Summer, start your engines.
The countdown has begun, and it's almost time to blast into a vacation, or, worse, that scary universe called real life.
"I'm not ready," pouts a senior, pulling on her Duke hoodie. Is it because she's jobless? "No," she smiles. "All the cool seniors don't have jobs yet. We're waiting for ones that actually make us happy." Rubbing Bliss Body Blaster into her calves, she continues. "It's not my future I'm anxious about. It's the unfinished business I still have here."
Leaving school is like closing a checking account: You want everything cleared. And it's not just the seniors, says a sassy sophomore. "I can't leave, not even for break," she insists, lacing up her blue New Balances. "There's too much here. I finally understand French and I'll lose it over summer. And what about the guy?"
They're hooking up, but since he lets her stay until morning, she thinks it's got potential. "But we won't talk over summer. And there are other people I want to make projects..." As she lists unkissed crushes, unforgiven exes and people passed on the path without a word, an unwelcome thought pops into my head: just because something's ending doesn't mean it's closed.
"There's no perfect closure, at least in relationships," says my ice cream date. We're scarfing a Ben & Jerry's carton while scoping a Tom & Jerry cartoon and philosophizing at 5 a.m. "You can't pretend nothing ever happened with someone; it gnaws at your heart." He steals the last fleck of Phishfood from my spoon. "So the closer you get to closure is the less you think about someone daily."
If getting close to closure means letting things go, how can you put pain down sooner? "You just have to decide," instructs my California boy. His voice is crackling through the cell phone, and I curl onto my bed to listen. "You've got to say, you are not worth it, and walk away." But soul baggage isn't like curbside check-in - you can't just dump your stuff and take off.
"Will you call him?" asks my sorority sis. We're debating closure, which she says is open and shut. "You've been keeping this guy in your gut for too long," she snaps, citing a winter leftover I used to want to love. "Look, you can move on or you can carry him around forever. What sounds better?" she smacks her Stila lips and I know she's right. But you can't control shit stuck to your soul, and he won't shake loose yet.
And also the opposite - I met the coolest kid this semester: smart, hot, styling. But he has a year left in the Bubble, and I'm ready to fly.
"It sucks," sighs a fellow fashionista. We're tea-partying at Mad Hatters; next year, both of us will be gone. "I don't want to say goodbye to my boys!" she squeals. Sucking on a strawberry, I suddenly realize: closure only comes when you admit something, a relationship or the period it represented in your life, is over.
Last week the sun skimmed over West Campus. Iced lattes melted and there was more Lily Pulitzer at Alpine than on East Hampton. As I sat on the quad, the summer sky was closing in, and the year was closing up. If the only baggage we want to have is our Vera Bradley carry-alls, we might have some work to do. Admitting you have a problem is usually the first step. So for all of us with closure issues, repeat after me:
It's ending, and we're ready.
Faran Krentcil is a Trinity senior and senior editor of Recess. Her final column, "Faran explains it all," will appear in the exam break issue Monday, April 28.
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