Goodbye To All That...

Joan Didion tells us that it is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. Our Trinity careers have an official end, of course: for my class, that end is in a couple weeks. It seems to me, though, that now (and maybe this is just me) that we are going through the motions. As Didion further points out, youth possess the certain na'veté to believe that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, nothing like this has happened to anyone before. In August of 2006, packed into the cab of my father's pickup truck with my father and sister, driving down I-84, Hartford came into view, looming bright in the morning sun. In the coming weeks the fears and anxieties of being a college freshman would wane; the novelty would hang around for longer. We were comfortable staying up all night to see the sun rise over the Allen Place cemetery from the courtyard between North Campus and High Rise, because at that point we had all the nights in the world.

An important other would draw me out of the library at 2 a.m. in the midst of paper-writing, simply because the first snow was upon us and the time was right for a quiet walk on the Quad. Walking around the lights highlighting Bishop Brownell, careful not to break their rays, I was incapable of embracing the mystery surrounding me, couldn't open myself up fully, couldn't match his embrace. This couldn't work. My end here was fast-approaching, his time had just begun. I hated this person for the time he was going to have; I pitied him for not knowing what he was getting himself into, jealous that I knew well the na'veté that I saw in him, and knew that it wasn't going to last.

The time when I could walk around in cutoffs, a navy blazer, and repp tie was ticking, ticking away. The time when I could wander around campus at midnight excited by two or three whiskey sours simply because it was unseasonably warm. The time when I could spend all night working in the library not because I had something due, but because a friend had something to do and I was hanging along for the ride. The times when I could stay in because it was raining, order too much Choice One and play too many rounds of Mario Party with those friends whose end was then approaching. Our comfort was in this easy excess. An excess of food, of space, of time. An excess of time.

And now, seeing that excess gone, how do I act? Do I pay severe attention every time I walk the Long Walk, because there will only be so many more times? Do I make sure to go out at all possible times, because when again will I get to dance like a maniac surrounded by all my friends? Or do I simply live as I have lived for the past four years, doing my best to have as worthwhile a time as possible? To do anything but the last would be a waste, to prematurely call now the end.

Thinking about writing this, the last of perhaps too many articles, I couldn't help but think to Didion, long my favorite writer, and to one of my favorite pieces written by her, "Goodbye To All That." I first encountered Didion in high school, and since then have thought frequently of her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It stood for me as two things: first as the kind of writing I hoped to be able to create: clear, succinct, and personal, and secondly as the story of an outsider looking in, which is, I suppose, the way I initially viewed Trinity. I certainly didn't know what I was getting myself into, and though over time it became clearer exactly how to maneuver in this snow globe, a fear has always lingered that what I'm doing here is just an act, a fear that the things that I've learned will prove to be false when I enter the outside world, that the person I've become is not the person I think it is, the person I hope it is. I look back at my Trinity career and it's confusing how often things seem to have just fallen into place. My roommate becomes my best friend and my roommate for three more years. I go to the Tripod office on a whim and end up in charge a few semesters later. The people I meet on a rare burst of extrovertedness become people I love.

I think that's the most important thing I've learned from my four years here. My best experiences have been a result of the simple but difficult act of putting one's self out there. At college we're allowed to trip and fall, because we've learned the skills we need to get ourselves back up. To swallow the fear, to strike forward, to hope for success, aware that even failure won't be so bad. That's what Trinity has taught me. I came here nervous and unsure of myself. I had spent the past four years as a private person, doing what I felt I needed to do to get by and not much more. But when I got to Trinity, I acknowledged to myself that I had four years here. To do anything but make the most of them would be, simply, a waste.

Four years may be just the right amount of time, for while I will certainly miss Trinity, I know that I can leave confident in what I've accomplished, in the relationships I've made, and the mark I hope to have left. As Didion points out, one does not live at Xanadu, and it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair.