(photo credit: Sundai Johnson )
You found me sitting amongst my mountain of luggage and nerves the first day of our freshman year of college. I recognized you by those blonde curls and that smile you flash that I’d seen in your Facebook photos that I had looked at while we were chatting about siblings and which one of us was planning to bring a microwave. I waved wildly at you and you ran over and wrapped me in a hug that felt more like a reunion than a first introduction. And from that moment we begin the journey that has been college.
Remember when we nearly slept our way through freshman year? Roommate naps after class before lunch, after class before dinner. No one knew how we did it. I still don’t know how we did it. We ate pretzels and watched new girl in our beds. We fell in and out of like with the cute boys we met and danced on stranger’s porches on gamedays. We left parties early and came home to eat snacks in our room instead (we still do this). Remember on my birthday when my friends from home came and we had to sleep three to those gawd-awful twin beds? Remember when we slept outside to see the President and I screamed unmentionables at the boy behind us in your defense? Because I’ll always be here to defend you no matter what.
Thank you for appreciating my nonsense and tolerating me and all my hypochondriac tendencies and high maintenance ways. Thank you for the notes and bags of skittles, and cookies and pie you leave me when I have a long week or hard day. Thank you for loving food as much as I do and for always sharing. Thank you for coming to watch me read poetry for the first time and being proud of me. Thank you for drying my tears that night when I thought my world was falling apart. Thank you for convincing me that my world would be just fine. Thank you for being honest with me and not giving me answers if you didn’t have them. Thank you for being a roommate, best friend, sister, and mom (sometimes). You’ve been there for the fall-outs, the breakouts, the failures and the victories. You helped me salvage what was left in the debris of poorly thought-out decisions and told me not to regret them. We’ve grown up together, we’ve helped raise each other and I don’t think there is anyone else I could have done it with. Three years later, and here we are.
In six months we’ll be making our big exit. We’ll be standing in caps and gowns with faces covered in tears because we made it. We’ll throw our caps and do our happy dance. And from that moment on we will begin the journeys that are our lives. We’re going to move on to those big things we plan on doing, even if we don’t know what they are just yet. We might be nearing the end of this chapter, but it is not the end of this road. We may not be living together for the first time in forever, but when we finally reunite, it will be like the sunny day you found me sitting on a suitcase on the first day of our freshman year, and the first day of the rest of our lives.