The following is the journal entry following my visit, dated March 14th:
The last two months have been hectic and exhausting. I decide I need a break, a refresh. I am in my old university town for the weekend- from Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. I graduated last June, so it hasn't been that long. Everyone thinks the same. Everything is familiar but everything is different. I don't run into any of my friends. I don't see my classmates or friends of friends. Everyone is gone. The fields, the library, the main intersection, the campus coffee shop- everything is the same. I am home, but I am not. This isn't my home anymore. It almost feels like a strange dream.
I get in on Thursday afternoon. The ride share isn't pleasant, but I'm back in this place where everything looks the same. I sit with my friend at the library for a couple hours while she works on a paper. I grab sushi with one of my old roommates and I tell her everything- all the good, all the bad. She tells me it's like old times again. We go over everything. Friday consists of shopping downtown, Thai food and hanging out with Sarah, her boyfriend and his friends. I miss my friends, I miss my friends, I miss my friends. Saturday is sweet. I go for a short walk because it is beautiful and warm. There are so many girls already in shorts and short dresses. Ellen and I get coffee. We check out the small art gallery attached to the library. After this, Sarah drives us to the movies. We see How to be Single. We have dinner at the campus pub. We order so much food between the four of us that the waitress cannot believe. Saturday night ends when my best friend and I wait for her to get ready and then a beer tasting at a brewery downtown. I don't get back to my weekend home till almost 2 or 3AM. I leave Sunday, so Sunday is slow. We start slow and we sit at the campus coffee shop until my ride is there.
I encounter all the same things but everything feels different. Everything feels fine and normal until in an instant, I realize, I am reminded that this is not my normal anymore. While everything looks the same, what made this place for me is not here anymore. I am walking by the field and I will not go past it to go to my first year residence, or the building where my last year seminars were. I am sitting on a couch at my friend's boyfriend's place and the jokes being made are not personal (to me, for me). These boys are funny, but they're not my Boys. They're not my friends, not who made these past four years great and safe and home for me. I take a shortcut through the gym to get to the house I lived in for two years. I only do this once. It is not my house anymore. I go into the house and everything is where it is supposed to be- the kitchen, the living room, the dining table, the stairs upstair, et cetera et cetera, but it no longer has that sense of home. It no longer has a sink filled with dirty dishes or drums sitting in the living room. It is not filled with our shouting or our laughing. It is not mine. Not our's.
This weekend I feel strange and distant from everything because while everything looks the same, I know things are not the same. While they may not have changed drastically, they have changed. I have changed. The people who used to make this place home for me, have also changed. All the the students walk by and everything makes sense. But then something says, "You're not a student anymore."
I'm not a student anymore. Kingston and Queen's was almost a year ago, but it feels almost like a dream.
