Saying the hardest goodbye
Noreen Gillespie
Senior Staff Writer
Wrapped in a dark gray hooded sweatshirt, chin-length brown hair swinging back and forth around my face and tears sticking to my cheeks in wet trails, I held my stepbrother tightly when I said goodbye to him four years ago. I wouldn't let go as I began to sob harder, suddenly not wanting to leave home.
"Come on, now," he said to me, trying to get me to stop my tears. My vision was becoming blurry puddles of tears, impossible to see through. I didn't want to cry. I was the girl who was leaving home and never coming back, who was going places no one had ever been and no one would dare to go. That girl, I told myself, never cried. But right then, in the pre-dawn hours of my first day of college, with bags packed and waiting downstairs, I would do anything not to leave home.
I cried that morning because I was scared about what came next. I cried because I was afraid of leaving the friends who knew me best, leaving the family that had raised me and leaving everything I knew. I spent my life working toward the next step, and now that it had come, I didn't want to be there. In the 18 years I had spent constructing that girl who was going to leave home and never come back, I had forgotten to consider what happened when she actually existed.
We spend our lives working toward the next step. In grade school we dream of high school, wearing a varsity jacket, going to prom. In high school we dream of college, living in a dorm, going to classes, taking long walks around a tree-lined campus. In college we dream of the future, sometimes boldly, other times tentatively, picturing ourselves working a dream job in a dream location.
But when we actually get to the next step, the next step we've spent our lives working toward, that transition is never comfortable, never easy. When we arrive, we wish we could stay at the step we've completed, because it's always easy to stay in what we've mastered.
I learned quickly when I came to college that scared or not, life will keep going. I could either hang on or hang back, lamenting the phase I'd left, or grabbing the new one head on. I went to classes and parties, met friends and boyfriends and dedicated my time to writing stories in a basement with an obsessed passion for the newspaper. And one day, I woke up and realized that I was in the next step, that I had completely left the last one and I loved where I was.
Saturday, I will walk away from college with a degree under one arm and a car packed full of dorm remnants. I will leave with volumes of photo albums and CD mixes, books from classes and a supply of college T-shirts to last the rest of my life. I will leave with boxes full of artifacts from this step in my life, doomed to a fate of a storage box in my attic at home, found years from now under clouds of dust bunnies.
I hope I leave with more. I am terrified, even more than in high school, about leaving this step. I am terrified of not having my best friends within a five-minute car ride, I am terrified of leaving the place where I constructed who I've become. But if I can put aside that fear, throw away that apprehension, I know that college will have been about more than just a step. I want to walk away from college knowing not to be scared of life and embrace the next step rather than mourn the one I've left behind.
I don't know if that's happened. I guess I'll know when I look my best friend in the eye to say the hardest goodbye. I will know when the tears start puddling in my eyes, causing my vision to blur and tear tracks to run paths down my cheeks. I will know when I'm told not to cry and I won't be able to stop, letting four years of this last step cascade in a waterfall of tears. I know I'm going to do it. But if I can stop by the time I pull my car onto I-80 east to begin the car ride to the next phase in my life, I'll know I've cried because it's over, not because I want to stay.
Noreen Gillespie is a graduating senior at Saint Mary's College and former Managing Editor. She will return to Connecticut to work for The Associated Press following graduation, and plans to make the best time ever on the 712-mile road trip back east, hopefully avoiding speeding tickets.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, May 17, 2002
