I Can't Carry It With Me

They don't tell you how much crap you end up accumulating in college.

My apartment used to be filled with tapestries and second-hand furniture, littered with Starbucks straw wrappers from late-night study binges at a too-small table. My computer barely sputtered out enough battery life to allow me the final kindness of submitting my bachelor's capstone. Now, that table groaned under my box of hardcover novels as I wrote its contents on the cardboard lid. The blankets provide no comfort now. They dried my tears last night after I said farewells to the three people who actually cared enough to say goodbye. I don't know if I'll see them again in a few months, a few years? Perhaps never again. I don't know if I have room in my heart to hold them so close anymore.

The photos my best friend took of us at the promenade the first day I met her are tucked in a binder with my therapy documents, the sessions I never got to finish since I graduated early. My stuffed dinosaur, Spike, stares at me from a clear duffel bag with the rest of the things I deemed too valuable to force into a suitcase. He looks so confused, with that wide-eyed stare plushies have. Spike knows everything. It's like he, too, is wondering why we can't stay. I was happy here; why do we have to leave?

There's nothing for me here. I thought I'd find my purpose here in this state where the monsoons rage and the summers hit harder than any bad grade. I thought I'd find love, be it a job or a man worth the beans we both could afford on a part-time salary. It was hot and hard, but here, life felt free,

Free doesn't pay the bills. Free doesn't get you a job. Free doesn't replenish your medication or the food in your belly.

So I have to leave.

My Dad knocked on my door and reminded me of the ten-hour drive we have ahead of us. I let him take the chair. And the bookshelf. And the suitcases.

My roommate - what will she think when she comes back? - will arrive in a half-empty home. I left my TV stand, but not the TV. My mugs and pots can’t stay. My record player won’t play again. What is a home without its other half? It's only 'ho' and 'me', and they are losing me, and I them.

But I can't call this place home.

They can't fit in my car or my twin-sized bed in my childhood bedroom. They don't fit in my tiny closet or the dresser with my high school shirts. They don't belong at my dining table, gossiping about the boy down the hall who smiled at them in passing. They don't fit on my phone. My photos of her and I together lie in the deleted folder to make room for hiring apps and employers' contacts.

And my heart. What can fit in my heart? I have only memories. Four years' worth of time passing like a whirlwind while my world at home stays the same. If I pick up a rock in my garden, is the underside lighter when I turn it around? Will it know I was gone too?

My eyes well with tears. I thought I’d feel happy. Dad said that change would be good. That it’s time to grow up and make my own way. 

My own way.

I have no love, no ring on my finger; I have only a golden tassel, a black robe, and a degree saying I was here once. That’s put away too. My roommate celebrated her one-year anniversary just last week. She’s getting married in March to Harrison at the chapel by the courthouse. Her path seems so forward, yet here I am moving backwards. I won’t get to see her walk down the aisle. I don’t know if I even want to.

I can’t stand any of it. I return to the bathroom I spent hours dressing for dates with no payoff, interviews with no callback, presentations with no applause. Dad curses in the hall while I cry with the faucet on.

The woman in the mirror is not me. She looks so sad. She wears a black hoodie, worn jeans, and scuffed sneakers. Her mascara runs down her cheek, and she reaches for a towel that isn’t there.

I know it’s me. I know it, truly. But it’s not me.

He calls my name louder, and I shut the water off and spend my last moments here in my room. It’s empty now, a true blank slate - a place without a name in my head. I don’t wish to be here any longer.

There’s a box for donations and my backpack; that’s all that’s left. A few toiletries for the hotel, a change of clothes, and my dying laptop are inside. I turn off each light, fix my bag over my shoulders, and hoist the box up into my arms. I lock the door, and I don’t look behind me. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, if I look back, I may never leave my heaven within hell.

There’s one thing I’ve left to do. I almost slipped down the staircase, catching my balance as I walked down the hall to the Resident Director’s office. I don’t remember signing my name and giving up my right to my room. The envelope is closed. The key is inside, the memories gone with it.

“Looks like you’re all checked out,” she says. “What’s in the box?”

I peer down and open the lid. There’s a jacket with a torn pocket from my sophomore sweetheart. A textbook with dog-eared pages from my junior year’s failed culinary elective. A defunct diner hat from my freshman year. A stress ball from the therapist’s office on the intake day of my first breakdown a few months ago.

I look at the Resident Director and then at the pile of donations for the local shelter down the street where I used to volunteer for credits. 

Maybe Old Thompson from the shelter will remember I was here, when he’s not drinking himself into next week. Maybe the Director will remember I was here to drop this off. Maybe Harrison will remember when he ripped his jacket pocket the night we broke up and never bothered to take it with him.

Maybe my roommate will remember Harrison was mine once when his ring is on her finger at the altar. Maybe he’ll remember Spike heard him tell me he loved me. Maybe Dad will forgive him for breaking my heart one day.

“I don’t have room,” I sigh as it lies with everyone else’s memories in the office. 

“Are you sure?”

Dad calls my name. He’s frustrated, I can tell. I don’t intend to make him wait any longer. This is no longer my home. There’s no one who wants to say goodbye, and no one I wish to see one last time. It’s snowing in my old neighborhood this Christmas. There’s no place like it here. 

I mean it. They don’t tell you how much you hoard until you graduate college. I eye the box one last time. I tell her six simple words, my parting gift to someone who cared enough to ask.

“I can’t carry it with me.”