For some reason, I can’t get last night out of my head. As I walked home with Aryeh, we saw stars near Morningside park. Yeah, you read that right. STARS. Stars. (All of Orion, no less.) Stars, stars, stars. You know what those are, right? You haven’t forgotten? Stars, for the uninformed, are those gorgeous shiny things that I always wanted to study, that sit up in the sky and remind you just how small you are and just how big the universe is, and how that’s ok.
I can’t remember ever seeing stars in Manhattan, except once, so of course last night reminded me of that one time. It was the second or third week of freshman year, the night of the student council election debates for the first-years. I met a (now-dear) friend for the first time in person that night, after the requisite “OMFG-we’re-freshmen!!” conversations on Facebook, and we started talking, and then walking, and somehow we wound up on the roof of Mudd, and I saw stars then. That was the first time I was homesick – one of two times, so of course it’ll be in my head forever. I hadn’t seen stars since Illinois, since I’d driven out into the country alone, a few days before leaving, and laid on my back on top of my car and stared out into the distance at the incredible patchwork above my head. There was nothing like that sensation. It reminded me, too, in a lesser way, of all those times that I’d climbed out my window or the bathroom window and onto the roof of my parents’ house and stared up, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes so tired that I had nothing left in me, just exhaustion and an appreciation of the serenity above me. The stars didn’t care about my papers and projects. They didn’t care about how much I loved or hated school at that moment, about whether I was getting along with my friends or my family or my teachers, about whether I had any money in my pocket or not. Senior year, those stars were a reminder of what I wanted to be and what I was aiming for and why I could do it and on and on and on, all these empty pseudo-philosophical thoughts that we all excel at when we’re sixteen (and I guess when we’re nineteen too). Seeing those stars, freshman year, was a justification, a proof: ha, I made it, I’m at Columbia, on a roof, with a really cool guy, talking about everything and anything and nothing and wondering how he’s going to play into my next four years…but they were also a reminder that I was no longer a sixteen-year-old senior, lying on the roof with my mother asleep twenty feet away, with a support system and a plan and all the other things that you have when you’re a kid and don’t have when you’re a college freshman two weeks into your first semester.
Time rolled on, at varying speeds. I became a music major. (Sometimes I still wonder what would have happened if I was an astronomy major instead.) I went been back to the roof of Mudd once, with that same friend, later during freshman year, but it was cloudy that night, and I haven’t been back since.
I spent the summer after that first year of college in Illinois, but I was almost afraid to look at the stars that summer – I had nothing left but a relationship that was falling apart and a job that wasn’t a job and a lot of disappointment, as I realized that I was never going to be a boring suburban dweller (and was almost certainly never going to shop at Bath and Bodyworks again – working there can do that to you). I was almost afraid that the stars would pass judgment on my miserable self, so I hid. But the apartment I rented with my brother that summer was in a basement (you know that half-submerged style) and there were bushes in front of my window, so the point, I suppose, was moot.
I rarely saw that friend during the next year, other than brief passing encounters (we were both busy and stressed), and the doomed relationship died a long, slow, painful death and I fell back in love with music all over again and I started to figure my life out, all without seeing stars.
Last summer was Cairo. I’ve talked about that plenty. And I remember seeing the stars there. That was refreshing. But last summer, the night sky was more about the moon than the stars, and it was, most of all, about the lack of sun in the sky, which was the most refreshing part of all.
The friend had to leave Columbia this past summer, for various complicated personal reasons.
And now, there are stars again, in the city. This time, the stars made me nothing but happy – happy to be where I am, who I am, what I am, and what I hope to become. I’m with someone I love, studying something I love, living somewhere I love, and I am largely content and occasionally truly happy or truly sad. I talk to that friend every now and then, and he’s doing better, thank goodness. We’re a little awkward every now and then, but isn’t that half the fun? So maybe now I can look the stars in the eye again, and be serene. The stars always got to live happily ever after. I was so jealous of that in high school. But maybe now I don’t have to be jealous of that anymore – I can live happily ever after, too.
