The Other Me

It's taken me a long time to "find myself"... several months have passed, the seasons have come and go. It's getting colder outside everyday and I'm starting to need to carry a sweater with me to classes. The cold crisp air is a change that reminds me that I am someone. That I must be real because time is passing and the seasons change.

Walking campus can be such a drag sometimes, passing old memories that I try not to cling onto, but they feel very real. When I pass by McBryde I see our freshman crush playing his guitar and I think, wow he was a loser. When I walk down the hill and pass South Quad I think about the friendship that I lost and how things are so different now. My walk is longer than it used to be, so much longer. And then that horrific bridge gets closer and I swear I can feel the cold wind whipping my hair in my face as my headphones blasted "take a shot for me" that my first boyfriend dedicated to me as we broke up. I have never walked across something so large and felt so small and alone. I can see people coming in and out of my life everyday. People that left long, long, ago. People that I never event thought that I cared about until now. I see Bates West off in the distance and I think about how Cody treated me awful and lied to me and I cringe. Then I look down and see the field full of lacrosse players and I feel a sadness and exhale. What freedom, what carelessness. Dalton used to make me feel at peace on a lacrosse field watching him laugh and smile and not have a care in the world, and I would be able to push away all of my worries, even if just for a short time.

By the time I finally make it home, I'm exhausted. I wish to free myself of a campus that haunts all of my happiness, and its pathetic. I have more good times that bad, but the bad sting more and hang around much longer.

I don't really know what I am expecting out of a place that is only my perception. I know I'm the problem but the more I try to let the feelings just come and leave, the more put down I feel. I know that I will be gone soon, but do I really want to leave things this way?

Dalton is now joining the Army. It's been a rough last few years fighting with him to grow up and having to have peace with our separation. But you know life still goes on. The wind still blows and the seasons still change, with or without my approval.

Just like that my whole world is out of my hands. I don't have anyone to be broken with. Isn't that pathetic? I think that this other person in me, the real me, just wants to leave campus and go to the cold October beach and just wander around lost until I find myself.

The successful me keeps sticking to her schedule and going to her classes, checking her calander and to-do lists, smiling at successes. And the other me, maybe the inner me or the real me, who knows, keeps waiting for the successful me to be done so that she can breath. Just a few more months I tell her. Just a little bit more time and you can be free.