Renegade

May

May 3, 2018

Dear Miss Catherine,

I'm in the airport again, waiting for boarding to begin. Not much has happened except that a kid who was moving out got stuck in the creaky elevator for one hour. I've also finished my exams, and I've learned how to weigh dogs.

Two days ago, I was folding laundry with the recording I had made of the theorems for 226 playing on continuous loop through my earbuds. Do chores and study. Knock out two birds with one stone. I was packing up all my unnecessary but indispensable junk into large cardboard boxes to put into storage. They have a fifty-pound weight limit for the standard box charge; if it's even an ounce more, there's extra fees.

I have a scale, but after you put the box on top, you can't really see the numbers. If you lean the box off the side, not all the weight is captured. Who do I know who knows what fifty pounds feels like? I know...

Lawrence was in his room, vacuuming the floors for the first time this entire school year before he moved out. I asked him if he knows what fifty pounds feels like.

He said sure.

I asked him if he could help me pick up a box and tell me if it's under fifty pounds or not.

He said no problem and came over to try the box. He picked up the box with a swoosh like it was empty and stepped on the scale. "This is how they weigh dogs," he told me.

The box was about sixty pounds.

Whoops. Time to repack.

I think I threw out my lower back from all the bending over and picking up stuff.

The storage pick-up crew came yesterday morning. Then, this morning, three days after the elevator was fixed, I wheeled my stuff to the highly inconvenient half-flight of stairs and lugged everything down. I got inside the elevator and pressed the button "1."

I am finally leaving this place for good.

Sucked it up and wrote another 500-word essay for an upperclassman residential program next year, so sayonara to the ivy-covered, ivory-towered, urine-soured, pot-empowered, mold spore-flowered, rat-embowered stone-faced glowers of the freshman dorms.

Dickens was right. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Despite everything I went through, despite all of this, the one thing that cannot be disproven is the bittersweet hugeness of life. There are so many people out there, each with their own stories and mysteries—seemingly simple on the outside, but, just like the T.A.R.D.I.S., bigger more complicated than anyone could ever fathom on the inside.

Why use more words when one will do?

Sonder.

And because WW3 is already upon us, weaving a net of ICBMs, you upgrade your missile defense system like it's iOS, jaywalk across the zebra stripes, and tell yourself that:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Because, ultimately, only you can live your life. You can write someone letters or tell someone your stories, but no one except for yourself will be able to understand your experiences exactly. Music exudes an emotion. Dance expresses an energy. Fashion flaunts an attitude. Art reflects a part of life. And words try to convey everything, but there's always something hidden in between the lines.

Fully living my life,

Ari

[END]