(a small essay written on the campus of UC Santa Cruz for a creative non-fiction writing course)
The early August sun is infused with end-of-summer chill. The concrete is pebbled. Wooden benches are warmed by the afternoon heat. Crumpled pieces of blue tape are on the ground, remnants of a four-square game now long in the past. A fallen cup, the red plastic kind that adults use to drink cheap wine, lays on the shady stage, a relic of Friday night’s dance. It is now Tuesday. No one has picked it up. There is a small grassy area with a tree, a patch of beauty and shade. If you head forward, towards the building, there are flowers and trees next to the dining hall. Fallen purple petals decorate the pathway, blossoms wilting and dropping to the ground. New buds seek to bloom in their place. Graceful branches stretch into the sky, as though reaching for something they will never have again. If you take a left, there is a pond full of koi fish, with more trees draping over it like mothers protecting their children. Trees are everywhere on this campus, and with them, fallen leaves. They are strewn about the ground, on benches, lining pathways. They are minuscule pieces that once belonged to a whole, details that were once a crucial part to the tree, before they were cast aside and taken with the wind.
Life is impermanent, made up of small moments that slip like water through your fingers. I remember the girl in the Converse with the hot pink backpack that I met on the bus at 3:55 in the afternoon. I remember thinking I wanted a backpack like that, and fixating on that for weeks, only to realize one day that I didn’t really like pink anymore. I remember the girl in my rowing class who I grew close to, only for me to move to a different team and never see her again. I remember Pom Pom headbands and lemongrass tea and the sweet taste of pomegranates with my grandmother in India and wanting to cry every time I ate lunch. I remember everything I took for granted, everything I thought defined me, everything I clung onto for ages till it fell away like a leaf from a tree, leaving me standing in the pieces of who I once was.
Are we not all like trees, decorating ourselves with habits and desires and small interactions that mean everything in the moment and nothing days later? Do we not all watch pieces of our lives fall away, only for new things to grow in their place? We live in phases, adorning ourselves with little things that shape the lens through which we view the world. I love foods I refused to eat three years ago, I barely contact people who were once like family to me, I cringe with horror looking at my old playlists on Spotify. Two years from now, I will most likely view my current wardrobe and shake my head with disdain, have friends that are nothing like the ones I have now, and laugh about the things that keep me up at night. Who we are fundamentally, our values, our beliefs, may change slowly, but the ways we express that shift on the daily. Everything is transient, every moment shapes you, and the small things you love may all someday be gone, only to be replaced as time passes. We are cyclical beings with ephemeral identities, and there are only so many things that we can hold onto forever.
Standing here staring at the fallen leaves, I can’t help but be reminded of everything I never wanted to let go of. It is a bittersweet feeling, thinking of the past. Where did my childhood go? What am I going to lose next? Our lives can change so quickly, so subtly, that sometimes you don’t fully understand what you’re losing until you wake up in the morning and realize that it’s long gone. I don’t know when exactly I stopped feeling like a little girl, or the exact moment I started worrying about where I would be in the future, or when I began subconsciously distancing myself from my family, and I don’t remember exactly why either. I don’t know exactly when I stopped missing my best friend who moved away, or came to terms with the death of my grandfather, or ended my childish obsession with glitter and sparkly dresses. All I know is I once felt a certain way, and now I don’t. But change can be a good thing, too. I lost some of my youthful naivety, but I gained the ability to be more objective. I lost a friend, but I gained a stronger sense of self. Every tiny thing I have had to let go of, every emotion, aspiration, or connection that I have lost, has made me more alive, more myself, in one way or another. No part of me was taken that was meant to be there forever. My self-expression may have shifted, but the person I am remains the same. The leaves may have fallen, but the tree remains strong.
