You rise up over the hill and she’s laid out before you. The Beta Bells peek at you above fiery leaves; your eyes search for the water tower, falling only on treetops and empty sky. Your glimpse is brief as you glide back down 73, your heart swelling from the quick glance. You open your sunroof and let the country autumn air fill your car. Your pulse picks up and you can’t sit still.

You roll onto campus and a smile kidnaps your face. You hesitate at the light, not sure whether to turn left or right, quickly trying to decide if you want to drive though campus or uptown first. You peal left, eyes dancing over Bachelor Hall and Shriver Center. White sheets blow between trees - Kappa Alpha and Tri-Delt cheer on the team using spray paint and bedclothes.

You know these roads like the tributaries of your heart. An intricate pattern impressed upon your soul. You could close your eyes and follow the turns and stop signs, letting them lead you home.

Only you don’t live here anymore.

You’ll never live here again.

You don’t recognize the faces walking to the library, the kids wrapped in their fleece jackets, hugged by their North Face packs. They look like babies to you. High schoolers playing sleep away.

But you were them. And they’ll be you.

They see the nostalgia on your face and pity you. But their pity is sparked with fear. Fear of their own futures. Fear of life outside the bubble. Will they look at the ones younger than them, at the classes yet to flow into Mother Miami’s arms, with the same longing look you bestow upon them?

I’m not sure why I still long for college. I can’t place it. I can’t make sense of these feelings. Because I like my life now - I do. But the pull of those days is so strong, so fierce; I can’t work them out. I can’t shake off the feeling that I missed something. I didn’t get a flyer. I forgot to mark it in my planner. There’s something I left undone.

But what? Was there someone I was supposed to meet and I missed him on the slantwalk? I walked right by him, nose in the air, with quick steps, bells ringing in my ear, late to class?

Is there something I didn’t learn? Should I have taken those history classes? That marketing one or business law?

What is it nagging, whining in the corners of my mind? Whispering the memories of my Miami years. Begging me to pull out the scrapbook one more time, flip through my old Memos, think about exactly what I was doing three years ago today, or four or five or god help me, six.

And it’s not that I want to still be in college. I don’t. I shudder at the thought of being a fifth year – hanging on, all your friends gone, the old-timer in your house. The dude the sophomores sort of feel a little sorry for.

I just want to live those specific years again. My years. I want to go back and freeze time and suck every last sensation and memory out of it. I want to pound them into my head – every face, every story, every friend.

I want to be able to close my eyes and play the movies on my lids and not have flickering missing scenes.

Instead I keep walking that cliched path of life. Afraid of the blackness before me. Terrified I’ll never walk roads like the ones I’ve walked before. I want to turn around, I want to go back, I want to be able to walk those roads again and again and again. And it is just a fine line that keeps me from them. A fine line of time. Of fate. Of destiny.

Of fear.

What’s keeping me from finding utter joy in these years, these moments. This time of my life.

There’s such a fine line. Such a fine line.

Life on one side and the future blurry on the other. I walk to understand. Balancing foot in front of foot, treading the way to what I will become. It’s desert dark before me, but I won’t stop, I can’t stop. I can’t turn around. I can’t go back.

I just need to figure out why I want to.

 

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