It’s been two weeks since I’ve accepted my diploma. That day was sunny and long awaited and hard won. That morning, I milled around with my friends in Ratner, waiting to be lined up and organized into the order in which we would accept that fancy, calligraphed piece of paper. Then, when we processed out onto the chairs set up in Harper quad, I just remember sitting there in the bright, beating sun. The speakers were good, but their time was fleeting. Mostly, I just remember being extremely uncomfortable and hot; I was just out of shade range. Finally, my row’s turn came and I stood with them and filed up toward the stage. The moment that I actually took my diploma is a complete blank in my mind though. My heartbeat filled my ears and I received my congratulations with whispered thanks. Later, L said that she had called my name, that there had been a smattering of applause. But I don’t remember any of that, anything beyond the feel of smooth leather underneath my fingertips and the blood rushing through my head.
Now I don’t know what to do with it. It sits there, a testament that I’ve accomplished something, but nothing has really changed yet. It’s coming though, I suppose.
Tonight, I had a very late dinner with R&C. They’re leaving tomorrow to head home, and then to get married and go on with the rest of their lives. And as we hugged and parted ways, I realized that, really, we were parting ways. It struck me that almost everyone has left now. People that I’ve talked to and grown with and lived next to for the past four years, people that I’ve sorely underappreciated, are gone.
It has a sense of permanence that leaving high school didn’t. This idea that now, now that we’ve gotten our first degrees, now that we’re filled with knowledge but no life experience, now that we have the idealism but not yet the cynicism, we are on our way to something larger. The idea that (tossed around with joking seriousness) now we’re on our way to saving the world.
I know it’s not forever - hell, I’ll see them in a month and celebrate their marraige. And at that time, I’ll see so many of the other people that have gone before
But (stating the obvious) it’ll all be very, very different. We can’t have those lunches on the steps of the GSB. We can’t skip class and go for gelato instead. We can’t have those same late nights of beer, drunken philosophy, and nerdy board games.
The nostalgia that hits hurts my fingertips.
And it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a couple weeks or so now. What with the Boy’s ever-impending departure and with the confusing brush-off by a character from my past, I’m wondering about history.
I’m wondering about what’ll happen when I’m the only one again.
