Hark Upon the Gale

Being back in Williamsburg was weird in that it is a place I am intimately familiar with and able to easily navigate yet I felt totally removed from it while I was there. I walked around campus, went to Aromas (which I habitually called Hyperion), and drove to Nawab - I felt myself grasping to feel what I did when it was actually my home. That is impossible.

A few months before we graduated, Shidan and I spent what is still one of my most favorite nights ever editing his resume and laughing like crazy. I asked him if this, if college, really felt like the best time of his life. He laughed pretty robustly and then shook his head and said, “I will miss you, I will miss co but I will not miss thming over here for good food or a hug or to sitting around all night listening to music,is place and I have to believe that we have better things ahead of us.” (I know Shidan said things like that but I am totally misquoting him right there – OH WELL!)

I did love college, especially the last 5 weeks of it – where I went out every single night with an athlete’s dedication undeterred by hangovers or the onset of strep throat – for that last month I was a person I had never been before and I. loved. it. I think what was best about that time, or what made it so amazing, was the fleetingness of those days. We kept insane schedules precisely because we knew that we couldn’t do it forever and that we could rest after graduation. We made out with the people we’ve secretly pined for for years because we had nothing to lose. And I made some of the tightest bonds at the end there and felt like I’d wasted a lot of time walking alone.


You realize once you’re gone how many of those people that populated your world for four years are “oh, hi” friends. And you shake your head at the 1000 missed opportunities. Then you remember that you went to William and Mary and that 700 of those 1000 only left their dorm rooms for Anime club meetings and you don’t feel so bad.