on the Twentieth

What I should be doing and what I actually am doing are two far different things. I should be studying for my macroeconomics cumulative final I have tomorrow at 2:30PM. That is, without a doubt, what I should be doing. Instead, I am typing, doing my laundry, drinking coffee, thinking about taking a nap, staring out my window at the snow flurries, listening to endless Damien Jurado albums... but most of all, I am thinking about what today will bring.

To be more specific, today is the day two of my very closest friends graduate college (eek!). Like, really graduate. And move away... from a city where we have made too many memories; a city where we have grown from strangers to acquaintances to great friends and, finally, (as cheesy as this sounds) to family. These wonderful women are two of the very few people who have kept me alive and fairly sane throughout these past two years. The two years of my life which have entailed an incredible amount of loss. They are two of the people who kept me here (as opposed to me going out of my head, quitting college, and moving back in with my parents). They have kept me laughing even through tears and frustration. Wow. What a feat.

And now they are leaving. They are leaving me in a city where acquaintances are plentiful, but family-like friendships are dwindling. They are leaving me in a city I have grown tired of; a city that, with the absence of these wonderful friends, only really provides me with painful nostalgia (I hate admitting that).

I will reside in this city until June - when the lease for my flat ends. Making it five years which I have lived here --- the city to which I moved when I was hardly 18 years old. The city in which I have attended four and a half years of college (thus far); the city where I have met some of the most interesting and gracious people I may ever meet; the city where one relationship ended and another began (and eventually ended); the city which inhibits landmarks of houses and flats in which I used to live; park benches I remember sitting on for hours in the middle of the night. Memories of exact locations of silly first kisses, bike rides along the river, and countless afternoons spent skipping class to read poetry, smoke cigarettes, and drink red wine in the sunshine at the riverside park instead. A city whose UW campus induces heartwrenching, embarrassing, and comforting memories which (still) flood my brain as I walk by certain buildings or take particular routes to classes.

Honestly, I am scared for these friends to leave me. I am petrified of what this place will become sans their invariant presence. I have never had to live in this city without these women --- without the constant feeling of reassurance and infallible companionship.

Life is wild, though. I know this. It is unpredictable and in a changeless state of turning your brain upside down, twirling your body and thoughts in circles until you finally fall ill. You sit down. You stand up. It begins again.

It is endless and terrible, but in a good "this makes me feel like I am really living" sort of way. And I guess that is what it is all about.

People come, people go. Sometimes you are the one leaving, and sometimes you are the one left.