Meeting Rachel

The end.

   The end. Or Rather the beginning of the end. Today was my last day of high school, the day we’ve all been dreaming of since midterms freshman year,  and I was finally on my way from  bumbling student council vice-president to stunning,(hopefully)thin college student. The days of late night studying on the quads of my new dorm were only days away and my chance to become everything I’ve ever wanted was at the tip of my hands. I had gone to the orientation, I had met friends, singed my life away on a loan I’d have to hope my job could cover in a couple of years and set out to become the next Sonia Sotomayor, or RBG, or anyone of importance, really. It's funny because you never really think about the negatives when you are at the top, and you never really know it is the top until you’re back at the bottom, and even then you still wonder. You know, you think you leave high school with a sense of whom you are and who you are going to become. You set goals, you make plans, and you rush through life without a care in the world. Then your first week of classes starts, it’s good, you think you have everything under control, you think you make life what it is, when really life makes you who you are. The circumstances you are going through, you know they are not normal. Weeks pass you have joined an organization or two you think you are happy but you know deep in your heart of hearts that you are stuck. Therefore, you wait. Wait for your catalyst wait for something to change. And you laugh because there is really nothing else you can do and it's funny.

It’s funny, how everyone always tells you that opposites attract, that as human beings we are infinitely more attracted to the people whose traits are so different from our own, people that complete us. I think that is bullshit. I cannot think of a time in all my infinite 18-year-old wisdom I have ever searched for someone who was not like me: broken, funny, moody. Fucked up people look for other fucked up people to be around, it is not rocket science. Only those who have lived a life of it are the ones who can tolerate the dank smell of inner rottenness. I guess that is what brought me to them, or rather, to her.

I met her through a friend, an obsession really; I was obsessed with who I thought this person was but quickly got fed up with who she really is. But through her I met Rachel, frightened, hedonistic, insecure, broken Rachel who said I reminded her of her freshman year. They were roommates; I was staying the night, too drunk to make it to the bus stop.

“You know, if you want you can sleep on the big couch” she said, or rather whispered, Rachel never really said anything not definitely. She whispered suggestions, she was calming. She lived in a horrible box with four other students, two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and a bathroom. She was the epitome of broke college student living on vegetarian quick meals and ramen, she was everything I wanted to be. I know it sounds weird, wanting to be broke and squished up in some tiny apartment with a bunch of other kids I mildly tolerated, but you don’t get it. As bad as it all seemed she was free- I drunkenly nodded to her retreating form, short too short. That was a bad night, that was the night I realized that I was truly stuck so I went out and got drunk because what do you do when you can’t move forward and you certainly can’t move back, you sit, you wait, you drink.  That’s how  I found myself laying face first in her couch crying silent tears, I was stuck but even then I knew Rachel was my catalyst.  That was the first time I had ever cried alone.

Two weeks later I saw her again sitting down at the campus café doing god knows what with a guitar. I cleared my throat hoping to catch her attention. Nothing.  “I-I didn’t know you played” I said hesitantly. She looked up at me; she was not expecting me, not expecting me to talk to her that much was clear in her eyes. “I don’t. Well, not anymore.” She whispered.

 “Why’d you stop?” she looked away, was it too personal?

  “I quit music because it gave me no purpose. I was brilliant, top of my music school, then I dropped out. Couldn’t care about music anymore, so I left it all behind to deal with real world issues, trust me there are a shit ton.”  This was probably the longest conversation wed ever had and I could not keep my mind straight. The next morning id gone straight to the advising office and changed my major from Theatre to political science. She was my end. My catalyst.