I don’t know what I’m going to be doing or even where I’m going to be living in two months, but the fear of that is finally being drowned out with the thoughts that it’s almost over. It hit me today when I realized that I had played in the Pep Band for the last time.
It was a damn good last time, cheering on our men’s basketball team as they won the Big West tournament and advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time in six years. It was one of the best moments of the past four years. But there won’t be any more moments like that. I might never play my clarinet in any sort of band every again. And I will never again cheer and stomp and shout as fiercely as I did that night.
Maybe that’s part of why it was such a special moment. But it also brings a lump to my throat when I think about it. And I can’t stop thinking about it because I chose not to travel with the Pep Band to the NCAA game because I didn’t think I could afford to miss three more days of school. And now that seems like such a stupid decision. But three days ago it hardly required any thinking at all.
This is all I’ve been thinking about all day and I had to get it down into words. But this time, writing doesn’t seem to have made me feel any better. I want my classes to end, at least the homework, but I don’t want everything else to end. This has been my life for the past four years, and it has been the best four years of my life so far. And in 46 days it will be over forever and I will never again experience so many of the things that have become part of my life and part of me.
Life & Fiction 