in honour of everyone moving out of uni
i’m moving out of university today. i look around my room in its state of undress. the walls are bare now, the occasional faint splotches on the paint the only indication that it was ever covered from corner to corner in posters, pictures, paper. the bed is stripped, the mattress naked. the curtains thrown back, the room cast in the murky light of the day. the open window lets in a cold breeze that slides around the room and down the back of my shirt. the shelves are all empty, as is the cupboard. just yesterday there were clothes and toiletries and so much stuff spilling out of them like forbidden treasure – if said treasure was a disproportionately large collection of jeans, jumpers and chocolates.
there’s a stereotype that when you get your room keys, you have no idea the year you’re about to have. the memories you’re about to make, the people you’re about to meet. that you end up a very different person than when you started. i walk down the hall to the kitchen. i think about the year i’ve had. i’d never be that dramatic to say i had no idea what was in store for me - because while i may not have been able to predict exactly what i got up to in my first year, i had a pretty good idea of how it would go. but when i think of the person that in october, found this walk down the hallway so unfamiliar, i see a chasm between us in my mind. we’re undoubtedly the same person, but she feels so far away from me now. she’s forever stuck on move-in day, and i’ve been allowed to pass ‘Go’ and collect my 200 dollars.
i double check the fridge. the four shelves are empty, save for a half-full jar of mayonnaise sitting on the third. i grab it and bin it, thinking of when i bought it. how my best friend told me i’d definitely need such a big jar and how do you not already have mayonnaise? i eat it with everything! and i’d laughed and added it to our trolley. i think of how a year ago, i didn’t even know she existed. and how i don’t think i can even go an hour without texting her now. and how i don’t think i’ve ever met someone who thinks so similarly to me. and how she doesn’t even have to speak and i know exactly what she’s thinking. and how she’s the only person not bound to me by blood that’s seen me in tears. and how if my grades had been slightly different, our lives would never have intersected. i have to lean against the counter, my head in my hand.
my dad wrestles the last of my army of suitcases out of the door, the rattling of the zipper the only sound in the eerily silent flat. the guy next door to me has already gone. i can’t make fun of his awful music taste and even more awful singing any more. i smile. i really never had heard someone that bad before. the girl on the other side of me woke me up at 4am yesterday, she was laughing so hard. she’s gone to burger king with her brother before they leave this afternoon.
the hallway smells of… nothing. not spices, not weed, not meat. the floor is clear, bare of the usual sea of pamphlets and leaflets shoved under our door. as we step into the lift, i note that for the first time since i moved in, it’s clean. we walk out of the building in silence , the only sounds the occasional cooing of a pigeon and the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of my suitcase wheels on the paving. we cross to the security gate, my dad nodding at the guard sitting next to it, handing him my access key and holding it open for me to stride through.
the gate closes with a scrape on my first year.
