Since middle school, a little yellow bag decorated with a blue “L” has lived in my backpack. Sixish years ago, my best friend’s mom got me and my four friends small pouches with our respective initials on them and Wet Brushes for our birthdays, which all fell in a two-week span.
My pouch had an “L” for my last name because there was another Meghan and a Maddie in our group, so a third “M” was seemingly excessive.
This week, I pulled out the pouch to get a hair tie and found that it had begun to erode, and the yellow covering was peeling off, revealing tan dry rot.
I had noticed the little yellow traces in my backpack, but I hadn’t realized the extent of the decay.
“Why can’t things just last forever?” I thought to myself as I inspected my trusty “go bag.”
While I’ll admit it was more of a critique on the low quality of our goods and overconsumption, my sappy, nostalgic brain started to get emotional at this question.
I don’t know if anything is meant to last forever, and we never know how much time we have.
The bittersweet aspect of college, in particular, is that we know it only lasts for a finite amount of time. That’s exactly what we sign up for — a few years to prepare and usher us into the rest of our lives.
Throughout these years, there are many firsts, a lot of lasts, and loads of hellos and goodbyes. That’s the whole point, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
The friends that I’d had since pre-k, the same group that got the Arie pouches and Wet Brushes, stopped talking shortly after that round of birthdays.
We used to talk about our weddings and kids and fantasized about going to college together, which I know is all typical childhood naivety. Nonetheless, these girls were my entire world, and now I see their lives on vague Instagram stories.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Something I’ve been learning about change, in friendships specifically, is that the tighter you hold on, the worse your memories become.
The art of letting go and accepting change is daunting and delayed. Trying to hold onto what’s no longer there is unavoidably painful. Likewise, only remembering the murky end of things negates the value that that person or thing brought to your life, because the truth is that at one point, we may have thought that this “was it.”
Things last only as long as they are meant to, which is sad but also special. Some things aren’t made to last forever, and resenting this fact will not counteract it.
The temporary nature of everything gives life and experiences value. Without change, or the looming notion of change, we wouldn’t appreciate the moments we are currently experiencing.
Just because something doesn’t last forever doesn’t mark its existence as worthless. Like it or not, we are changed by every change, and that’s what makes life’s impermanence beautiful.