Because everyone is making their obligatory end-of-the-year posts:
There just isn’t enough time. Because we didn’t get to watch Love, Actually again, after all, & we only got through two of Xtina’s Xmas songs, & we didn’t even get to watch Xena getting crucified, so now I’ll have to suffer through that emotional trauma alone. I could have cried when Ali called me from the road; I should have cried when I said goodbye to Robert this morning, but it was 6:30 AM & I assumed our farewell was just a dream I’d wake from, eventually. Several of my friends left before I could say goodbye; Courtney & Sarah took off before it could register; Jordanna’s parents now think that I’m a slut, & she’s not even here to giggle about it with, to read Hancest aloud to. Ondra’s the only fucking one on this hall now, & even she’s gone to bed. I’ve got one day to pack, to see how few boxes I can fit my life into, & then I’m going back to a place that I wasn’t ever even sure that I’d get out of.
I just wrote (& deleted) a long list of things I should have done differently; secrets I should have spilled (& a few I should have guarded more closely), silences I let stretch out for too long, times I could have been better. But really, it’s been an incredible year, & I suspect that even my mistakes were ultimately for the better-in fact, I already know that several of them were. & in spite of all I didn't do, never said, this year was every bit as necessary as it was fucking amazing.
Because I learned to do laundry & fell hard for professors & managed A’s on twelve-page papers I’d written on things I knew very little about. I built a bazaar & had a pedophilia/incest movie marathon & watched the Hanson video with my roommate an ungodly number of times. I became closer with passing acquaintances here than I ever got with most of my friends from the past twelve years. I made lots of lists & discovered what I really need from life, & stopped purging, & wrote dozens of letters, & fell into autumn leaves & met lots of brilliant inspiring activists. I learned to use mix CDs as a strange sort of comfort for a crying suitemate or a wistful mother, & I received letters from five prison inmates (one of whom killed his grandparents for insurance money, um), & I got used to waking up next to my girl far too easily. I spent all but six showers singing Indigo Girls (even when I had laryngitis), & I became, like, the best secret admirer ever, & wrote more love letters than I could ever hope to deliver. I took a lot of photographs & somehow inspired certain people & met a kid who read me slash as a bedtime story (& even did accents!!) & realized how necessary grand gestures are to a fulfilling life. I made a kind of kickass zine, & I read aloud a whole lot, & I repaired my relationship with pretty much my entire family. I learned that I was capable of things that I’d completely written off beforehand, & I surprised myself almost daily, & when I climbed into bed every night, I was exhausted from living so very hard.
& really, even the worst summer of my life, complete with social isolation & drama & working at West again, couldn’t ruin this record of, um, best year ever. Until next year, anyway.