I’m not entirely sure what’s inducing me to admit this to the Internet, but a couple of weeks ago at a party, I spontaneously burst into tears for no reason. (I should also add that this has only happened to me once before at a social gathering and that it is not a normal party-going occurrence for me at all.)
While I feel like the floodgates may have been randomly opened due to the night’s festivities, it was clear from the word vomit that started streaming out that I had been repressing something that had been eating at me for a while now: the creeping dread that all of my friends will forget about me as soon as I leave Northwestern.
I started feeling random bouts of sadness over this back in winter quarter, but it wasn’t until the flood of emails this quarter about student film projects that’ll be happening next fall that it really hit me: Everyone else is already moving on. They’re getting ready to live their lives without me.
And that just sucks. A lot.
I realize that it’s completely petty – considering I’m the one who’s actually leaving – but it kind of stings to think that your friends can see themselves living life and being happy without you. Because as irrational and ridiculous as it sounds, in my mind that equates with forgetting about me.
And I believe it’s because I oftentimes fall into this belief that I think about other people more than they think about me. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s had this thought – and I think it’s because you don’t think of yourself in the way that you think about other people. You’re with yourself all the time, so you never have to remember your own existence.
But with everyone else, with people I used to know, I think about them all the time – even people I haven’t talked to or seen in years. They’ll just randomly pop into my head – or I’ll see something they posted on Facebook – and I’ll think about them briefly and remember the point in time when our lives intersected. And I’ll always wonder, “Do you think about me? Do you ever just randomly remember me and wonder how I’m doing – what I’ve been up to recently?”
Because I do. I still think about you.
A couple months ago on Facebook I saw that a girl I had gone to high school with had had her very first fashion show for a bunch of clothes that she had designed. I haven’t spoken to her since we graduated, but it was awesome to see that she was doing something really cool and something that was so her (I remember she was always impeccably dressed in high school). It’s basically moments like this that make me wonder if people ever have those small recollections of me – and if they will once I leave.
I hope so. I hope that, even though you may not think of me every day, you’ll randomly think about me when you’re at the gym or watching something ridiculous on YouTube. I hope that you’ll still have reasons to say my name out loud when you recount the time that we went on the trampoline in the rain, or even just casually mention the time that we watched something together on Netflix while drinking wine and cheap beer.
Because I know I will. Even as I try to navigate how to be An Adult/A Real Person, I’ll still be thinking about you.
Inhye served as Copy Editor and Assistant Entertainment Editor for North By Northwestern.