For all intents and purposes, this is the de facto word on what’s been happening in my personal life. So this will be the last time I go into detail about this for the time being. Thanks for understanding.

In life, there are events that are seen as “unbelievable” and beyond comprehension, moments you can’t describe or come close trying to. In a year defined by these moments (both personal and global), there was one that recently happened last week.

It was a delayed reaction and realization of the future. As if my brain didn’t want to accept anything that was happening, that things were changing right then and there.

It didn’t faze me, when I bombed a final and failed a course. When I cleared my room and packed ahead of schedule. When I signed those forms. It never seemed as if I was leaving something behind when I did those things.

But when I started to walk to the bridge just a few minutes away from the campus, that’s when it all came down.

It’s mind-blowing how the innocent things become something much more in the blink of an eye. Watching the cars go by, and the wind set the atmosphere, allowing my mind to see everything and anything.

To be frank, I had a face-to-face meeting with reality. End result: crying my guts out like a 13-year old all over again. The devastation of it, the fact that I was losing a lot of things I was really close to and enjoyed in my life, it was beyond awful.

Even a man breaks down sometimes, and I guess it was my time. All that emotion coming down was the brutal closure I wanted, yet never expected to manifest the way that it did.

After crying my guts out,  I returned to campus, and finished the job. Everything packed, cleaned, signed, and just waiting for Dad to pick me up.

Sitting in my room, with all my possessions ready to go into a small Honda, the feeling of the end was just not sticking with me. Limp Bizkit’s “Hold On” on repeat, quietly in my room, in a state of stunned disbelief.

No parts of me wanted to believe that it was truly over, and yet, it was.

Dad picked me up at 3:30, and I left at 3:45 PM. The car ride was a silent one, and as we drove over that hill past CVS and Stop and Shop, the sun set over the lines of apartment buildings across the landscape, with the song “Xerces” by Deftones playing in the background. The song is about goodbyes and a specific lyric fit the moment like a glove:

Return to see everything looks the same
I don’t know if a change made was grave
Cause the craving remains the same

Goodbye
Safe, Heaven, New new world
I'll be waving
Goodbye
Safe, Heaven, New new world
I'll be waving goodbye, I'll be waving...
I'll be waving...
Goodbye

Seeing this, there was an uneasy sense of closure washing over me, which I guess, could be the one thing you need more than anything on the road to reconstructing your personal life.

Arriving home around 4PM, I unpacked, set up shop in my room and began to settle down, or at least try to. It was an uneasy feeling to be back home, and to take this all in. Eventually, it passed, merely being a phase of time, just an awkward moment.

My college days were effectively over, but there was no joy, no smile, just a tense feeling of uncertainty running down my spine. The worst was over, yet in my mind, it may have just begun….

 

 

I’d like to take this time right now to thank everyone I’ve talked to either online, in person or over the phone for their kind words, their advice, and their understanding during a tumulus period of time. I’m deeply grateful for that, and while it may seem generic and soul-less to say this in typing, please recognize that it is 100% legitimate. I do mean this from the bottom of my heart, I couldn’t be more fortunate than I was to have the right people to talk to in this period of time.

Best of luck to everyone, and happy new year.

-Larnel