I have been having the most bizarre time over the past few weeks trying to grapple with where I am in life, which is not where I expected to be, considering I’ve been mourning being a college student since quite literally freshman year.
I remember crying in my Rob dorm room at the fact that I’d be leaving college in four years, which is so extra but also so real. In hindsight, I wish I had cried more because it seems that I barely have time these days to stop and absorb the moment. I feel so guilty for ever having wished a class would end or even that the weekend would come sooner because any and every minute I have spent on this campus has been such a gift.
What has been most difficult for me to grasp is how things that were once far in my future are now my reality.
I never would have thought that I would be turning in my honors proposal this week. Freshman year me would be astonished to know that I actually pulled off planning my class’s junior prom and that people would show up and have fun. There are zero realities in which I would have seen myself winning a spot on St. Bonaventure’s SGA executive board. Like, zero.
But, all of those things did happen and are happening. I think ‘bizarre’ is really the only word I have for describing what coming to terms with my present reality feels like.
It brings to mind one of my all-time favorite Charli XCX songs, “party 4 u.”
Discovering “party 4 u” was such a defining experience of my teenage girlhood. After having read “The Great Gatsby” just a year before, the symbolism was just too perfect to ignore. It was one of my most listened-to songs during the pandemic.
It feels somewhat ironic and beautiful that in a time where my reality is changing and becoming so tangible, a song released when reality was changing drastically for the worse and things were fading from the realm of possibility as the COVID-19 pandemic made its way around the world is back on the radio and making waves on social media.
Before I can have my “American Teenager” summer, I must have my “party 4 u” spring, served with sides of occasional snow and existential pondering.
Niche music references aside, the past month of my life has been minute 2:49 and beyond of “party 4 u” over and over again. Everything is real, like, very real, and I’m still trying to decide how I feel about that.