Prospectus, 2.

Marina Keegan, Yale '12, wrote: "We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time."

I'm 22.

She died in a car accident last Saturday "at a time when the members of the class of 2012 have separated for the foreseeable future, and underclassmen have scattered for the summer. There is no physical space for us to mourn..." She had just commenced; graduated magna cum laude five days before her death.

What she had was what I aimed my heart at, what I wanted out of college, the years I was so sick with envy, wanting the "opposite-of-loneliness" that she described.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together... [College] is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts. 

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now. 

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York...

Actually Life is more than the "tiny circles we pull around ourselves." More than college.

There is permanence, non-elusive Joy. There is certainty beyond "We can't, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have."

We build our sandcastles, meanwhile, Christ is building up his Church. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, we confess. The True Church of all places and times.

As I wrote before, I would have built my life upon these fleeting tiny circles, on possibilities and probabilities. I tried. But Christ had mercy on me.