Our Final Marathon

After four years here, today, finally, suddenly, was our Final Marathon.  Part I.  Because of scheduling weirdnesses, we sort of have two — it’s a long story.  We did the speeches today, but the party is next week, along with extra time for people to say things they didn’t get the chance to say.  Which is good, because I didn’t have time to finish mine.  And it’s all sort of overwhelming.  And I’m sort of, kind of, so sad.

I don’t know.  I said what I wanted to say to Danny, except too briefly, but he already knows.  And I said what I wanted to say to Brendan, except too briefly, but he already knows.  I said everything I needed to to Aaron and to Anna, and didn’t talk at all to Parker because he wasn’t there (part of the scheduling mess I was talking about; people had shows during Final Marathon).  I ran out of time just before I got to Alex, so I’ll cover him next week.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.

Danny told me that he’s going to have to spend some time out in LA to see me, as soon as he has money he’ll come, he said.  I said I hoped I’d still be in LA, maybe I’d be in London by then.  And he said, fine, then I’ll come to London.  He wants to see me.  I miss him so badly.  And we’re still here, goddamn it.

Parker gave me a shout-out, and thanked me for having him in my cabaret, said he had so much fun, said it three times for emphasis, and I was so indescribably glad that I was on his radar enough to be included.  Eric B—– included me in his list of people who remembered him after he left, and I appreciated that with my whole heart.  Danny…I don’t even remember what Danny said.  But I don’t need the specific words, because I already knew, just the way that he already knew.  So that’s OK.  Marina came up to me afterwards and gave me a huge hug and thanked me and said how grateful she was to have had so much time with me, getting to know me, doing shows with me…and I told her how happy I am that she doesn’t hate me, that she loved being in London with me, that we’re still friends after the roughness of some of that.

But the one who broke my heart and healed me was Anna.  Anna, my wonderful roommate, whom I love unconditionally, but with whom my friendship is not unconditional.  Anna, of whom I must always be slightly careful, always just slightly specific in what I say.  Who I never really expected to remain close to after college…I don’t know, I just sort of assumed she’d disappear into the void of Cincinatti with Mark and lose touch with all of us.  And what she said to me…she said that they always say we make our best friends in college, and that she knows that the friend she’s made here who she will keep for the rest of her life is me.  That is what Anna had to say to me.  I love her.  I love her.

I feel like it was so incomplete.  Like there is so much more that I want to say, and I want to say it publicly, announce to the department with tears and emotion that I love Brendan, that I love Danny, that these people are mine and I am theirs and…I don’t know.  I get possessive.  I get jealous.  I want to be Danny’s most important person, even though I know that in a way I am, that I mean the exact same thing to him as he means to me, there is no imbalance here, all is well.  I don’t want to say goodbye to them all.  I hate the idea of saying goodbye.

I’ve been so remiss in writing this year, and it’s really a shame, such a lot has happened and I’ve grown so much and there are people who are so important to me.  I’m giving as gifts to people, next week, at Final Marathon Part II, excerpts about them from this diary.  A true, meaningful, and probably quite naked telling of what they actually mean to me.  And I’m finding that there are people who I haven’t written enough about, people who are dreadfully important and I haven’t written about them…Megan, Eric, and especially Alex…I know I’ve written about Alex, but not recently, not the truth of the matter.  I’ve written about him the way I write about people I fall for.  Not about the relationship that we actually have.  It isn’t a romance, and it isn’t meant to be a romance, at least not right now.  It’s meant to be exactly what it is.  And I haven’t charted the development of that.  Which makes me so sad.  Because I remember it now, but a few years from now I won’t remember the details.  And I can’t give him the details.  Because I didn’t record them as they happened.

I’ve been going through my entries from my freshman year.  It’s quite a painful process, actually, because I wrote volumes and volumes and most of it was sadness.  My goodness, how my life has changed.  Back then, every hug, every compliment, every friendly interaction was cause for rejoicing and was faithfully recorded as a major event.  They’re not now, because I have friends.  And I know who they are.  And I don’t need to write down every time I talk to them and everything they say, because we’re friends and we talk and that’s what friends do.  So if I go to Phoebe’s and I talk to Danny and a couple of freshmen who may idolize me just a bit and Aaron gives me a kiss on the cheek and says he’ll call me to hang out this weekend, I don’t run home and write about it with huge excitement.  Because it’s normal.  And I am deserving of friends.  And…it is not worthy of comment.

But in a way, it is worthy of comment.  It is worthy of comment because of how far I’ve come, how much I’ve settled, how established I am.  I should write about it precisely because I don’t actually need to write about it.  I have made a life for myself here.  One that does not revolve around my hopeless crush on a boy, or my desperate desire for faculty approval, or who has shown an actual interest in talking to me.  And there are people I wish I’d managed to become close to but never did, and there are people I used to be close to but it was so long ago now that I didn’t even remember before reading about it in my own diary.  Like Adam J, who I never quite managed to win.  Like Peter, who was such a huge part of my life freshman year; like Phil, who took such wonderful care of me once upon a time and who I loved so desperately, with whom I have almost no relationship at all now; like Jeremy, who I lost when he moved out of Shaw.

And then there are people with whom my relationship is so deep and so complex and so real that words just aren’t sufficient.  Danny, Brendan, Alex.  Anna, Aaron.  Anyone I was in London with, to a point.  People I love so much that I can’t tell them, there’s no way to tell them, and yet I have to tell them because how can I not, how can I not give them this?  They deserve to have this, to have it in tangible form, to keep it close to them when they feel lost or alone.  I will have to consider very carefully how I want to use the extra time I have been gifted next week.

And just so I don’t forget years down the line, just in case this is something I find myself wanting to remember, I was mentioned only very briefly in the freshman skit.  It was s

upposed to be set at our class’s five-year reunion, and it had a narrator who introduced each character.  Quite clever, actually.  Anyway, "I" didn’t say anything in the skit (I don’t actually even know the girl who played me…), I just stood there looking very innocent and cute, while the narrator said, "Here comes Stephanie M——-.  She, unlike the rest of our senior class, is not sketchy."  And then the girl playing me retreated into the crowd and was never mentioned again.  In the moment I was a bit disappointed, but in fact this is just fine.  I am OK with this.  They were quite cruel to some people.  I was not one of them.  And my superlative was Most Likely to Give a PSA for Drugs.  OK.

The slideshow was fairly fantastic.  Quite epic, too.  Spliced with video interviews of us that we filmed at Marathon earlier this week.  I don’t really know what happened to this past week.  That was Tuesday.  Feels like it was the day before yesterday.  I was at Marathon again on Thursday, just to say hi.  Feels like last night.  Time is racing away from me so very fast.

I have no idea whether or not I will miss this place.  I don’t know what’s coming.  I’m very scared.  All I really do know is that I will miss the people.  I will, no question, miss the people.

–Stephanie