Once upon a time an eighteen year old with very short dyed hair and a wardrobe comprised exclusively of Hollister shorty-shorts started her freshman year at Harvard. Bewildered, she shook her first series of hands, had her first meal at Life Alive — which was consequently the first time she met a vegan — snuck off an hour later for her second first meal at Al’s (the first of many six inch chicken parm subs to come before its untimely demise at the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Smith), and later that night, had her very first tormented ugly-cry in the shower. She was scared, her hair dye was running out, and she was the only one wearing Hollister shorty-shorts. College was going to be hard.
And it was hard at times, like the time she broke her hip and had to hobble up three flights of stairs every time she wanted to lie in bed, or the time she put her pset in a bottom drawer and pretended heartily that it did not exist, or the time she didn’t realize she was on her period and the boy who fingered her never made eye contact again.
But most of the time, it was awesome. She had two new best friends who were perfectly content to spend every weekday unlocking the mysterious secrets of campus (mandatory never means mandatory! Free coffee outside memorial church on Wednesdays! There are leaves everywhere!) and every weekend drinking Skyy purchased with her coolest roommate’s fake ID. Their more memorable adventures included when they took several shots each, put on heels, rode the shuttle to the quad because they heard tell of a party, took a series of (what would one day be considered humiliating) selfies in a random Cabot hallway, and finally, drunk and stumbling, headed home. Or there was that time they ordered Dominos to Lamont, at eleven PM on a Wednesday.
There were also the serious times, when her new friends — or rather, soul sisters — would sense her crumbling and drop everything to offer twenty minute-long streams of whole-hearted encouragement. There was a magic in their words that always stopped her tears, no matter how lost and inadequate she felt. By the end of her first year, the short-haired freshman had cut some unflattering bangs, bought new shorts, and found herself ensconced in an unbreakable bubble of exhilaration and happiness. She had friends, she had (just barely) survived her classes, and though she was tired, she felt very contentedly full.
That eighteen year old turned nineteen (and dyed her hair blond) and twenty (and cut it all off so it would grow back in its normal color). She pierced her nose and then un-pierced her nose — well no, her nose was unceremoniously un-pierced by her father when she brought it home bearing a little gold hoop for Christmas that year, but these things happen. She weathered C minuses and straight A’s, ten pounds up and ten pounds down, broken hearts and the craziest, highest sort of love. And by the time she turned twenty-one, hair chin length and natural, nails painted blue and the very first threads of a senior thesis weaving in her mind, she was battlescarred and happy. She started her senior year suddenly ready, suddenly old and young and wise and yet again overwhelmed by the possibility that awaited her just beyond the horizon. She chuckled as she typed this, trying to remember just when she became the woman she always wanted to be. She still had her Hollister shorts — although they didn’t fit, she kept them; kept them under her queen sized bed, with a few stray condom wrappers and forgotten syllabi and hair elastics, kept them where she kept this story.