I Even Miss Cabrini

I knew I would miss college. But I'm a little surprised at how much I miss Cabrini in particular. I would definitely have predicted my heartache for Gannon, since they forced me out after graduation, against my will. But Cabrini I left intentionally. The point, though, and I've been trying to prove this to the people I left behind for years now, is that although I wanted to leave the school, I never wanted to leave them. But such is the way when I've made up my mind. I sever ties immediately and without consideration, and even the best of my friends are left to fend for themselves, and retired to a distant corridor of my memory bank.

Those two years I spent at Cabrini, however, are especially haunting compared to other times in my life. I'm not sure if it's due in part to the circumstances under which I left, or the particular kind of craziness I suffered while I was there...but it's tiresome even trying to relive in hindsight. With the resurgance of a lot of Cabrini people into my life recently (Tree's up-and-coming nuptuals, my surprise reconnection with Melanie, a recent email from Jamie) I've spent a little time re-reading old journal entries, emails and letters in the past few weeks.

It seems that two or three people especially, occupied almost all of my time and energy, especially that first, daunting year. I spent tireless hours writing to, and about them, in an attempt to better understand their respective roles in my life. It seems that I never figured it out. One of which, was my best friend at the time, we'll call her Nika. (Because that is, with a fake Russian accent, for some reason what I called her at the time.)

The story of Nika and I was this: We used to climb out of my tiny bedroom window, in the afternoons when everyone else was sound asleep between classes. We would just have thrown up our cafeteria food lunches and showered again. We'd both be wearing her boyfriend's or Melanie's sweatpants (another of my inexplicable obsessions that year), and some kind of Cabrini t-shirt. We'd sprawl on the gravel covered roof, on beach towels and quilts from my bed, and watch the trees sway. Hours of this. Usually there would be some kind of creepy emo depression soundtrack blaring from inside of our Tudor dorm. We'd cry, alone together, or just talk into the air. Not about anything in particular. Just to hear ourselves. We thought this to be quite poetic and meaningful at the time. And my roommate probably reported me repeatedly to health and social services. (I eventually came to spend an entire semester with the campus psychologist, these afternoon roof-sessions probably lending themselves forward.) And I have no idea to what end I did this. I don't know that it accomplished a thing. Much like the all night soul-searching we all did in someone's randomly selected dorm room over a bottle of parrot bay and some valium. It just existed. I guess, at the time, like me.

But why then, do I miss it so? I assume that like most things, when I left Cabrini, in all of its drama and chaos, that I never provided myself a single moment of grief. Which a person needs, apparently, to be able to effectively move forward. So now, when I glance back, at the memory of Melanie and our cross-state drive in her Toyota, or Nika and her Parliment lights and ever-repeating Dido CD, or Jamie, or Sean or Grace or the Chapel or Tim...that it's all just a dangling memory. The drop of sweat on the side of your neck as you heave from the run you just finished. As you bend over to breathe then, it's only a moment from falling off of the world completely, inonsequentially, but for now, you can feel it sliding down you nonetheless. I think it's like that for me. Cabrini, that is. Not really a part of me. Per se. But running down me. Touching, but not remaining, the way I so desperately hoped it would on those moments on the roof. The reason, maybe, that it hurt so much to figure out then, was that there was nothing, afterall, to be figured out. Maybe it was all there, just for me to miss it.