In another life

In another life I woke up in the mornings and found myself lying in a bunk bed, enveloped by purple sheets and closed in by a Naked Green Man and Charlie the Elephante. In another life I looked out my window into the long street leading away from Marzell, and in springtime watched the cows munch on their grass and in wintertime watched the snow fall from the heavens. In another life I sometimes woke up at midnight, convinced that my roommate was sitting at her desk, painting away like there's no tomorrow.

In another life I got on a bus every day and rode down a mountain to school, and came back eight hours later to a dorm full of girls. The lights in the dining room were yellow instead of white and the most we could fit at our table was thirty, not over a thousand. There was almost always someone sitting at a piano, playing the soundtrack to our movie, and there were other girls curled up on a couch, snuggling and giggling and sharing secrets about their day (and whispering and making up nicknames for cute boys), becoming more like sisters every day. And just like sisters sometimes we fought--sometimes the peace of the morning was interrupted by yelling, sometimes there was a direct line between two people, a line spelling out clearly "tension"--and we always made up in the end and were closer than ever.

In another life every night of the weekend nine or ten girls piled into a small room and gathered around a TV and watched movies and swooned over Lucas Till or argued over whether or not Justin Bieber deserves Selena Gomez. Sometimes we went into the kitchen and turned Rihanna on really loud and danced like madwomen, and others we chose to listen to Ingrid Michaelson and sway pensively, dreaming about the future. And when people celebrated their birthdays we dragged them outside and threw water on them and ran screaming from them when they tried to give us a hug.

In another life there was a day when all the staff members left and the Seniors were in charge and we ran all over town and had a water fight. There was a day when we all locked ourselves up in the TV room and sprayed hairspray and put on make-up and watched Disney movies until when we walked out we had been transformed from simple girls into beauties fit for a Banquet. There was a weekend when we traipsed up to Switzerland and danced and screamed "Body Body!" and "Party in a Swiss Chalet" and fried bacon for an hour. There were long walks in the woods to visit Karcia, sledding trips down the hill and Hieber's picnics in Malsburg. There were countless other times when we lived together and laughed together and grew together and loved life together.

In this life sometimes I forget that life. Sometimes I look at it and all I see are the fights, the days of sickness, the boring weekends when everyone was off on some trip or another. Sometimes all I remember is being stressed out because of school; I forget all the girls who distracted me from it when I needed a break. I only remember that I had to clean the bathrooms every day, and not that I got to do it with Ami. I remember only that the winter was bitterly cold, not that I had precious friends to snuggle under a blanket with. I remember that the nights were dark but forget that they were also filled with beautiful stars under which we sat on blankets and shared dreams about our future husbands.

In this life sometimes I go days without thinking of that life. And then there are days when I wake up and look out the window and instead of seeing the streets of Marzell I see the Asbury campus. And instead of seeing Angela I see Rebeca. And I eat my meals under white lights in a room with a thousand other people. My small group is made up of people from TAG and iTAG, not the Witty Home Babes. And most days I see that this is good, but there are other days when I want to go back to bed and keep dreaming. I want to dream that I am sitting on one of those yellow couches, the ones that used to sit next to the aquarium before all the fish died, and all around me are my Blauen Babes. I want to dream that we are sitting under blankets sharing prayer requests and praises, and that outside, though we can't see it because the sun has gone down, the snow is falling and maybe, just maybe, we'll go out and carol in a few minutes. I want to dream that I am back in that life and that this life is still just a hope for the future.

I want to dream all this, but I know that it can't be true because that life is gone. That life lives on only in my memories now, and when I think this I feel the urge to cry. But then I realize that that is good, too. That life was good, and this life will also be good, and someday, in yet another life, I'll look back on both of them and shed a tear because I want to dream that I am back in one of them. That life is gone. But I have the pictures and I have the John Mayer and Ingrid Michaelson songs running through my head as a soundtrack to the memories. Maybe someday I'll go back to that place, and walk through the dorm, and in each room I'll remember something beautiful or tragic that happened. And instead of shedding a tear because it's over, I'll smile because it happened.

In this life, I sometimes smile because I remember that you were in that life.