Aging out

I’m 21 in Notre Dame, IN, and sometimes I think I’m aging out. 

My life looks like this: I order overpriced iced coffee from Hagerty every other day and try my best to recycle my plastic cups (although I am still not convinced recycling is a thing here). I occasionally try to craft cocktails at my friends’ apartments and find myself enthralled with the process, but entirely uncertain of my ability to make a good lemon drop martini (or pickletini or dirty martini). I speak to probably three people daily. I don’t drink enough water, but I enjoy a no-jumping HIIT workout. Sometimes, I actually can’t shut up. Sometimes, I actually can’t will myself to do the things I don’t want to do (i.e. my simulated internship for Social Media Strategy: I’m so sorry Professor Connelly, I absolutely will get it done).

Sticky dance floors are still the place I feel the most alive, and I’m still caught in a love triangle with CJ’s and Olf’s every Thursday night. Going to the dining hall makes me feel old, so I do it rarely (against my better judgment: my Domer Dollar account). I watch the Bachelor now and am currently rooting for Juliana (or Litia or Alex, maybe Zoe?). Sometimes, I go for long walks around the lake and talk to myself in my Voice Memos app like I’m a podcast host. 

This is my life, and it won’t be like this pretty soon.

Everyone complains about spring semester in South Bend, but I love it. I mean, I was pretty high-functioning depressed at this time last year — to the point where I refer to the perfume I wore every day last spring as my “depression scent” (Pacifica Dream Moon). But truly, there’s nothing better than our little world feeling like a snow globe or curling up in your dorm room with the radiator clanking against your bed (very loudly, but it feels like a sauna in here, and thank God).

There’s nothing better than running to the bar from your friend’s car with no jacket, wondering if you’ll ever be this naive again. There’s nothing better than the first warm day all semester, how girls come alive in short skirts and guys who have been wearing shorts all winter continue to wear shorts (to prove their masculinity? I’m not sure. I’ll never know).

When the sun comes out, it all feels worth it. I start playing the songs I listened to from March 2023 — that golden month my sophomore spring when everything felt right. It takes me back to wearing my baggy blue sweatshirt and shorts everywhere no matter the weather, spending all my nights in with the BP girls and all my nights out also with the BP girls (at Newf’s or CJ’s or LaFun or the fourth floor study room with the essential oil diffuser going).

It doesn’t feel real to me that it’s all coming to an end. But I know it is — because I bought my commencement ball dress, I’m finishing my thesis and we just picked all our new RA’s for next year. 

I know it’s ending because I find myself in class fantasizing about my last summer of freedom back home, on the other side of graduation, before moving across the country to properly begin my 20’s. I find myself daydreaming about playing tennis in the hot Virginia sun again or going to O’Connell’s again and catching up with all my old friends. I find myself missing my dog terribly. I find myself knowing this is all ending and being so okay with it because I’m aging out of this experience, and I have to leave to make room. 

I’m 21 in Notre Dame, IN, and I’m going to miss this so badly someday. These next few months here, moving through the preemptive mourning and my class’s looming departure, I will take a deep breath every time I pass the dome to take it all in and remember (remember what this all felt like).