fresh starts

Without really requesting it, I've been given the opportunity for a fresh start.

In the last two weeks, my computer crashed with everything on it and I lost my cell phone.

In a sense those two losses mean nothing, but in another, they were loaded (I repeat loaded) with the heaviness of the last two years.

My voicemail alone is a diary in a sense. I delete few messages. Without fail, every time I check my voicemail, I hear Jesse Butler's voice first as he sits in Cassano's Pizzeria with me, calling my phone and yelling, "SSUUUP CAAAAAAAAAIIIIIT LEEEEEEEEN! HOWZIT GOIN!?" I hear my mom's first message to me as she and my dad drive home from dropping me off at Northwestern. I hear Brandon calling to say he misses me in October. I hear Tate calling to sing me a Happy Birthday at 4 am on the day of my birthday. I hear Heather calling me to say she got home okay from the party she abandoned me at where I had protected her from scissors. I hear Matt calling to say to come out to the lakefill to study. I hear Jess calling this summer because we kept playing phonetag rather than talking to one another. I hear Amy calling to go to Kidd Coffee. I hear Brett calling to say he was in Old Navy and thinking of me. I hear Bryan calling to say that he was out driving and listening to Keane and figured I was doing the same. I hear John calling and just screaming my name. I hear JP calling after our connection gets lost and cracking jokes for five minutes. I would hear Julie calling to give warnings about sketchy men, if I could reach my phone. And that would definitely get saved, if I could save it. I'm not even sure what the last message on my phone was recently...maybe something from Amy or Carolyn or my parents about the Chicago roadtrip.

Among other things lost are all phone numbers and saved voicenotes (they were actually important) on my phone.

My laptop is the worst loss of all. I had not only hundreds upon hundreds of photographs from my first years at college on there, but also a 50-page diary (Microsoft Word, size 10 font, single-spaced) that I had been keeping since June of senior year. I looked it over fairly thoroughly recently and I was blown away by how much I had changed without realizing it. That had been my purpose is keeping it, too--to see how much I change. I had done a relatively good job keeping it, writing long entries at least every two weeks, sometimes in spurts of a dozen short entries in a few days. I cannot express enough my disappointment at losing this document. I will never again go without backing up files for more than two weeks.With Carolyn and Amy's visit to Northwestern (simultaneous with discovery of all lost files and losing cell phone), I think that a fresh start is inevitable. Although I already felt pretty free of everything, now that I cannot even reflect on it, I have no choice but to live in the moment. Now the question is what will the moment bring? The end of the quarter brought me to two paths, one that might circle to the same point it always has and another that leads to who knows where. I am pretty excited for this trip, even if I have left my baggage somewhere else.