The End

The end saw less tears than the beginning.
There were no parents, trying unsuccessfully to hold back tears.
No over abundance of hugs...no standing in the parking lot waiting, hoping maybe they would come back and take me home.
No campus full of strange faces...no apprehension that I wouldn't be good enough.
Instead it was a string of what had developed to be 'our' routine. 'Our' as in this family that somehow formed over the last 5 years. There was coffee and good food and lakes and talks about the past and the future.
There were, however, no tears.
Until I hit the exit for St. Cloud and realized - it's over.
Life will never be like this again.
The lack of goodbyes ate at me for the next 60 minutes. I've always been a tearful goodbye kind of person. My mind puts on its own little power point of good and bad memories and at the end of it my face is red and my cheeks are wet but in my own strange way, I'm ready to leave. It's what I expected from this weekend, and when it didn't happen I felt a lack of closure, until I remembered a goodbye from last year.
"Life is never gonna be like this again, isn't that crazy? College is over," he thought aloud, as much to himself as me. We hugged in the kitchen of my empty house for longer than we ever had before. A year later, on the drive home from my own 'leaving' experience, I realized that the need for closure was really all in my head, perpetuated by this need to have a movie ending to every chapter in my life, when really this weekend wasn't that much different than any other weekend over the last 5 years. Relationships are not defined by goodbyes. Relationships are defined by Wednesday nights at the Northern Inn, singing along to Junction 51. By jamming in the sky lounge and staying up late to watch election results. By what happened after the meetings at conferences and long bus rides in foreign countries. By late night phone conversations and drunk bagpipe players and a boy who's unofficial spot to pass out was the hallway in front of the bathroom...the goodbye can't even come close to living up to the moments before it.
So I dried my tears and turned up the radio and alternated between preparing myself to leave in less than 2 weeks and thinking about absolutely nothing at all.