and know you once occupied it, that once upon a time it formed the borders of your world.
But what's even stranger is to be aware of that feeling BEFORE you've moved on from a place - when, because you've already experienced it so many times, you know it's going to happen again. When you can visualise it happening even while you're still a part of what you're about to leave. It happens at university, as you study the snow's purple glitter at night; it happens in Havana as you watch hip hop artists freestyling in your living room; it happens somewhere between Honolulu and San Francisco as you cling to a line in a night-time gale and your entire purpose of being narrows to don't let go.
Now, you answer your phone at the office where you've had so many mind-blowing conversations, knowing full well that at some point, months from now, you'll be standing there watching someone else answer that phone. Someone important compliments you, and even as he's saying it you have a flash of yourself in some distant future looking at the chair you were sitting in. You leave the office at 2am when the next day's edition is already coming off the presses and know that one day, months or years from now, you'll pick up a copy of the newspaper in a store somewhere and feel forsaken, because you're not a part of it anymore.
Everything you do becomes a string of moments, and you keep thinking, I will look back and remember this. I will remember this. And this. This is not a new feeling for me, I'm used to feeling homesick for places I haven't even left yet. But that doesn't make the feeling any less evocative.
It's the end of something. I know this has to end for something new and exciting to begin, but that doesn't mean I want this to end and that I won't always regret that somehow I couldn't have managed the new while staying in the old - all the old worlds I've lived in.
I just hate endings.
posted by SarahT at 4:10 pm
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