Campus

Walking on campus last night was strange.  I felt this tug in my chest as I rounded the corner and saw the Welcome Center.  And it hit me all at once; that this place healed me in ways I hadn't realized until that moment.  It was like walking into the room where someone saved your life.  It was a turning point, and it didn't feel like coming home so much as it felt like coming back to yourself.

I drove slowly and looked around, remembering the path I'd gone down when I was there.  A path of healing and growth.  The first friend I made.  The boy who lit the sarcastic spark that had died inside of me too young and saw more in my eyes than anyone else ever had.  We spoke in looks and gestures and so many moments being his friend mended the broken pieces of me.  The first class I took surrounded by people who loved what I loved.  People who laughed at my jokes and listed to my ideas and didn't look down on my plans.  The instantaneous friendships that blossomed into twitter conversations during class and Starbucks runs afterward.  The first room where I made my first real "college friend" that I had more in common with than just our classes.  The friendship circles that became a tradition with strangers who became friends.  Snaps and snorts and national days and workshop anxiety and people who loved me just the way I was.  And then the thing that healed me most: the hallway where five people became friends and planned to skip class with trips to the zoo and sailboat purchases and laughed until the bell rang. 

As I sat in my truck, waiting to go meet my fellow sailor friends, I realized how beautiful it was that I was coming back as alumni to see people who changed my life more than they could ever understand.  I walked onto that campus at nineteen, broken, grieving, drowning, lonely, scared, a ghost of the girl I had been and then it changed me.  Every class and every friend and every day blew a little of the dust off of me.  I walked back onto that campus last night at twenty three, a graduate with a job and a friends who missed me and a place that felt like home.