& to be completely honest, I’d rather be anywhere else.
I wander around the busy streets of Ann Arbor and notice kids rushing to class or basking in the sun in the diag or standing in line for boba or limping home from yoga. These scenes are so familiar that they take me back to the last time I lived on campus two years ago. A time I don’t want to relive.
When I think of sophomore year my memory is flooded with the taste of brownies, a result of my stress baking (which I would eat the entire pan of only to hate myself because of it & starve myself for the 24 hours). The sound of footsteps in the stairwell of University Towers apartment where I hid my face in my curled up knees, praying that whoever was going up or down wouldn’t make it to the eleventh floor and see my puffy eyes. The reflection of myself in the mirror while I layered up in baggy clothing, covering my new curves which I so despised. & the chills that shot through my body as I gulped down the cheapest wine they sold at Champs, hoping to numb the heartbreak of my family splitting up.
This past year and a half away from campus I have grown. I have learned. I have let go. I have become someone new. Yet, returning to this place that I am supposed to have missed so much, the place where I am supposed to be having the “college experience,” I am reverted back to sophomore year. My insecurities overbearing. My stress crippling.
It’s only a year, I tell myself; but a long year it will be.
