The Casper tell-all special

I call this the “Casper Tell-All Special,” even though I don’t intend to tell you anything (at all).

What I will tell you is that I saw my first love at my hometown bar last Wednesday, and it got me thinking. It got me thinking that he looked exactly the same as I remembered him, only this time we weren’t 19 and 20; we were 21 and 23, and I didn’t feel anything for him like I used to.

It was liberating and sad, like a Little Death.

I didn’t even say hi to him; I didn’t need to. I liked seeing him exist, even if he exists somewhere on the periphery of my world now, in O’Connell’s or otherwise. And he looked happy — well, he looked hammered, but also happy. It made me happy to see him happy (even if he was flirting with two other girls) (even if he was too hammered to notice me, standing in the corner with a vodka soda, probably talking to my cousin or Michael or my coworker from high school) (my coworker and I reminisced about our old POS system, and it made me feel warm and fuzzy and also very faraway from the people we used to be, very old). 

I felt very faraway, very old, this semester, all these Little Deaths following me, like ghosts (really friendly ghosts). Seeing your first love at the hometown bar is one thing, but living all your lasts is another. The last home football game was a tease (thank God), but all the other lasts felt very real to me.

But I like to think with every Little Death, perhaps I become more keen to the Big Life we’re all living right now. A little more present to the changes, the things that end, the things that will end.

If I could sum up the past four months in two words, it would be that: Big Life.

It wasn’t easy this fall. It never is. 

Sometimes, you find yourself talking to someone you adore in a Chicago bar or dancing the night away with your girlfriends in some honky tonk in Nashville. Other times, you find yourself trapped in your room, crying, watching “One Day” and eating a cold Impossible Whopper you ordered for $17 off of GrubHub (the Whopper was delivered, of course, to the wrong building).

I don’t intend to tell you why I was crying (remember, I don’t intend to tell you anything at all).

What I will tell you is that feeling sad is just a sign of life. It’s like turbulence — you might forget you’re floating in a chair in the sky if not for the small shake and drop of the plane from the rough air, which reminds you that you’re here, which reminds you that you’re human. 

I promise, I did not feel more human than when I was crying that night with the cold Impossible Whopper. It felt nostalgic, like staying home sick from elementary school, just shutting yourself in your room in your pajamas watching TV shows for hours (only minus the hourly temperature checks from Mom or Dad). When you’re sick, you let yourself feel everything (and then you shower and then you heal). 

Feeling everything is awesome (like, yeah, sure, sometimes it totally sucks, but for the most part it’s great). 

Feeling everything is sitting in LaFun, texting someone you really really like, and you’re grinning down at your phone hoping this never ends. It’s going to Hammer & Quill after homework with your closest girlfriends you never see and ordering fancy drinks, cheers-ing with the fancy drinks, then paying for those fancy drinks. Feeling everything is reading “Giovanni’s Room” for colloquium, and you underline every sentence that aches. Feeling everything is getting five words into your Italian presentation when your voice starts trembling and you forget everything you ever learned in Italian (so you say “I’m sorry,” then take a swig of water, then accidentally spill water all over yourself). Feeling everything is sitting with Clare at work before her shift ends or having visitors (so many visitors) for all your game day weekends; it’s flying to California; it’s “Shenandoah” on a cold rainy day; it’s a shamrock temporary tattoo on your thigh (which proved impossible to remove); it’s the quiet of your tiny living room, where girls on your floor enter in all states (happy, sad, just okay) and sit for a while and talk to you and also keep you company.

There’s something so funny about this Big Life we’re all living, something that makes me so unafraid of the Little Deaths to come, the things that end and break and hurt. 

I figure, the things that send you to your bed crying with a cold Impossible Whopper will one day be the things you smile at, from afar, in some bar, just happy that they exist. There’s still more out there for us, and I probably won’t tell you anything about it (at all).