To Life,
When I first moved, I wanted nothing more than to hate it here.
I searched for every minute flaw and flipped them into something fatal; I found each scab that this place held and picked at until it was black and blue. Each day, I reminded myself that this was only until senior year, that once I made it to the end, I could move back to my normal—to the place I called home.
I wanted nothing more than to hate it here.
I wanted to hate it because moving here represented leaving everything I once knew behind—it meant that I was tossing aside the warm blanket of safety that California had wrapped around me for the mystifying depths of the unknown.
I was leaving the place that awarded me with comfort for a place that owed nothing to me.
I wanted nothing more than to hate it here.
However, with each step I took into that dark unknown, my worries seemed to dissipate. Slowly, that fog that veiled everything began to clear, and I was met with beams of dancing light and a flourishing forest full of faces.
I wanted nothing more than to hate it here.
But, eventually, those fictitious smiles transformed into something I considered familiar, and that light began to coat me with a soft warmth. Everything felt too good to be true. There had to be some underlying flaw, some condition that had been between the lines that I had simply missed.
It was everything I wanted but, at the same time, not. Those smiles weren’t the ones I had once known, and the warmth didn’t feel the same as it had before. I told myself that this was merely the calm before the storm.
I wanted nothing more than to hate it here.
That storm never came. At times, it would rain, some moments harder than others, but at the end of it all, I was always met with a glimmering rainbow in the sky and the smell of morning dew in the air.
I wanted nothing more than to hate it here, but gradually, I fell in love.
I fell in love with the memories that I made. All of the late-night calls, worrying about whether or not it was worth staying up to finish an assignment, and all of the random trips and hangouts; looking back, I can’t help but miss them.
I fell in love with the people: the ones who transformed the word friends into family, the ones who taught me how to love unconditionally, the ones who showed me how to live adventurously, the ones who guided me without judgement, the ones who expanded my world.
I fell in love with this place. Each tile painted from years past, each mural embellishing the halls, each lived-in couch sitting in room 139/140, every object reminds me that people lived and loved here—that I lived and loved here.
The moment things changed, when my apathy and callousness morphed into passion and happiness, I couldn’t quite say.
I wanted nothing more than to hate it here, but now that it’s time to move on—to say goodbye to the place I so badly wanted to leave—I want nothing more than to stay.
I want to stay in this moment, where I can live happily in these spring-summer days, carefree and happy. I want to stay at this place, where the halls look like familiar faces welcoming me with a smile. I want to stay here, where I have come to call my home.
But I know that I cannot.
Time keeps moving forward, and I know that I must, too.
When I first moved, I wanted nothing more than to hate it here, but now, I only hate to say goodbye.
Love always,
Alysse
