Alyson Derrick

Of course I let the ties go. The casual acquaintances, the hookups, the friends I never really talked to outside
of school, keeping my personal life tucked away in a little box.

The only person I really held on to was her. Until tonight.

She said “I love you” and I stopped myself from saying it back to her. She asked me to say one thing about how much she meant to me, and I couldn’t.

I couldn’t just tell her how Saturday mornings with her are the highlight of my week.

But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I messed it all up because she asked for the moon, and I couldn’t give it to her yet.

She’s the first person I don’t want to say goodbye to, and here I am running away.

When you spend as much time as I have worrying about what to say and how to say it and it still comes out wrong, it just becomes easier to not say anything at all.

This year, though, I don’t have to be quiet Molly Parker with the crippling social anxiety. Things can be different at Pitt.

This is college. It’s a fresh start, a chance to rewrite myself. People are always saying that things get better in college, and I have to believe that. This can’t be all there is.

It has to get better.

I don’t think I can make it through another four years of—

Crash.

“Open doors make happy floors.” He swings my door all the way open before following my dad into the hall. As if making friends is as simple as opening a door.

but I mean, who needs sleep when you can stare out a window for seven whole hours, regretting every decision you’ve ever made in your life?

This is my chance to make my life different, and I can’t pass it up.

“Yeah, I’m, like, super gay,” I tell him. I’m so embarrassed, the words tumble out before I can even obsess over them.

It’s like the anxiety that usually sits between me and the person I’m talking to doesn’t feel as impenetrable as usual. Maybe I can save this.

I find myself thinking about what I did wrong today. All the things I should’ve said but didn’t and the things I maybe should have kept inside.