Have I Told You How Much I Love Purchase?

            While I have already blogged today and should be writing an essay on Zora Neale Hurston, I decided that I was going to write for pleasure instead.  It has been a while and it was definitely needed. One week from today I will step foot onto my old campus ground.  I can't help but think about my reactions and how it will be that hopefully gorgeous, sunny day.

             She drove into the familiar entrance.  The sign greeting you into the destination, the giant sculpture placed directly in front of you.  A fork became of the road, asking if she wanted to turn left or right.  Her home for a year and a half was always the right turn, around a small bend.  She would pass the lit soccer field and the tennis courts before coming to a parking lot filled with cars – visitors and residents.  Today though marked a year and five months since she had stepped foot, and even drove onto this campus.  The campus that she adored and once called her happy place.  Today she would be turning left.  Turning left also had two options.  Option one was to go around the bend with the view of the green woods and the beautiful elephant tree she frequented when she was stressed.  Or option two, straight through campus.  After her first left she would take a direct right.  Down that road that contained multiple speed bumps and she would pass the tree that had her name engraved in it.  Starbucks would be on her right, which held late night fuel and early morning breakfasts and further down the road would contain her old dorm.  The building that changed everything.  Directly across from that, on her left would be the counseling center.  The building that had started to fix her broken mind, before gripping it tightly and smashing it into tiny pieces.

            The familiar road began to present apartment complexes and she remembered the various nights of driving late at night up this road and to the left to drop of her older friends, the ones who were allowed to live in the apartments.  She would have lived there this year, however that is if everything hadn’t changed and she had gone on living her life as a ghost.

            However as the ghost, she had made friends.  And with the reconnection with them, she knew she needed to visit this place once more. She needed to be reminded of why she loved to live here.  And why she had made these friends in the first place.  But most of all, she needed to finally close the chapter in her life.  The timid, self-conscious, brown-haired girl needed to show herself that her life was better.  Much better than it ever would be here in this place.  The place that was often described to her mother as being “her favorite place.”  Conversations to her Mom often started with, “Have I told you how much I love Purchase?”

            She held so much pride for her school, that the sudden attack and the sudden mood change, well to everyone surrounding her came as such a shock.  To herself, she knew it was happening.  And to her best friend, Becky, she knew as well.  But everyone else was oblivious.  And of course this wasn’t their fault.  She would have never given much indication that this place wasn’t for her.  And that she needed more help than she was receiving.

            Why would she though?  Why wouldn’t she ask for help if she needed it?  The answer is because she would be asking for help.  That is precisely the problem.

            It had been hard enough to ask for help that one afternoon in the middle of October, her first year there.  She had only been a month and a half into her studies when she knew something needed to change. She couldn’t go on living the way she was.  Trying again and again for something that wouldn’t change without time and help.  She was given “the best they had.”  While the girl was excited about this because she felt the sense of hope, it was even harder to walk into the basement of that building mirroring hers.  Passed the police station on her left and down the long hallway.  It was silent.  And the silence was deafening.  She wasn’t sure how this would work.  Where she should go and how she should act.  The girl had never done something like this and she wasn’t one for doing something new, especially alone.  But this was something that no friend could do with her.  Or no friend she would want to do with her.

            The memories are vivid and will remain locked away in her head.  These aren’t memories that she will try and forget.  While the pain was difficult, it was special pain and process.  Without the pain, the healing would not and could not begin.

            As she drives further towards the music building, a right onto the loop passed the apartment complexes; she starts to feel the nerves in her stomach.  So much has changed.  So much as happened.  Would everything be the same?  Would she be able to talk to her friends and start off where they stopped? Would he be there?  Or better yet, would she be there?  And of course there was her savior, and her strength missing.  She was back home in Buffalo, creating a better life for herself as well.

            This was the moment.  This was the beginning to the end.  However, she wasn’t doing this alone.  She couldn’t do this alone.  Not without him.  Not without her new strength.  She placed her hand on his thigh and squeezed it.  As he grasped it and interlaced their fingers, the girl let out a breath.  She was sure she could handle this.  She had to.  For herself. 

She parked the car in the lot in front of the music building.  This is the place it had all began, from orientation, to fundraisers, to late night grocery shopping, all the way to the special diner that her and her friends went to when things were rough.  As she turned off the car, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply before letting her breath out. When her eyes opened, she rejoined in the beauty.  The freshly blossomed trees, the terrible brown architecture, the bright green grass of the soccer field and the students walking all to different destinations.           

It was now or never.  It was time to see her friend perform in his senior recital.

Oh, how the time passed so quickly.