I knew I shouldn't be here.  Even for me this place is nothing but trouble.  As soon as I step out of the car, the memories come flooding back.  I don't want to remember.  I shut my eyes and hope the images will go away.  They don't.  I start to breathe faster.  Faster than normal.  Faster than I have breathed since that day.  My heart is beating so fast and so loud.  I swear if I was not utterly alone right now everyone would hear it.  Some birds fly off overhead.  I can't help but blame myself for their departure.  They must be able to hear my ragged breathing and my heartbeat.  I step closer to the yellow tape.  I know it's meant to keep me out, but nothing or no one could keep me from crossing the tape right now.  I need to see the scene.  Everyone has been trying to shield me from this moment, but I cannot possibly move on like they tell me to without trying to remember what happened that day.  I cannot forget until I can remember.

Honestly, I just wanted to get away from the pomp and circumstance.  The theatrics of it all.  I could not care less about the ceremony.  I fidgeted wildly the entire time.  Enough that my best friend elbowed me every few minutes.  She whispered "Stop it," a couple of times.  But I couldn't.  I needed to get out of that room.  I wasn't just a want.  It was a need.  I felt myself growing smaller and smaller into myself the whole time.  

Small time life was too suffocating to me. It had been suffocating me since my grandma insisted on a theater trip to New York.  I wasn't surprised that there weren't any cows or trackers.  I had seen enough movies to know I wouldn't find those in the city.  But I was taken in by the hustle and bustle of the place.  It didn't scare me like it scared Grams.  I found I could navigate the busy streets here far easier than I could navigate the country roads back home.  I had found my kindred spirit in this amazingly large city.  

Even before the trip, my mother had been calling me a New Yorker since I was ten.  I didn't know what she meant at that age.  I knew my mom came from a big city.  She said it ruined her.  I still, to this day, don't understand how.  She never explained it to me.  And after my own trip to New York, I knew I was indeed a big city girl just as mom had thought.  And from that day on I have been counting down the days until I could get out of this god-forsaken place.  

I fidgeted because it was finally my time.  To get the hell out of here.  To get away from the pomp and circumstance of small-town life.  To get to a big city, any big city.  I had no idea where I was headed that day, but I knew I was gone.  As soon as the hats were thrown and my mother was done crying, my car would be headed for the nearest highway.  

There are days we will remember forever.  We can name all the big ones.  Wedings. Births. Deaths. Graduations.  But there are others.  For me one those days is my first day  at college ....

No one was there to help me move into my dorm.  No parents.  No siblings.  I left home a few months before and I hadn't looked back.  I went to so many cities across the country and I had settled here in Indianapolis.  Don't laugh.  It may not be as big as Chicago or New York, but it was the perfect mix of big city and the comforts of my small town upbringing.  I had pictured myself in a high rise dorm downtown New York or near the beach in Los Angeles, but neither of those cities fit.  Plus, they were so damn expensive, I knew I couldn't make it long term there.  I may seem a bit flighty, but honestly, I'm may more rational than I seem.  At least I was back then.  

A new life was beginning for me.  College.  I love movies.  I have probably seen most of the movies out there about college.  So I thought I knew what to expect.  It turns out I was wrong - very wrong, but in such a good way I can't even begin to explain the feeling.

Most of you probably don't remember your first day of college all that well.  It was probably a mess of tears, maybe yours, maybe your moms.  It was probably chaotic.  It was most definitely filled too many experiences to really allow you to just enjoy this new moment.  For me, I can remember every detail of that day.  Probably because it was one of the most significant crosswords in my life.  That day floods my senses with my gumption, my naivete, and a new kind of freedom.  I had been free for a few months now.  But it wasn't the same.  Here, I could let go and really enjoy freedom without worrying about how much money was still left in my bank account, or where I was going to sleep that night.  All of the big concerns were being taken care by the big fat check my scholarship cashed in for me.  Looking back, I still feel that college is the most carefree time I ever had in my life.  

Whoever said, "Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all," was exactly right.  He probably went to college as well.  When I left home in June, I honestly didn't realize how much I would think about my small-town life anymore.  But I couldn't help thinking about the high school chapter I hadn't really closed.  I never really said goodbye to my friends.  I had known most of those kids my entire life.  I never bothered to think anything about them until I was gone.  I didn't care about the sense of community I was leaving behind.  All I could think about was the yellow-brick road ahead and where it might lead me.  And it lead me here.  To college.  To this dorm.  To this school.   And I was bursting with the energy of the place on that first day.

More me, college was never about the learning and knowledge.  I had thought that would be my escape, but it turns out it was so much more than that.  It was that place between dream and awake that allowed me the freedom to become who I thought I was meant to be.  That has all changed now, but without that sense, I never would have ended up here.  For the good and the bad, I know I was meant to be in this moment.  

For me, the most glorious reality of college is this:  It doesn't stifle you with warnings and threats as its predecessors did.  It never tries to strangle you and hold you down like weightiness of really belonging to the adult world.  It simply lets you live in the in-between for a few years.  You have the freedom to do what you want without all the strapping responsibilities that the fully adult world brings along.  That in-between world is as magical as living in an enchanted castle.  It's so much like Wendy's discovery of Never-Never Land.  It's a mystical place that we think we can reach only in our dreams, but when we wake up we realize it is just as real as anything.  

I remember on that first day of college, this feeling I had never felt and I've never been able to duplicate since ... that if I wanted to jump off the roof I would sprout wings just in time to catch my fall.