heart.cooks.brain

I'm going to start reminiscing and talk about growing up.

I was sitting at my kitchen table tonight and had an out of body experience. There I was, sitting with all of my roommates, we were all bitching about how our University is raising its tuition for next year. Someone started talking about how much cheaper it was freshman year; to which I replied, "Ya, but we won't be paying for school next year, so who cares?"

That's when it hit me. 

I won't be paying for school next year because I won't be here. I've been lucky enough to have a job before I graduate doing what I love and what I've always wanted to be a part of. But that has kind of distracted me from the fact that in a mere 15 weeks or so, I won't be able to forgive my delinquencies due to my status as a college student.

I'll be a full blown adult, so to speak.

I couldn't believe that I've been in college for four years. It sounds cliche, but it seems like Welcome Week was just a year ago. I started to think about all the things I had done, the places I'd been, and the friendships I had made over my time at school. Don't get me wrong, these were all fond memories, I've had a blast at school.

I started then to think back to the friends I didn't have anymore though. The friends that I made during freshman year that I see on campus and either ignore or give an expected smile to. The close friends I came to school with that I no longer speak to.

What happened?

Who's fault is it?  

That was where I really got sappy. It didn't help that "Wild Horses" was just starting from the Stones record I had going. I couldn't believe that I had let go of so many relationships over the years. It made me think back to the last time I had genuine conversations with that person. What happened? What did I say? What did they say? 

At this point I've moved to playing Explosions in the Sky, almost as if I didn't even choose to put the record on, it just jumped out of the sleeve and on to the table, as if it knew that I needed to hear it. 

When i heard the music finally, I realized that the song playing was "Have you passed through this night" from EITS. Probably the song with the most physical meaning to it. That was the song that was playing when I realized that my best friend and I weren't going to be best friends anymore.

It wasn't a big issue back then, because I was callused to the whole event, but now more than ever for some reason it really tore me in two. I thought about the last time I talked to her, where was I at? Where was she? Why did we grow apart so Biblically (think Red Sea here)? That's the tricky part about college. You come in with expectations that you will improve the things you came in with, but in reality you lose the stuff you came with and get stuff back that you probably are more suited for, but the middle section there is hard to go through. 

Every old person I've talked to seems to say that "College was the best time of their life". So at this poetic juncture in my young adult life, I decided to take stock of my level of enjoyment over the past four years. 

Had it been the best time of my life? 

I think it has been, but it's not over. I've really had amazing opportunities in school. Seattle has been the best city to come to age in, I got to live out my childhood fantasies of playing rock shows in the city, see amazing shows in the city, and the people I've met have been genuinely some of the greatest people ever. 

Some of the things I've been a part of have been spectacular. I feel sometimes I learned more out of the classroom about business than in, but that's college, right?