For Me

Lainne Wilkins

Imagine this: two eighteen-year-olds graduating high school, falling in love for the first time in the summer, both finding their freedom, starting to find themselves. Imagine their clammy hands entwined with one another as they go cliff jumping, walk through town, finish hikes, listen to music in the car. Imagine a chick flick, but being the main character, starting to fall for the boy you have been infatuated with for years, the boy everyone teased you about liking, and you getting too embarrassed to admit it. Now imagine a cheap neon orange bracelet you would get at an arcade that holds the promise of forever. After you and the boy both lose all your money at the arcade, he asks the front clerk, “Hey can I get two of the neon orange friendship bracelets?” then gets down on one knee and says, “Will you be my best friend?”

Two other friends go on adventures with you and the boy. One day you go on three hikes, walk across the “Bridge of the Gods” in the Oregon Gorge, and look at the world that you feel is yours. Spend late nights with these friends dreaming of a future as adults where you are the gods that made that bridge. Late night taco runs and soft serve ice cream that balanced out the three seltzers that could get you tipsy. Singing at the top of your lungs in the boy’s run-down Jetta that only broke down every so often. Twirling the boy’s hair in your hands, hands dried from the sun, from swimming, and from quick showers that led to the next adventure. Imagine feeling so in love that it hurts, and feeling like one person could be the rest of your life, at eighteen.

The last time I listened to the full song “For Emma” by Bon Iver was at the end of that summer. A week earlier, the boy had asked me to date him knowing I was leaving for four years. He chose to be a part of my future, which still felt promising.

One last feeling of freedom, one last feeling

of being alive, and one last time feeling this in love.

The night before I left for college, we went out for one last date night. One last feeling of freedom, one last feeling of being alive, and one last time feeling this in love. He was driving me back to my house after exploring downtown Portland, and I was trying to swallow my tears so he couldn’t tell how much it hurt me to leave. I was going to college six hundred miles away, and neither of us could stop what seemed like an end to something magical. So, I did what I had always done: found ways to make fun of him. Countless nights of driving me home he had missed the exit that leads to my house. As he turned on the song “For Emma,” I started to mutter under my breath, “Remember, it’s the Battle Ground exit.” I looked over at him because he didn’t say a snarky comment back. Tears poured from his eyes as the first line of the song played: “So apropos. Saw death on a sunny snow, for every life… Forego the parable. Seek the light. My knees are cold. Running home, running home ….” That was the first time I had ever seen him cry. I placed my head on his shoulder and teared up myself. He continued to cry as the song played all the way through. It was the first time I had heard it, but I can still remember each crushing word.

For months after, I tried to listen to that song. I could never make it through the whole thing. I don’t know why three years later that song is still too painful to listen to. I don’t think it’s because I saw my boyfriend cry or because I was leaving the next day. That summer marked the end of freedom without priorities. Listening to the whole song will never be the same. The magic of that summer only existed once. I wish I could listen to the whole thing and feel the same again. I want to soak in the fact that I lived in such magic that I can’t listen to a full song. “For Emma” was an end to what seemed to be a life that could only be in a movie.

I was still that eighteen-year-old when I heard that song. I was still caught up in the freedom of getting older, the most fun part of getting older.

In my psychology class the next fall, I learned that a person’s emotions are most heightened during the ages of sixteen to nineteen years old. Was the way I felt during that summer just heightened emotions resulting from my age?

That summer saw a lot of firsts, but it also had a lot of lasts. It was the first time my mom let me do what I wanted. It was the first time I loved someone. It was the first time I had an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Most importantly, it was the last time, so far in my life, that I would feel that much magic. I want it back. I want to be free again. I want to look into the same boy’s eyes I did three years ago and feel how I did then. Everything is fading. Is this what life is, just one big disappointing movie that has the best highlights when you’re young? I have to say, it’s not like I’m sixty years old writing about some terrible life I embarked on since graduating high school; I am only twenty. I am scared, though. I still have a chance to make my future something as magical as that summer, but I am not quite sure how to do that. How do I feel that way again? I consciously remember thinking how alive I felt during that time. It’s almost too “cheezeball,” as my professor would say, but that’s what the summer after graduating high school is. The possibility of anything, and reality being too far away to see. It’s the mindset that everything can be magical, because nobody actually needs priorities, right? It’s actually bullshit. You think you’re in some goddamn movie that has a happy ending, but the truth is reality is not always happy. The summer before college, I had three months to forget about the world out there. I had three months to be a teenager in love and feel like everything in life could be magical. I am thankful for that summer, but I almost wish it never happened. How am I supposed to live up to those three months of pure joy?

Having so much life left to live, I have gone over all of these questions multiple times. I have concluded that your twenties are about finding yourself. I just feel like I am finding myself in two different places. When I go home, I live in a little bit of magic. I only work when I’m at home and pretty much get to do anything I want. It still partially feels like that high school life because everything and everyone I left behind are still doing the same things there. The boy lives with his high school best friends. They all work for the same company and still have Friday poker nights. They still drink cheap beer on Saturdays and invite over the same people to enjoy it with. They have gotten older but still seem to be the same people.

For most of the year, though, I am on my own at college. I have priorities and a real life. I made my own friends, not just the ones I had in high school: I have homework; I have collegiate volleyball; I have priorities that not even my mom knows about. I am growing into this new person that has nothing to do with high school. I’m learning about myself, but on my own. It feels like two different lives. The boy is back home, so of course home feels like a different life. I think fully submerging myself into my new life might grant me the ability to find a new song in time. It’s just difficult to let go. That eighteen-year-old felt like the best me. That eighteen-year-old was the happiest she had ever been. Now I’m twenty, still holding on to that one summer. This current twenty-year-old needs to learn the value of moving on.

When I started college, I still had the person I was at home in the back of my head. I thought that if I did enough of the things I did during that summer, everything would stay the same. I took pictures of scenery in Montana, like I did at home—I did it because the boy did. I thought it would keep us connected if we still did the same things. It felt different, though. I posted on this “secret” Instagram account I made that summer and poured all my thoughts out. I made this account for myself and let nobody follow it; I just wanted to write somewhere about everything I was going through because that’s what I did at home. In time, I let the boy follow it, but this made me stop writing and just strictly post pictures. I have not posted on that account in a year.

Freshman year I had a “Summer 2019” playlist that I listened to on repeat, trying to keep all of the memories locked in my head. Those songs still bring me back, but now it’s only for a moment. By the end of sophomore year, I had a new playlist, a playlist I made myself of the songs that I connected with away from home. I am now a junior, and the “Summer 2019” playlist has yet to be played again. I subconsciously let go of that summer, but still hold on to the smallest strands of what used to be that eighteen-year-old.

I guess the main question I have contemplated is whether I felt alive because of the boy, or because of my immaturity and lack of knowledge of the world. Honestly, it was probably both. You don’t stay the same person and think the same way throughout life, but I did not know that then. I know that now. I have changed so much in two and a half years. Staying in the moment of that summer has made me unable to find a different kind of magic, but I am finally starting to become myself outside of those three months. Along with starting the process of finding myself, I moved away from that eighteen-year-old. That summer was beautiful and always will be, but feeling like I know who I am has also been beautiful. I just don’t know what all to let go of to fully feel magic within my college life.

Being eighteen was stunning.

Being eighteen was stunning. I may have had heightened emotions, but I know that will forever be a part of my story. I will find another time of pure happiness, but this time, I will know who I am. I will not be living for the boy who was my first love and all the beautiful things he showed me, but rather find the things that I love for myself.

Being eighteen was magic in itself, but I would not be able to tell you anything about me back then. I could tell you everything there is to know about my high school best friend, or why my mother cares so much about her kids, or why the boy was the most amazing human you could know. Without leaving that summer, without leaving being eighteen, I would still be infatuated with everyone and everything else that has nothing to do with me. Leaving home was the best thing I could have done to start to find the magic within myself. I still wear an arcade bracelet around my wrist, but the bracelet is now pink. Every once in a while, I try to play the song “For Emma,” and although I fail, I make it a little further into the chorus. I do these things in memory of being eighteen years old. But that is all it is: a great memory. I could never go back now and relive that summer because I have started to find myself. I have started the process of letting go. The next time I find a song I cannot listen to, it will be mine.