Rachael Lippincott

Healing and sad all at the same time.

it feels like I blinked and the seasons changed

I traveled many roads to find this lost treasure, this piece of me,

Sometimes the choice to live or die is up to us,

“I had to say goodbye to my life with Laura… before I could start my life with you.”

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.