I recently stumbled across “An Audit of the Past 6 Years” by writerchick99 and felt inspired. I am currently sitting in bed, with an ache in my back, finished with all my tasks for the day, and am incredibly bored as it is not even 1 pm. So here we are. (Also, I feel like my memory is far worse than writerchick99’s so I am amending 6 years to 4 years.)
My endlessly stir-crazy self decided to pack up all my belongings and move to Florida. As a senior in high school, I was overwhelmed by the freedom that college promised. I watched way too many teen dramas and romanticized college. I wanted to move far away – I yearned for a new climate and a new world. I wanted to be the picture of the college girl I saw on television: smiling with a book settled comfortably under my arm, turning around as a friend called my name, my skirt swishing in the autumn wind, my hair falling out in wispy tendrils around my face. I pictured it almost too easily. I desired to reinvent myself – and moving far away from the Northeast was how I planned to start over.
My freshman year was not even close to the idealized dream I had settled on. Instead of spending Friday nights at massive parties where I could flirt with guys and drink until I stumbled home happily, I spent my weekends in, usually watching a movie with my roommate. We ached to be invited to the big blowouts we dreamed about, but found it incredibly difficult to make the necessary connections. Her stir-crazy feelings matched mine – and we’d wander downtown late at night hoping something would magically happen and our lives would suddenly become the exciting picture of college that pass from the lips of reminiscing adults – who smile slyly while recalling going out every night of the week – as if they have been harboring a secret all these years, one that has been continuously and frustratingly slipping from your grasp.
My roommate had crazy blonde curls and a thick Georgia accent. She was in love with a boy from a foreign country- who she would sometimes call at 2 am in our bathroom, as she tried to muffle her crying, so she didn’t rouse me from the sleep she thought I was in. She craved adventure and chaos, possibly even more than I do, and frequently marched up to guys she was attracted to and plainly asked them out. This was met with incredible success and led to her often quietly closing our door at 1 am to meet a new guy at the stretch of beach near our campus. Around 5, I would hear her crawl into bed and I would breathe a sigh of relief. She was incredibly untamed, which always got her in trouble, but I loved her endlessly for it.
I didn’t meet tons of guys and have carefree flings – I had my heart broken instead. My college experience began with a guy who approached me at a gas station- where my roommate approached a guy not even ten minutes earlier – and told me I was pretty and asked for my phone number. Within a week, my roommate and I were driving to his house to unknowingly spend the night. Despite the fact that he had a long curly man bun tucked into a trucker hat and a dick the size of a pencil, I slept with him when I was incredibly intoxicated. This was significant – as gas station trucker hat man was the second guy I have ever slept with – the first being the previous love of my life – my one and a half year stint with my movie theater coworker.
Gas station guy blew me off after – solidifying himself as my first one night stand, and was the reason I missed my very first class of my very first day of college – waking up in his bed with no comforter, hungover as he retched in the toilet next to his room. Welcome to college.
Two weeks later, my roommate and I were laying down on the side of a bridge, as we often did on quiet nights, loving the way the cars flew past us and how the wind felt like it could chop our hair off. I guess we were both a bit of adrenaline junkies, and us being together only fueled each other. Being with her often felt like something very hot and flammable was brewing underneath the surface – if only we had a city to burn down. Instead, we felt trapped in this sleepy Southern town most famous for its cheesy ghost tours.
Then I met him. Well, my roommate met his friend. She told his friend his eyes were pretty (they were – he was half black and had the most wicked green eyes I had ever seen) and we were done for. Green eyes’s friend was a 6’3 blonde southern boy -and the cutest boy I have ever been with. He was not traditionally my type in any way – I go for dark haired indie boys – but there was something magnetic about him. Within three hours of knowing him, I was clinging onto his back as we swerved through the streets at 4 am on his motorcycle. It was electric. I knew that first night that I have somehow dropped into something very dangerous.
We had a two-month whirlwind romance. Our typical outings consisted of him calling me at around 10 or 11 pm, telling me to come out near the post office next to campus, because he was waiting on his motorcycle to take me to the beach. This is how we functioned- spontaneous nightly adventures, usually fooling around on an empty beach, trying to hide when flashlights swooped lazily up and down the beach. We’d laugh and laugh – and he’d kiss me and I’d feel like I had the whole god damn world in my hands.
Despite him telling me I was the first girl he had slept with sober, and the only girl he’s ever desired being with, within two months of our passion and hormone fueled rendezvous, he cheated on me – by posting his new relationship on Facebook. When I called him to tell him off, he revealed (not directly of course) that he was a pathological liar – by admitting he lied about his age when he was actually three years younger – and that he was seeing this other girl for a long time but “did not know it would turn into anything.” That was that, until one year later he reached out with a string of text messages within a few hours starting with “hey” and ending with “y r u ignoring me?? :(“ I found out through a quick Facebook search that he was single, and all pictures of his ex had been erased, hinting at a messy and painful breakup. I ignored his request to meet up at our usual spot.
The following semester, I met an artist from West Virginia. He had shaggy hair, was probably 90 pounds soaking wet, and his brain didn’t compute the way the rest of ours do. His best friend, a massive Italian from the richest suburb of Florida, brought my friend and I into their strange friend group and I loved it. When most of my friends moved back to their hometowns after the first year, the boys promised they would keep me in their group.
Sophomore year of college felt like I had started all over again. My two closest friends moved home – and I was left with a mutual friend from the previous year and the boys. The mutual friend and I bonded over the fact that our friends had left us after their homesickness took over, and I spent some of my free time at her dingy apartment, watching sitcoms while eating Panda Express. Although I loved her immensely, and our comfortable, predictable routine, I was lonely. She still had another friend group – a group of rich party girls all from New England who took the rest of her free time. My new roommate did not talk to me beyond one-word answers- and never left the room. The promise my guy friends made fell flat – and I was excluded from their outings after many of them found girlfriends over the summer and felt weird inviting me. I was left with my artist friend, who I wanted to date so badly. Despite the fact that I spent one night a week in his dorm until 2 am watching him draw or watching videos while sometimes cuddling, it never amounted to anything. The more I wanted to see him, the more he pulled away, citing he was not looking for anything at the moment. I left that Southern town after the first semester of my sophomore year, and we never said goodbye. We have not talked since.
I wanted to leave the second that I stepped foot onto campus again- immediately the town felt different, foreign even. I didn’t want to have to meet new friends while everyone else was comfortably falling back into their routine. I regrettably resented my friends for it- I felt like they had left me stranded. The fact that I was in a dorm building that was a few miles from campus and far from the nightlife of downtown, (however small and sleepy that nightlife was) just made me feel more isolated, and it truly was the loneliest I had ever felt. I looked forward to my showers everyday, so I could cry without my never-leaving roommate seeing me. That was the highlight of each day – and once I realized that, I considered the fact that maybe this was not the place for me.
After a few weeks of going back and forth, I received a phone call. I had skipped my last class of the day because I had felt incredibly depressed and could not fathom sitting in a classroom and trying to focus without crying. I was taking a walk in a small garden in front of my favorite museum when my phone started to ring. It was my boss from my old job when I worked back home in the summers and on breaks. I was shocked to see her name on my phone, but I picked up immediately, beyond grateful to hear a familiar voice. She asked me how I was doing, and if I would like to work for Christmas break. I broke out into an uncontrollable smile, with a few tears already dribbling down my cheeks. I remember saying: “Actually, I’m moving home. So put me on the schedule full time.” That phone call, which filled me with feelings of such warmth and love the second I answered, was the push I needed. I was moving home.
I moved back home to my snowy hometown and felt like I could breathe again. I expected to move back home and fall into tatters, but I felt oddly strong. I lived at my parent’s house while they were snowbirds in the south, and my brother and I held down the fort. I went to my local community college to knock out some general education classes as I planned what I wanted to do next. I worked full time at my retail job, and came home each night to my brother watching British comedy shows. I loved it.
When the next semester rolled around, I moved into the city and began at a new college. I moved into a studio apartment, and despite developing an intense crush on the guy who lived across from me, I was not happy living there. The loneliness came back as I realized I was starting over yet again and did not know anyone.
I spent the first few weeks at my new college feeling dejected like I did the previous year. I called my parents and told them I wanted to drop out and that college was not for me and was making my depression worse. They encouraged me to finish out the semester and then see how I feel, then I could move back home if I felt the same at the end. However, they told me if it was really that unbearable, I could move back home now. I weighed my options and figured I’d try to stick it out.
A week later, I met a guy who would do so many wonderful and awful things in the next year and a half, and I was blissfully unaware at the time. He was the class clown, and incredibly annoying, and wore faded jeans everyday that I hated. But he was cute, so when he asked me out after he witnessed me wandering lost on campus, I figured, why the hell not. I was beyond lonely, had no weekend plans, only went out once with a high school friend in the month I’ve been there, so my stakes were super low. I informed my friends that “a cute jock-y boy” had asked me out and I didn’t expect anything good, so maybe I’ll get a mediocre hook up out of that which will then morph into an uncomfortable semester in our cramped classroom.
I sorta wish it were that simple. Within seven minutes of our date, which wasn’t even the date part yet since we were still driving, I was in deep trouble. It was genuinely bizarre how comfortable I was with him right away – and I was excited because now I had a reason to stay in the city. He was the answer to my lonely nights; after our first date, he spent most nights squished in my twin bed in my apartment. I felt like we lived together and finally the heavens had opened up and said “hey, you’ve been through enough shit, here’s a boyfriend and a best friend rolled into one and you’ll never be lonely!”
Fast forward to now and he’s been my ex for over a year now. I’ve learned in this year and a half of knowing him that people can have many personalities and sides and qualities that lay dormant and incredibly quiet, and then are unveiled one day and change your world. Through our endless fights, his biting words, our horrendously toxic push-and-pull relationship, I’ve learned a hell of a lot. Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to the realization that I am not happy with who I am. I let people push me around, and despite speaking up for myself and being more defensive than I used to – I still forgive the most horrible things without waiting for an apology – just because I am terrified of people leaving me.
I didn’t want to get deep and philosophical at the end of this rambling and look at my life over the past few years but here we are. I have made intense changes, chased after silly dreams and boys that I shouldn’t, given up, abandoned so many things, I could go on and on. But the point is, even though “starting over” doesn’t always work for me, I think I’m ready to start again. I’m not sure moving away and trying a new identity is the healthiest choice for me, but I need to reinvent. I want to channel the courage of my freshman roommate and just ask directly for what I want. I want to be open, strong, independent, all while keeping my passion. I’ve lost a lot of that in grasping onto this relationship that inevitably ended in flames. As much as I’ve done in these past four years, I’m ready to leave a lot behind to ensure that in four more years, I’ll like who I have become.
Journalistic Writing
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I enjoyed reading this part of your life and hope the best is yet to come, thanks.
Thank you so much – I hope so too!