nolongergrey.com

It also feels like a complete life hack, a way to trick myself into getting something done while still avoiding the part I actually dislike (just send it! Moving gave me a chance to pack a new wardrobe, something 15 year old me would have been infinitely jealous about when I was going through a phase of loving capsule wardrobes and coveting the idea of the perfect wardrobe. I’m writing about clogs, reading about the garden, walking streets I’ve never seen before in a city I’ve spent years in. Funny, to be here, everything tinted with the hazy memory of seeing a road, a field, a building, fourteen years ago, or a Covid-year ago, whichever is longer.

I was living only a few miles (as the crow flies, because nothing is that direct in Vermont) from the place I’d gone to summer camp for eight years, and the air smelled the same, something I always missed. Driving around, through red and orange back roads (moving south gave me a second chance at fall), towards the sunbeamy ocean, and I think how silly it is to ever be anywhere else. Some days, in that fuzziness of not knowing what tomorrow’s tomorrow will look like, I find excitement, excitement to get to live this strange life that I never thought was an option. pasta sauce, carrot cake, cinnamon rolls from a can because normal cinnamon rolls don’t come with the joy of banging a cardboard tube against the counter.

Life feels more normal than it has for months, even though I’m in a new house, taking new, very different classes But instead of living with the fallout of a sense of interrupted reality, I’ve been so astronomically lucky as to be able to create a different reality, one that includes early morning breakfasts on a porch that feels like a tree house, Friday night stargazing to Fleetwood Mac, long Facetimes curled in bed that feel grounding and safe and loving. This whole living-off-campus-like-really-off-campus-like-three-hours-off-campus thing has felt more like summer camp than moving or going to school or leaving home. I was, the type who goes on long walks through the green mountains and touches all the jewelweed, the type who packs a trip day lunch, the sort who shares a shower with a spider because it was technically there first and therefore has dibs.

Not to mention how inappropriate I would have felt creating content this past month that centralized anything other than promoting black voices, learning about racial inequality, and discussing news and necessary legislative changes. The disjointed-ness of it— photos of my college friends, a club-party-faux-prom, Cambridge buildings, with photos of my parents, New Hampshire sunsets, and high school friends a requisite 6 feet apart feel somehow more accurate than the photos I took digitally. I bought the camera initially for spring break (ha!), but best-laid plans have a way of going awry, and this was no exception. These are just a few more, grainier, more color-warped, less posed than usual, of the place I’ve called home for so long, even when it’s not quite the right word anymore.