thoughts
I was flipping through some pictures of college the other day (I have this huge box crammed with pictures from freshman and the early parts of sophomore year, back before I got a digital), and I couldn't believe how quickly the time went. I realized that awkward phases, mine in particular, are more far-reaching and longer-lasting than I had previously thought. My face was rounder, my eyebrows were thicker and my fashion sense was pretty appalling. Those things, the superficial and insignificant things, are the parts about college that indicate that I was at one time sweeter than I am now. I can't explain it except by maybe saying the best part of naivety is the utter lack of self-consciousness it causes. Once you learn that parts of you are not so much unacceptable, but unmarketable (so to speak), I think you kind of lose forever a pretty important part of youth that always leaves us before we can fully appreciate it.
I can nearly feel what it used be like inside my head when I first got to Loyola, the excitement about meeting new people and the trust I put into those near-strangers. When I was lucky, those people became my best friends. When I was unlucky, I lost everything, or at least parts of me that proved to be impossible to replace or recover.
So I flipped through those pictures. A series of nights that progressed from innocent, pot-laced buzzings to shrieking, emotional benders where I threw anger at every person I could collide with. Nights where I learned how to inhale, or shotgun a beer. Nights that ended in tattoo parlors. I laughed the hardest I've ever laughed in my life, those nights in that freshman dorm. Nights that ended in feeling closer to people by using methods that would ultimately keep us incapable of becoming real friends. Nights that ended in tears, in political discussions, in lying on the shores of Lake Michigan trying to keep the sand out of my eyes. Nights that started in cabs and ended in unfamiliar apartments. Nights that took me everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I got to the end of that huge stack of pictures and hoped like hell the other people in them cared about those nights, and felt them, and still feel them, as much as I did, and do, and will.
I can nearly feel what it used be like inside my head when I first got to Loyola, the excitement about meeting new people and the trust I put into those near-strangers. When I was lucky, those people became my best friends. When I was unlucky, I lost everything, or at least parts of me that proved to be impossible to replace or recover.
So I flipped through those pictures. A series of nights that progressed from innocent, pot-laced buzzings to shrieking, emotional benders where I threw anger at every person I could collide with. Nights where I learned how to inhale, or shotgun a beer. Nights that ended in tattoo parlors. I laughed the hardest I've ever laughed in my life, those nights in that freshman dorm. Nights that ended in feeling closer to people by using methods that would ultimately keep us incapable of becoming real friends. Nights that ended in tears, in political discussions, in lying on the shores of Lake Michigan trying to keep the sand out of my eyes. Nights that started in cabs and ended in unfamiliar apartments. Nights that took me everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I got to the end of that huge stack of pictures and hoped like hell the other people in them cared about those nights, and felt them, and still feel them, as much as I did, and do, and will.