My ride home from Bonaventure the day after graduation felt dismal, empty, hollow. Mom kept rolling her eyes.
“All right, you think you’re done crying yet?”
So, so beyond that.
No need for me to explain the details of SBUD; it’s been done. When I thought I’d be writing a quirky, memorable BV column and a speech to make my friends cry, I didn’t expect to be infecting myself forever.
The ride home from Bonaventure Sunday, my second homecoming weekend, was silent, sleepy, yet still jarring. It left me wondering when the visits will quit becoming heart-rending reminders of the lazy lovefest of those four years, and will begin feeling like happy reunions.
For now, it all feels frighteningly normal. I can still wake up on the floor of Bain’s room and even for a millisecond think I might be a college freshman, trying to catch a nap between comp & crit and lunch, while my fairly instantaneous best friend plays video games starring a handsome and wholesome young golfer.
You have no idea how hard I hugged Adrienne, having held out more than a year since we’d last seen each other, and after a minute of gasping for air, we clinked our OP cups and had the same conversation we did four years ago in her Gardens apartment.
Noelle hooked up with the same guy; Uuk wore a Dinosorgy t-shirt; Sam & I baked a cake for Anne Marie & Amy; Em ate a championship meal at 3:30 a.m.; T got stoned & let me borrow her shoes; Curtis snored at an unhealthy volume; TJ did all those unspeakable things TJ always does; Jordan’s an elitist; Danza & I tried unsuccessfully to tear into each others’ egos; Regan watched MTV Jams. We all lived college as we knew it. I even made a chipwich in the Hickey (with birthday cake ice cream!). And I can sit and lament it wasn’t the same, but who expects it to be? My roommates weren’t there. Neither was my room.
I get it, Life. I’m a grownup. Some of my legitimate friends are legitimately married. (Which is terrifying, just FYI.) But how weird is it to talk about things like this in the BV? Or to talk to PJV about cover letters because I’m actually receiving them?
Honestly, when I started writing I expected to have hilarious things to say about the weekend. And it wasn’t without its share of mishaps (or brilliant happenings, all depending). I trashed Bain’s living room & simultaneously wasted all of his popcorn and Cap’n Crunch trying to throw them into my friends’ mouths while they spoke. TJ tossed “used” condoms into sleepers’ beds. Curtis sang along to country songs. (This last one probably wasn’t supposed to be a joke, but seriously?)
But for as much fun as I had, a palpable sadness followed me, like Winnie the fuckin’ Pooh. One of those I-can’t-believe-I’m-a-grownup rainclouds. It didn’t help that I had a severe falling out with one of my closest friends at a dart game in the Rathskeller, but that’s what happens when you date awful people.
Didn’t I ask for this, though? Isn’t that brilliant spark that lives in Bonaventurians the same thing that causes this awful SBUDing? (I mean, I guess it is. I pretty much wrote the disease’s symptoms, so, yeah, I can say that.)
Eh, as usual, I’ll take it.
I came home with a raspy throat and a new colony of cats living in the backyard, vocalizing a return to real-worldiness (or just vocalizing the most miserable, awful sound in the world. Seriously, I still am not sure if I want a can of tuna or a bow & arrow for them.), and there was a new book of poetry waiting when I got home from work tonight. (Thanks, PJV.) And I keep acting accidentally depressing, blasting songs like “Into the Mystic” while I dust my photo frames, since I suppose I enjoy living in a movie cliché, but I just like to think back to the Ursula Le Guin quote I scribbled on the wall of the bathroom in the Hickey Tavern in 2008:
“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
To quote one of my best friends: “The good journey, bitches.”
