Dear whomever it may concern,
Love sucks. And finding love in college, well, that just seems impossible. Whether it be the bleach blonde Californian who sits beside you in class and only meets your gaze when he’s been caught scanning your paper for answers or the tall, dark and handsome frat star who thinks his form in flip cup will sweep you off your feet, the decent guys are few and far between.
But then you see him, no you stalk him from afar, the guy in the corner of the party trying to help the girl whose had one too many to the bathroom where he’ll hold her hair but only before escorting her outside and into an Uber he paid for but wasn’t at all for him. He’s there, smack dab in the center of the front row in a 200-person lecture, making small talk with the professor about her husband’s new job offer and asking all of the right questions that the other 199 of you were too afraid to ask. There he is again but this time a little bit closer; in your Instagram follower requests to be specific. You accept and gladly follow him back, only to see his profile full of pictures with his dogs and beautifully large Italian family.
A follower request would become a like, that like would become a direct message, that direct message would become a phone number and before you knew it, you were driving to your favorite sushi place to meet him, palms sweaty and heart racing. An order of edamame, two rolls and a cocktail later, you’re beaming with happiness. He pays the bill while you’re in the restroom, walks with you arm in arm back to your car and leaves you in the most gentlemanly way possible with a subtle kiss on the cheek, watching as you drive away. Damn. He might be the one.
After a movie date a week later, you invite him back to your place to hang out and talk, anything to spend as much time with him as humanly possible. Deep in conversation two hours later, he drops the ultimate bomb: he’s transferring next semester. You try your best to look as unbothered as possible but the shift in mood is heavy in the air. He breaks the silence and suggests you make the most of your time together and that the chips will fall as they may. Speaking of chips, immediately after he leaves, you grab them from the pantry along with the Chips Ahoy and the can of icing because the love of your life, the only decent guy that walked the halls at your university, is leaving.
You get to thinking, “What choice do I have? He is leaving whether I want him to or not.” And you’re right. So you pull yourself together and text him asking when you can see him again, determined to make this the best two months of your life. And you do. You spend all of your free time with him, making memories and reaching levels of happiness so high they are stranger to you. The laughs are nonstop, the number of restaurants he takes you to are countless and it feels as if you’ll live like this forever. That is until it comes; it’s exactly one week until he leaves for Christmas break and man does it hit you like a rock.
The days creep on, but not nearly slow enough, and eventually dwindle to hours until his flight leaves. You stand on the sidewalk in front of Terminal A, tears beginning to stream down your face. He encompasses you in his warm embrace and tells you not to cry, that you’ll see him sooner than you know it and that he misses you already. You climb back in your car and take a minute, disappearing into the world of all the what ifs, before being honked at by the stream of taxis behind you and driving away.
So to the girl whose relationship had an expiration date, love sucks. Sometimes we are lucky enough to find it and it sometimes we are cursed enough that it leaves us. No, he won’t text you as much as you wish he would. And no, things won’t be the same; 800 miles has this ability to separate things regardless of how hard you try to hold them together. My best advice, something you might remember from a certain someone before, let the chips fall as they may. If what you two had and the memories you shared were really that which you only find once in a lifetime, they will return. He will return. Don’t stress over bleach blonde bimbos and kappa alpha no substance phi. What is meant to be will be.