talking crazy on the driver's side

i should be studying for a microbiology midterm. i really should. but i am reverting to old habits, and so instead, i'm not studying. i am doing anything else i can find to do but study. this is not good. 

i just keep thinking about how beautiful my life has been. the last few days, i have been thinking of college, particularly, at belmont.  what a phenomenal, heartbreaking, soul-forming, joyful, fun, hilarious, tragic, breathtaking and beautiful time that was. today i found myself almost in tears with the longing to go back there and watch it all over again.. not live it, necessarily, but just watch it all happen so i could appreciate it more. 

i kept thinking of freshman year, of being so.. fresh.. and so scared and so excited all at once. of the incredible thing that happens when you go to a place where you know no one, and make all these friends from all over the country, people who will eventually or sometimes immediately change your life. i remember meeting some of them precisely; i remember the first words they said to me. others i have no idea how friendship happened; i just know that it did. 

i keep in touch with none of them the way that i should, and many of them probably don't even have any idea how much they mean to me. i should fix that.

there was laura from chicago, fallon from arizona, sheila from california, erin from florida, sara from pennsylvania, becky from indiana, tiffany wharton from.. i have no idea where she's from, but i really liked her. (later. at first i did not. i can't remember why. i think she complained because our music was too loud.). kristine from virginia/maryland. beth from pennsylvania, collett from georgia, bridget from pennsylvania. justin tam from california, tripp from nashville, matt from.. somewhere. emmy from nashville.  and later, lucy from tennessee, lauren from new jersey, nathan and cliff from my hometown, caleb from... california? i know you lived there for a while.. people from just everywhere, is my point, and a hundred more i've left out, and somehow we all got along and some of us even came to love each other. amazing. 

do you know, i used to walk around campus and hear some of the best music you'd hear anywhere? obviously, some of you do know. you were there. but in case you weren't. people would sit outside and just play and sing.. the guitar, the cello, the violin, the bongos (does anybody else remember bongo girl?), the mandolin, the steel guitar. just sit, outside the music building or in the middle of the quad or smack in the middle of a hallway, for that matter, and play their hearts out. it was amazing. i sat in the lobby of my dorm with chris rice, backstage at a charity showcase with kathy mattea and mike-y smith, in a young life christmas party with most or all of jars. not that those things matter, really, but come on. it was awesome for us, and it should have been. 

anyway. the late nights, the filthy rooms, the birth of nicknames (that have stuck), heartbreak, lasting love, good and bad music, first drinks, surgeries, deaths. impromptu cafeteria songs (thank you, pat gann, why did you have to leave?), road trips, professors you could learn from AND talk to, professors you couldn't (no thanks are offered to you, 'professor' real-estate-whose-name-i-cannot-even-remember). some REALLY awkward conversations, often thanks to me.. hahahaha. and some wonderful ones. sitting with two of my best friends' heads in my lap with tears in their eyes, hating that they were hurting but being so very glad they trusted me enough to do that.

 people got speeding tickets in my car. people peed in it. not intentionally. actually, that may have been the same person. people went 38 hours without any sleep and got captured on video.people went on road trips with insane people who happen to be the boyfriends of other insane people (jackie, why WERE you sitting with your nose in the corner under your bed that time i walked into your room?). people came home with me and lived at my house for the weekend. we sat and sang in stairwells, we prayed for each other, we went to doctor's appointments with each other. we lived together. functionally. (sometimes.). we bought a trampoline. i gained 15 pounds of pure wendy's by halfway through the first semester. weekly time with laura dudich, now grant, from first semester to last. she is still the only person i know who understands some parts of me. the opening concert of senior year, tim wildsmith, standing next to erin and knowing this is it. london. graduation. 

i just cannot get over it. it was phenomenal. i do not want to forget, or to completely lose the people i came to know. i am thankful to remember so much. i wish i remembered more. 

anyway. i guess maybe now i will go study. maybe. 

as you go your own way, remember do not be afraid. because you're right where you should be: in capital city. 

i will always love you, like a long goodbye.