Looking Back: From The Beginning

Dear Freshman Year,

In three days, school will end; freshman year will end. It’s so crazy how fast time has flown by. Truly. Looking back, I don’t think I would have thought that this would all end so fast. So many things happened, so many people were brought into my life and some left for that moment – so many world events occurred: everything has changed and everything is the same. Recently, I have been asking myself if this was the college life I had envisioned. And I think when I answer that, I think it wasn’t at all – it was so much better. I had always imagined leaving my hometown would be temporary, but I realized it was not: it was permanent. One day in early March, I was confessing my concerns to my writing mentor – I was worried that I would not get an internship for the summer. However, with assurance, she smiled and promised that I would get in somewhere – and if I didn’t, that it would be okay. In fact, in hindsight, she said one thing that I will never forget: I wish I had one more summer at home. 

Now living out the last few days of freshman year and – she was right. With two internships down the line for the summer, I think of this whenever my eyes start to glaze over pictures of my brothers laughing with ice cream dripping down their tongues and cheeks red in the summer glow, over pictures of my sister and I, naive and still youthful, over pictures of my parents with twinkles in their eyes – frozen in time posing in front of the cherry blossoms that one day in central park: proud. These memories make me realize how important family was too – now more than ever. At a time where you’re right in the midst of becoming recognized as a full-fledged adult but also old enough to be paying taxes, that’s when I remember these words the most. 

I think in another way I don’t think college is what I expected. I think coming into college, I thought I would know how to do everything and live that college life that I saw normal people handling with their drinks in hand and part-time jobs. I thought I knew what I was doing, but halfway through the first month in that humid room after my parents dropped me off, I laid on the wooden cool floor against the AC in Kyle and questioned my existence: What the hell was I doing? Was this college life? Why does homesickness squeeze my chest and stomach and make my legs wobble and my mind weak so much? Yes, I knew where the DCC was – What even is the DCC? Yes, I knew where the Lang Library was – Was that McCabe? How do I get to my classes on time – It’s not that deep. I didn’t know what I was doing. I ate meals on my own, I decorated the white walls with pictures of home with shaky fingers – is this freedom? I thought I was so alone for the first time and hearing my mom’s voice after she had called the first day I had finally set up my room made me go weak. Mom, mom, I miss you. Is that Hiro and Erina in the background? How I would trade all their teasing pranks that I used to yell at them for this piercing silence. But now, eight months later, I’ve started to appreciate the silence. 

I’ve become comfortable spending a lot of time alone in the crum woods – most days yearning for it. I’ve begun to understand that perhaps this is the journey of life: that in the end you will only always have yourself. I think that in some ways it’s a bit sad that humans are such lonely creatures even in times of happiness, but perhaps it’s so that we can relate and yearn for other humans, companionship. I think another thing that I learned this year was how fast relationships change. A month ago, I was spending a lot of time with one friend and now I hang out a lot with another – and still we’re cool. I think that college is this path that’s fickle and fresh and filled with fortitude and I think it’s comforting to know that at the end of these college years, this path forward will have allowed me to become the person I needed to be: stronger and courageous. But I haven’t changed at all – don’t worry, I’ll be the same girl you knew, the one who stayed up late until 4 a.m., studying because integrity got the best of her, and the one who will never forget about you. Don’t forget me, don’t forget me, don’tforgetme. 

You’re still the same, you know, you always will be, but you’ve come so far and I’m so proud of you but sometimes – to be honest – I don’t recognize you. Why did you change so much? Did college life turn you into a disheveled creature who used to love so passionately and now you’re wiped dry and tears are running down your scarred face? I wonder who you are now, who you were – did I ever know you? Did I miss the signs when you gave the smoke signals that you were running out of breath, you stepped on that pedal, and stayed there forever? Did I miss the signs when the plane crashed and you tore your old self off your skin to say goodbye innocence, goodbye world?

Sometimes, I wish I met people earlier – all the seniors I’m friends with are already graduating – but perhaps life lets you meet these people only for a certain time and for this time only because it’s training you for a world of hellos and goodbyes. And maybe I don’t know how to write a college-level paper yet, good enough to get a passing grade from my English professor, and maybe I won’t ever understand how to find the flux of a star that is 50 light years away with a luminosity of twenty suns. And maybe, I let that guitar strum for a little longer until I’m ready to declare that perhaps being a college student is not simply being a student and living college life, but a time of internal reflection and persistent struggle: a time to flee from everything you thought you knew was home until it betrayed you and ripped your beloved to shreds – for you to realize that you will have to constantly live with this unsettling feeling of: is this enough? Is there more to live for that I’m missing? But maybe it’s not about that right now, but simply a time of closing, another chapter, a time of grounding. For once, I think I won’t look back and instead revere how we’ll transform at the end of this road. The journey must continue and so simply: we are becoming. 

Yours forever,

Megumi <3