  countdown = 2 days today i did something that felt weird. i had to go to the school. i had to go to the building where i spent four years of my life.
i had to go because joe had left some things in his film locker and he wanted me to get them out. so i went to the place where his locker once was. the door there which had never been locked before, was. and in the hallway outside of that room where his locker was contained, sat the guts. the insides of my college life. it was awful. machines that i had made films with, chairs that had ripped small holes in the butts of my jeans, a couch that i had slept on when i was too tired to go home. they were all thrown together, on top of each other, piled high like a heap of dead bodies in a ditch, like those hallocaust films you see. so i stood there for five minutes on top of a chair i once knew. and i looked at the graffiti on the wall that named the local fast food joints and there adjoining phone numbers.
then i went upstairs to find someone to let me in to the locked room. there was no one. the doors were locked and closed and there wasn't a voice to be heard. and the rooms i once had keys to were not mine anymore. there was not a trace of me left. all but a sheet of paper with some names on them posted on a door. the top said: Cinema Production Award - Anna Payne and that felt good, in a way. that i was still remembered, perhaps, by passersby.
but at the same time i wanted to rip it down and take it with me. i left it there although i know it will be gone before the new school year starts. it wouldn't be so hard, i dont think, if i hadn't loved every minute of school there. so i left. i rode my lonely bike home with an empty back pack that would have contained joe's film school history if i had been able to retrieve it. i smiled when my house came into sight though. i smiled because my life will start again soon. and all my life i remember this feeling. the feeling of leaving. its so familiar and comforting.
it always hurts to leave. but the beginning of a new place in my life is so exciting. and i know that maggie will be there and joe and other people. and thats good. because i only have to bring the things i want with me. and i like that. so im smiling again. and im happy. because i am becoming older and thats all ive ever expected to happen. 
