Out On My Own

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I parked my car and walked with my laptop, handbag and rolling suitcase to the registration dorm, map in hand. Looking around, I saw a beautiful campus, anchored by rusted red brick buildings (the color of chunks that used to hang on the belly of my dad’s 15-year-old diesel truck) with apricot-colored trim, and freshly mowed green lawns. A clock tower stood proudly in the center of campus, and a fountain trickled as I walked past. Locating the registration dorm, I entered, stood at the back of the line and glanced at the other students around me. There was an older woman who was tall, pale and wearing what looked like a Banana Republic outfit from the days when the catalog was on soft, yellowed pages and bore scientificlooking illustrations. There was a clean-cut looking jockish guy who got in the line marked “Interns.” And then there was me, in my favorite pair of jeans, the first pair of designer jeans I’d ever bought, with money that should have gone toward groceries or the electric bill. A young woman behind the desk handed me my keys and I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d made it.

It had been nearly ten years since I was out on my own. I realized this as I stood in the middle of the colorless, stripped down dorm room that would be my home for the next week. Surrounded by a thick quiet, I took a deep breath and started to unpack my clothes. I made my bed with the new twin bedsheets I’d bought at T.J. Maxx, put away my shoes, plugged in the refrigerator and computer, stacked my books by my bedside and arranged my bathroom things on top of the dresser. I stood back and looked around; it was better, less bleak and felt a little more like me. I peeled off the sweaty shirt I’d spent all morning in (driving along the highway, feeling like I was pushing myself off the high dive) and changed into my favorite new sleeveless dress with stripes of warm brown, turquoise and pearl white. I pulled the door shut behind me and walked across campus to orientation.