If I know one thing for sure, it’s that my friends love each other.
And it’s not because we’re sad to see each other graduate, or because we’ve promised to stay in touch afterward. No, it’s not because one too many of us have fallen into bed with another or because I know that I’ll always have someone who I can drink my sorrows away with.
It’s because we fucking have each other’s backs.
Put us into overdrive, and animal instinct takes over. You mess with my people and you are insulting me personally. This is something not a single one of us will tolerate.
I could not ask to leave Binghamton University with any greater gift.
No, I’m not sure what my next step will be and I may not have an answer to that for a while. And yes, I know that my life will never be the same again. I mean let’s be real, where else besides a university in the boonies can you limit your spending to $15 a week while still managing to get belligerently drunk six out of seven nights?
I like to take Mondays off, it’s a nice break for my poor, poor liver.
But mostly, I’ll miss cohabiting with my friends. Basically living with each other, spending all of our free time together either camping out in the Glenn G. Bartle Library (ew), snuggling and having a movie night or holding my dumb best friend’s hair back while she pukes up jello shots — oh wait, just kidding, reverse those roles …
It forces so many emotions to the surface. Nostalgia, sadness, happiness, wistfulness, regret, satisfaction, all churning and fighting each other to win my heart or my head over by convincing me that this is the proper way to feel about this milestone in my life that always seemed to be so far in the future.
So I shall choose ignorance instead.
Why? Because it’s easy. It’s easier to disregard the mounting nausea brought on by the thought that I will no longer live directly above my best friends, and possibly never will again. It’s easier to live in ignorant bliss for these last few precious days than it is to let my ever-changing moods get the best of me.
And I’d prefer to end my time here on a high note, like cheering on my friends while they fail miserably in an intramural softball game and (not so) sneakily passing a two-liter bottle of Sprite filled with anything but soda back and forth, even though we all moved off campus three years ago and we’re all over 21.
I’d prefer to end my time here with the comforting thought that even if we haven’t seen each other in weeks, maybe even months, we’re always going to protect each other and have a good freakin’ time doing it.
I can’t be sure if it’s the Jewish mother dying to break out of me, or if it’s simply one of the purest forms of affection and adoration I’ve ever been privileged to feel or if it’s some weird and inexplicable combination of all of those things and more. What I can be sure of is that Binghamton has introduced me to some of the most amazing people I’ll ever know.
And that’s enough to make me feel like a successful graduate. That’s enough to make me feel like I can move into this next phase of life prepared and never feeling alone.
So thanks, Binghamton University. Thank you city of Binghamton, for sometimes being a little bit too run-down and for being so affordable because of that. Thanks for not leaving me with piles of student loans to pay off, and thanks for helping me continue to prove to my parents that I am a capable human. Thanks for letting me fuck up, and thanks for showing me that I won’t always.
And most of all, thanks for all my stupid fucking friends who I love so much.