Goodbye is a hard word.

I listened to a sad song on repeat on the parkway earlier.

It worked.

It worked because it dawned on me during class tonight that I have class only two more times. What has monopolized my time since 2009 in easy ways and hard is ending.

It’s ending in the best ways.

Tests from now on don’t have grades. All of them are open book. The books are cheaper. I can commit where I wouldn’t. I can sleep when I couldn’t. I am shifting from unable (to socialize, to read, to write) to able.

It’s ending in the worst ways.

I cried here. I laughed here. I grew (up) here. I am a little bit attached to here. There is comfort in the couch outside my adviser’s office. In the creased counseling magazines on coffee tables. In the classrooms where I learned everything I know (later to learn I kind of still feel like I sort of don’t know what I’m doing).

I am ready but not ready.

Happy but sad.

Goodbye is a hard word.