Letting Things Go
Dear Dad,
It’s almost that time—the time where I look back and try to remember when the line of counting down the days until my first day of college began blurred into right now, as I count down the days until graduation.
Despite how sentimental the topic may be, I feel as though it’s a realization that myself and many of my friends have been tiptoeing around. Yes, we know we’ll be gone from this place in two weeks, but it won’t hit until it happens. This is singling out one of my best friends who can’t go a day without asking what each friend is going to miss the most about college (I hope she’s reading this).
When I do prepare to answer a question like this, I actually can’t think of much else to say except just being where I am in that moment.
In other words, my best days of college lately have been being able to sit outside with friends and just yap about whatever and whoever while enjoying the spontaneous Philly sun. When these moments do occur, it reminds me how simple life can be. How much joy can come out of a mental picture you take in your mind of friends gathered around the bleachers about something that won’t be relevant one year from now.
But as you all sit there and look at each other while chatting, it’s like the unspoken reality sets in of having to leave this spot and never come back. Sure, you can all try your best to replicate it years down the road, but the conversations will be different. The excitement around graduation festivities and celebrations will be dwindled, and there will be new, adult-ish things to chat about.
So this is what I’ve had to come to terms with recently. That every day from here on out will never be an exact replica of the one before. That is why when I think of what I am going to miss the most at college, it’s the conversations and interactions I’ll have with others that will never be exactly the same as they used to be.
This idea of letting things go is what has brought me to writing to you today, dad. To see things in a certain light for so many years and protect those feelings of love is sacred, and therefore, to let them go requires that much more strength.
Recently, I feel that I’ve lost another piece of my life that I loved yet feared in my past. Similar to a past journal entry written describing a comparable experience, this one is one I believe is truly “lost” rather than forgotten. Lost in the meaning that I could see this person or thing being retrieved one day, found and cherished as God wants every person to be. But in this case, I have to be the one willing to grant it to be so.
What’s lost is never completely gone, but rather belongs to a different space of love and care. In a lot of ways, I believe this chapter in my life is what that needs—new people to cherish and love where it stands more than I can at this current moment.
So depsite the act of letting things go requiring great strength and resilience, the idea of someone being able to take over my release of a chapter makes the closing of that book a little easier. I hope that this mindset is something others can take with them when feeling uneasy about a spontaneous decision made, such as a big move across the country, or a friendship feeling distant.
Indeed, throughout my college experience, I’ve never went out much. Or ever. But as I start to reminisce on the times of when I cherished my college years the most, I remind myself that the bars everyone went to each weekend, or the clubs that seemed to be the most chaotic experience anyone ever had will always be there.
The act of going to these places will always be a option. But what can’t be an option after one moves that tassel is repeating what was said for all those days and weeks on the bleachers.
To today, tomorrow, and graduation on May 14—allow me to not forget these conversations or closed chapters in the past, but rather, pass them on to someone that can cherish and love them as I once did.
Until I’m a post-grad,
Lauren M Tauber
