This is a descriptive writing piece I wrote for my Language Arts class about my last night at camp this year. I'd like to dedicate it to everyone at Walnut -friends and staff- thanks for making such a difference for me this summer.
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It's hard to say goodbye. It's even harder when you know it might be forever.
However, something about watching Disney movies in a room with all your friends during a co-ed slumber party makes it easier.
The room's crowded by bodies, but the closeness is giving off a sense of comfort. Someone's feet are dangerously close to my face, but I don't care. Kernels of salt-infused popcorn are scattered through my hair, but the scent is stale and forgotten. "The Parent Trap" has been playing for what seems like hours on the flat screen; but, muted and abandoned, is paid little attention.
A hushed chatter lulled at the bottom of the room, a small silence lay at the top. Behind the couch, blankets keep people warm, protecting them from the end of our time together. There was something so welcoming, so desperate about the tightness of the blankets: teenagers holding their closest friends tight, wondering if they'd ever cross paths again. Kids who knew that they were enveloped by a lifelong family.
I'm only half awake, just barely able to absorb the emotion surrounding me, and I realize the sun's coming soon. With the sun -- that furious ball of fire and heat -- comes the end. When the sun breaks over the rolling valley and the brick buildings that we learned and laughed in, we'll say goodbye.
Just a few hours before, we'd been under the blinding stage lights. We'd danced and sung our hearts out with joy, with the last burst of energy we had. Most of us had wanted to stay up all night, to stay awake with each other as long as we could. And yet, exhaustion fills our lungs from five weeks of not breathing. Our month long adrenaline supply had run dry.
Five weeks are too short of a time to get to know people. To become friends, great ones, best ones. To fall in love and have your heart broken. To feel on top of the world, and to fall. Five short weeks should not have made that much of an impact on all of us. And yet, here we all are, drifting off to sleep as one, our last night.
Just barely awake, my eyes open just a crack, as far as I can manage in my exhausted state. The conscious part of the crowd is rising slowly: grabbing hands and slipping shoes onto weary, worn out feet. With blankets wrapped around them, they step carefully through the resting, around the weary, over the scratching rug, out of the dorm. I ask, almost in a dream, where everyone was going.
They're going to watch the sun rise.
