My Last Five Weeks

This room has somehow come to mean so much to me. These four white walls, not exciting or comfortable or intrinsically meaningful, have seen so much within the past 18 months that it would be impossible to be completely detached from them.

In this room I see the sun rise every morning and the moon come up every night. I can see the lights from the apartments across the street, and if I lean a little to the right I can see the complex I lived in the one year I wasn't in this building. I can see what used to be Hooters, now an Irish pub; I watched the employees there go from plastic under-dressed girls to slightly more realistic, slightly more clothed girls and a beefy bouncer.

In this room I've slept with the bed facing every direction; in this room we made love for the last time; in this room we made love for the first time; in this room his picture sits on my window sill. Into this room are packed all my possessions (except the bag of stuffed animals under my bed at home and the books on my bookshelf). In this room are reminders of the friends I've had, the boys I've loved, the girls I've watched over, and the classes I've taken. This room holds the memories and the things I've learned, the laughter and tears and breath of my entire last three semesters of school (nearly half of my higher educational career). The holes in the wood from my pictures and calendars. The marker on the walls. The dust on the floor. The feel of the air.

In this room, this 20 x 30 ft space, I studied, procrastinated, created, destroyed, learned, was entertained, and lived.

To the new inhabiter of this room, I leave my legacy: a leader that everyone loved, an acquaintance that most will miss, a teacher, an employee, a co-worker, a lover, floormate, friend. A girl about to move on with her life, about to make the next step into the world. To this room's new occupant, I leave my love for this job and my passion and caring for the others who live here. May you live up to the shoes you have to fill.

It's no simple task, living in this room.