A Random Letter To A Friend

Before I take you back, let me tell you a little about what is going on with me this week. A lot of it is not going to make a lot of sense (as I have yet to explain) but it will give me a place to start...
Tomorrow is another day at work for me. I will rise early and get ready to go to work. The only thing is, it will be difficult, as it always is, to get out of bed. I'll want to get up early-setting my clock for 6:30 a.m. like I do every night before I go to bed. But when 6:30 comes around, I'll hit the snooze button, like I always do, and I'll roll over and go back to sleep.
When I finally do make it to work, I discover that I don't know where to start. There is so much work to be done-and I'm behind as usual. There are at least five to ten messages on my answering machine-parents who want to talk to me about how their children have behaved, teachers informing me of a kid not at school for the entire month, and people wanting to know where their children are and why they have been arrested.
I like my job, but sometimes when the phone rings, I don't want to pick it up. I want to concentrate on all the other things I have to do before I can possibly even attempt to tackle a new task. But inevitably, the loud ring of the phone startles me into the reality that it is part of my job to answer the phone.
Pretty soon, it will be lunchtime. I'll want to go somewhere, get away for my lunch hour, do anything but sit inside in the dungeon where I work that has no windows-but I don't because that will mean I'll have to leave an hour later. Instead, I sit quietly at my desk, munching on whatever I managed to scrape together the night before to bring to work.
I can hear my co-workers talking and laughing down the hall. I want to talk and laugh with them, but there are two obstacles. The first is that I have so much work to do, I fear that spending time talking with them will only prevent me from getting any real work done. And the other obstacle simply is, I don't really feel as though I have a connection with them; sometimes I get the feeling they don't really like me. But then the feeling passes, and I just keep on working.
Pretty soon, the day is over and I gratefully pack my stuff and leave my office much the same as I found it-cluttered with files and odds and ends and tons more work to be done tomorrow. I head up the stairs, finally getting to see light (and see that it is now growing dark outside) and hurry to my car. If I'm lucky, there will be good songs playing on the radio to keep me company on my 40 minute-or so drive home from work. As I drive, my mind wanders to every place you can possibly imagine. I revisit the event of the day, think about the work that must be done tomorrow, and try to hurry home as fast as possible so that I can take Brinkley, my dog, outside before he goes to the bathroom in the house.
I don't want to go back home most of the time-it's cold and empty and I currently live with a roommate who has few morals and even less feelings. But I will talk about him later. I keep thinking, especially lately, of all the friends I left behind in Oregon.
My thoughts shift to my friend Norma (you) who was my very best friend while I was there. I start to feel as though I have let her down, and I am ashamed. I look back on how we used to watch Friends every night, eat ice cream, and laugh about the antics of our days. Times seemed simpler, easier then. Everything seemed all right and so great-before I journeyed off to college. And that, it seems, is where I left myself. Somewhere in the halls of the dorms or perhaps the classrooms, the Sarah that you might remember still stays there, trying to find herself. But it is a journey I would like to take you on. Perhaps together, we can discover what happened and where she went.
I loved my college. It made me feel so important and special that I could attend a college as prestigious and great as Pacific University. My opportunity to live in the dorm was like embarking on an adventure that I had never even dreamed of before. I would be surrounded by people, and for the first time in my life, could do whatever it was I wanted.
My first roommate, Faith, was the kind of roommate we don't want to remember. She had mousy brown hair and a sort of drawn face that made you think that she frowned a lot and her face had stayed that way. She complained about everything. She rearranged her bed to hide the microwave from the Resident Assistant. Her boyfriend was named "Christoper" but he went by the name "Topher." He was enormously tall and had stinky feet. Inevitably, the disgusting smell would find its way to my bed at night and prevent me from sleeping well. Worse, they both snored so loudly, it felt as if an earthquake happened every couple of minutes. I found it especially ironic that Kathy visited not too long after I first moved in-and Faith was away at her parents house. Well, Kathy had this habit of wearing shoes without socks and the wet weather made her old shoes smell obnoxious. So she came and spent the night and wearing a different pair, we came back to my room to discover it smelled like rotten things in my room. So someone got the genius idea to wrap up the shoes in Faith's blanket. I laughed until I cried when Faith casually noted her blanket smelled bad upon her return. I suggested that Topher had "struck again" and never told her the truth.
During this time, I wasn't sure how to make friends. Growing up in a small town caused the inevitable to happen: you have automatic friends because you see every one of your classmates so often. The people you grow up with end up being your friends. At college, there were so many different people, I didn't really know where to start.
A girl named Jodi lived down the hall and her roommate (whose name I can't remember) was obnoxious. Jodi was from Alaska, the state where the male population supposedly outnumbers the female population by 5 to 1 (although Jodi would argue that it was untrue). She was independent, fun-loving, and loved Pepsi. She had quite a collection of cans in her room. Oh, and she loved frogs too. She was short and athletic and had dark skin and eyes; she was very beautiful to me. I liked her instantly.
Another girl, Emma, lived upstairs with a roommate I cannot recall. Somehow, I befriended a girl named "Melissa" whom Emma introduced me to. Emma was trying to be in a sorority "Theta Nu Alpha" and it seemed cool to me, so I asked to try out for it too.
Emma was loud and obnoxious and her nickname was "squeaky" because of the way she squeaked about everything. Everything about her was larger than life. She was a big girl, yet skinny in a strange way that I didn't understand. She was from Reno, Nevada. There were problems with her and her mother and she had a really big anger problem. But underneath it all, Emma was a wonderful, genuine girl.
So we tried out for Theta Nu Alphas together. Of course they said that hazing was illegal, but they made us do it anyway. We had to do stupid stuff all week (I can't remember exactly what now) and it all culminated to a late night trip to Safeway blindfolded and ending at the bathroom where we were supposed to touch "poo" in the toilet (still blindfolded) as a measure of trust. But all it really was was a banana and chocolate sauce. You supposedly got extra points if you ate it. I knew the trick in advance (my friend had clued me in) and still refused to eat the banana. Ewwww…. It was in the toilet after all.
Meanwhile, Faith (my roommate) became more and more obnoxious. She made demands and let Topher sleep over every single night. I wasn't opposed to her having a boyfriend, but why they couldn't sleep in his room was beyond me.
So Emma and I decided to become roommates. She had slowly become a really good friend. And the some of the "sisters" in the sorority Alice and Eliza, were really amazing people.
Part of the way I paid for college was to do the "Federal Work Study" program which enables the student to get a job on campus as a way to pay for part of their tuition. My job was to work in the computer lab several nights a week. Boy did I get an easy, awesome deal. All I had to do was sit in the computer lab and answer questions and make sure no one walked off with any computer goods. The only bad part about it was that sometimes I was stuck there late at night during the evenings and weekends when it was the last place I wanted to be.
I remember one night, a few of my sorority friends camed and "rescued" me shortly before midnight. Alice drove up in her car toting Emma and Eliza and they wanted to get away they said and couldn't leave without me.
The four of us quickly became the best of friends. Alice was the nerd in the group-if you could even call her that. She was short and chunky with dark hair and giant old-lady glasses that were reminiscent of a style that died in the seventies. But she wore them proudly; she was like the mother of the group. She was really smart, loved theater, and was from Arkansas. She came to Pacific University on a free ride; her father worked as the head of campus maintenance. Eliza, whom I grew to respect immeasurably, was tall and thin and had short dark hair that contrasted her milky white skin. She was wild and wacky and always had an opinion on everything. You'd swear there was always a cigarette somewhere nearby because she loved to smoke. It was her thing. She represented to me the sort of wild, unbridled freedom that I always envied.
For a while, it felt like I was on top of the world. We'd go out, the four of us, and sing crazy "Friends" theme songs or whatever. We'd go to Shari's at unimaginable hours just for something to do. We would sit and laugh and make friends with the waitresses who knew us all by first name.
We loved Shari's and The Olive Garden. But things, like time, has a way of changing.
But that story I will share with you another time.