one for the road

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I thought it was going to be harder.

I sat the keys down on the desk — a cluttered desk buried by notes and phone numbers and ideas scribbled in the fury that seemed to hover over the year — gathered my things and left. In the doorway I paused and looked back at the office that I’d lived in for the past four years. There are so many memories — good and bad, great and awful, scary and exciting — held in that room. So many experiences that will stay there, ones that won’t be had again.

In the doorway I flicked off the light switch and stood in the dark newsroom in the basement of the Grehan Journalism Building. This wasn’t just where I’d made newspapers, it was where I’d made friends. Some days it was where miracles seemed to happen. It’s where I’d made something of myself.

I shut the door behind me and left.

Another Monday paper was finished — my last Kentucky Kernel to be exact. But the newsroom looked the same, as did the hallway; campus was empty like it usually is in the late-night, early-morning hours when I take the long way to my car, desperate to unwind from the last 16 hours. Everything was as it always was. Except for me, of course.

I guess I expected something to be different. Maybe the world was going to stop spinning when mine stopped spinning around the Kernel. But it didn’t. Nothing happened. Instead I walked alone to my car and drove home. And just like that, the last four years of my life snapped shut.

I was happy it was over but somehow sad. It’s a weird feeling knowing that something great has to end for something better to start. It’s even weirder to feel the need to stand still, to hold on for just one more second so it can hurt more. It’s supposed to hurt more.

I thought it was going to be harder.

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