Lately, when I think about college and the friends I made and the crazy, happy and at times regrettable things that happened there, I don’t feel a tingling pain anymore. Instead, I find myself smiling, just quietly content. That all of it happened, that when I think of college I remember the late afternoon light slanting through the trees by Berkeley High as I make my lazy stroll to Trader Joe’s; the nervous walks all the way down Channing to the Muay Thai gym, and the bus rides up when we were soaked in sweat and the satisfaction of a challenging workout.
I remember thinking after an Economics 100B class in Sophomore year that I’ll never be able to make close friends in a major I hate and a school so overwhelmingly big, yet I joined Cal Badminton and everything changed. Sometimes when I drink alone I remember leaning against a friend and replying I’d miss him too when he talked about my impending departure. “You know, this is the first time you ever said you’d miss me,” he said. Although not quite as drunk as he was, I was certainly surprised. Despite what I never said, I always knew I would miss him, and that wild bunch that was counting the seconds the freshman pulled from the wine bag and actively trashing my other friend’s apartment that very same night.
Lately, I realized a new way of coping. I realized that my dominant strategy—and all hail to the Game Theory so many of my Economics, Sociology and even History classes had so gracefully and briefly touched upon—doesn’t depend on the future. Surely, I’ll try my best to keep in touch and chat people up and everything, but nothing will ever be the same and I think we all know that. Some people will have changed so drastically and incomprehensibly we’ll have nothing to talk about; others I’ll find less time and effort to keep up simply because we live on different continents.
Either way, the college days we shared will be, and even as of this very moment is, forever behind us. But there are always some things I can choose. At least I can be the same person who opened up over a friend’s literature assignment and in turn listened for hours trying to understand and empathize; I can still vow to lay mostly anything down for a close few because of who they are but not who they might become; and I can always remember the sentimental me who cried in gratitude, in guilt and in confusion, alone and in someone’s arms and amid embarrassing states of public intoxication. And I am not sorry, because who knows, maybe someday we’ll meet again.
birds by michelle ko 