(no subject)
As I walked around the corner towards security I took a last look at my mother. I never saw the end of the wave she was giving me because something inside of me was driving me to keep going. If it hadn't been there, I don't know if I would have kept on moving. Then I was alone.
After passing through security I rushed to my gate faster than the people moving so quickly that you could tell they were late for their flights. Or perhaps they were just like me--travelers who knew where they were, and where they were going, but not what their destination would bring. Travelers focusing on moving quickly so that they did not have to worry about where they were moving quickly to.
I was an hour early. I sat and read and read and read and occasionally looked at the little girl playing next to me and then occasionally peered at the nuns that took her place when she left with her mother to catch their flight. One of the nuns was reading a fat, cheap paperback. I couldn't decide whether I thought it was a thriller or a romance.
As the plane was taking off I got that sinking feeling I always get when my body senses it is being propelled forward at unnatural speeds and will soon be flying at even more unnatural heights. I felt my heart sink too. I was not ready for this.
"Only big college kids are ready to go to college," I thought to myself, "too bad I'm supposed to be one. I certainly don't feel like one. I'm the same high schooler I've been the last four years who always felt kinda like a 6th grader who always kinda felt like a second grader." Second graders are definitely not old enough to be flying out to college by themselves.
I spent the flight reading, refusing to think about whatever significance the trip might have. Sure, one's first flight to college is supposed to be a great step in one's independence. I decided to let independence have its day. I was going to read.
So I read until the plane started to descend and that sinking feeling resumed. This time however, the sinking feeling was purely physical. My heart was too distracted by what my eyes were seeing to spend anytime sinking in a totally clichéd manner. Instead, it was focused on the mountains and hills and forests under the plane and leapign with joy at the non-Illinoisian-flatness of it all.
I was done saying good-bye to Wilmette.
I believe I am going to like it here.
-eww