Sunlight catches on my blush pink comforter, and its reflection washes the ceiling in a faint rose gold. I take a small sip of my strawberry matcha latte, and the cool drink refreshes my throat.
“Bags” by Clairo starts playing from my Spotify queue, and despite it playing fairly loudly on my dark pink speaker, I am somehow still able to hear, through the window, the sound of the mildly-inconvenient-to-use move-in carts being dragged against the quad pavement. Freshmen! That word feels odd as it sits on my tongue: It’s not mine anymore, and it’ll never be mine ever again for the rest of my time here at Brown. For just a second, I don’t know how to feel. For just a second, I don’t know what to feel.
It’s a strange feeling really, more than anything else, to realize how little and how much time has passed. It all moves like clockwork, it really does. You’ve been here before too; you were new to all of this too; but I know I can never really be here in quite the same way ever again. There are so many things about me that are different now, and yet, there is so much that has stayed the same.
I used to wear silver hoops every day, the ones that dangled as I walked through the breeze. Now I put on a different pair of earrings every morning; my favorites are the pearl ones that my friend gifted me. These days, I take my time applying moisturizer instead of foundation when I wake up and, instead of ordering in, buy myself groceries once a week. There are people whose faces I still recognize even though I never learned their names. But now I no longer run when it randomly starts to rain; instead, I let the rain fall down on me.
The changes are little, almost embarrassingly so, but they don’t feel little to me.
Another cart scrapes against the pavement outside. I look out my window, then down at the street and smile. It is so lovely to be here.
“Bags” has switched to “drop dead,” but by the time I notice, the song is halfway through. I take another sip of my strawberry matcha latte and finish it without reaching for my phone. I look at one of the many posters I have taped to my wall: Make yourself a priority. I don’t have to read it more than once to feel it anymore.
A light breeze enters my room through my half-open window, and the vines Scotch-taped to the top edge of my wall start to sway. It feels good to take care of my heart.
