One of my best friends from high school graduated from college this weekend. She goes (went? That's a scary switch) to a school that ends really early, so I'm just beginning my exam period while she's already moved. I've watched her parting and goodbyes and graduation as the evidence collects on Facebook. I sent just one message knowing that at this point in time you just need to experience leaving, not really talk with people who did not share that experience with you. But I will just say that photos of her roommates and friends (many of whom I have met) and their attempts to say goodbye to a place that has been their home have almost brought me to tears. Their photos mark a march across a campus much larger than mine and an attempt to recall everything that the space has been for them. Just watching them do this, even virtually, has been a lot for me.
The other day as I was laying down to go to bed, I laid there and let myself breathe. I let myself feel everything that I had been holding back or not ready to feel or the emotions that don't fit into the space of a given day at school. And I teared up. I laid in bed and I cried. I had the sad little moment of realization later that I was holding that back every second of the day. All the time I spent walking and working and talking I was always holding back a wall of tears. Since I still have to go to class and direct a play and do all the other things that come before graduation, the tears are only allowed to be released at very specific instances. (Mostly at home. And around other fellow seniors. Although, to be fair, it did happen the other day at the end of class in front of a professor.)
Today was another rare instance where the tears could not be held back in public. Again, to be fair, I knew this was coming. My roommate of many years had her last choir concert today and I have been to just about every choir concert since we were paired together as roommates four years ago. I could have cared less about choral music four years ago, but since every semester has ended with a choir concert and a running hug, choir concerts have become very important. When we were first years (long long ago) the choir sang "Loch Lommond." It is beautiful and Scottish (our school has a Scottish heritage which reveals itself in strange ways). There was a recording of that concert, and so I have listened to them singing "Loch Lommond" on iTunes tons of times. It's just a pretty song, but they sang it many times and became intertwined with my understanding of college.
This may be a little much, but the song became connected with a sense of belonging at college. "Loch Lommond" belonged to me, it belonged to my friends, it belonged to the choir, and it belonged to the whole school whether they heard it or not. There was a belonging in the song that sometimes just doesn't exist during college. "Loch Lommond" was the best parts of college. Then the choir didn't sing it for two years and I discovered new ways of belonging in college. But I would still listen to my recording of the choir singing "Loch Lommond" and remember the best parts of the confusion of freshman year.
A senior in choir asked that they sing "Loch Lommond again before he graduated. My roommate shared with us, and I knew, weeks in advance that I was going to cry. I teared up a whole song ahead of time, just anticipating "Loch Lommond." The friend to my left and I held hands and covertly tried to wipe the tears off our faces. When the concert was over I was still wiping my eyes. We did our traditional running hug to trample my roommate, and stood around figuring out what to do next and I kept crying. Or rather, awkwardly doing that thing where you're trying not to cry, but you can't really talk. All I could say to describe my reaction was "this is a last that matters." There are lots of lasts coming up, and some have already happened, but this is the first one that I have really felt. (There are still two weeks to go. I'm going to be exhausted at the end of this.)
I made a crappy recording of the song on my phone so that I could save it for later. On the recording you can hear me squirm, and my friend drops her program, but you can't hear me crying. Sitting in the front row I was honestly holding back sobs. I just listened to the recording and it's not the same. I don't cry listening to this recording, though I might in a few weeks. (One day when I'm feeling really lost I will listen to the first recording of "Loch Lommond" and then the last. It will be a day when I am feeling particularly sad for myself.)
I've thought about writing a lot in the last few weeks, but I just can't. All of my entries would be something like "look how much I don't care about my schoolwork," "look how scared I am," or, my favorite, "look how much I don't understand my emotions right now." In some piece of theory I don't really remember (transnational American studies to be sure) the author detailed belonging as the combination of "being" and "longing." They might have been speaking about citizenship, but the idea still fits. I think I've spent so much time recently longing for an experience that's gone, or almost over, or improperly recorded that I haven't given myself a chance to be. Regardless of the fact that being might be crying, I'm so wrapped up in longing for the nostalgic past or a more discernible future. I don't belong here anymore, but I am nowhere near ready to leave.
Sometimes I feel stupid, I knew this change was coming. If I spent more than four years at college I'm breaking the rules in a way. But this change isn't because I want a change of scenery, or because of a tragedy or a move to be nearer someone I love; this transition is simply a change of function. Four years and you're done. I have no idea how to live my life outside of the context of school. But why didn't I think about how hard leaving would be? Sometimes I have silly moments where I wish I hadn't gotten so invested in people and programs and places here so that it would be easier to leave. But that's not true, because I am so often satisfied with how I immersed myself in this school and this place and these people.
There is a quote, found by the friend who held my hand today, that has helped us to understand our wild emotions of the last several months. It came from her reading on some social structures in the Himalayas (anthropology of course), but clearly the author intended it for graduating college seniors. Ernestine McHugh writes, "My time there did not make me more whole. It made me more complex and
perhaps more fragmented. I am not the same as I would have been had I
not gone. It is not the same as it was when I was there."
I do not belong to this school anymore, but this school will always belong to me. And, I will have "Loch Lommond." But for now I have to live in this strange limbo between being and longing with no solid plans for the future. (Don't ask me what I'm doing after graduation. Probably crying.)
love,
hannah
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