I was so sad and scared for many reasons which I was leaving behind, but it quickly occurred to me that I was also scared for a few reasons looking forward. I didn't have a job secured yet and I was unsure of just how long the money I'd made at my summer job would sustain my new college lifestyle. I was moving to a place with a higher crime rate and I couldn't help but imagine being mugged in the bad neighborhoods of the city I would now call home. But perhaps most daunting of all, now that I look back at that moment in my life, is a fear which is far less tangible and much more realistic: I did not know a single person in Wichita. I was the only one from my graduating class to be going to WSU as a freshman, and while I was very excited about getting away from the people I'd long ago outgrown, it also momentarily paralyzed me with panic.
I had no one. The realization really hit me that first night when I went to bed in my dark new dorm room, all by myself, without my Mommy, my baby brother, my best friend, or my boyfriend. I only had myself. My roommate hadn't arrived yet and there was no guarantee I'd like her when she did (I didn't). I was just going to have to make friends in my classes and cross my fingers that I'd eventually find some people who would understand me.
It took some time at first, but eventually I did find my own little tribe of various misfits and weirdos.
Freshman year was rough, and I really only still speak to one person who I knew at that time. I like to think of that first year as the awkward freshman year that a lot of people experience, where you try your hand at a lot of different things just to find out what you like and see what sticks. My roommate and I didn't have much in common and we lived in an unhealthy silence for the entire year. This greatly shaped my outlook on making new friends. My suitemate and I, however, banded together for a while, but towards the end of the year that began to disintegrate as our paths went in separate directions. I'd made a few other friends through work (I actually ended up getting a job before August was even over, and I stayed there for a year) and various other activities. At the end of the year, though, I left Wichita to go home for the summer still feeling pretty alone.
The following year was really the turning point in my college career. You always hear stories where people say "we met in college" or they talk about how they went to college with their best friends/bridesmaids/groomsmen. This is the really profound part of my journey where I first encountered those kinds of characters in my life's story. I moved into a different residence hall, partially by choice, and partially because the university's administration kicked returning students out of where I'd previously lived. It doesn't really matter now how my path led me there, because I ended up exactly where I was meant to be. I was at Brennan.
I cannot count on both my hands all of the countries represented in Brennan. There are a lot. Within the first week of living there, I had made new friends from all over the world; from places I'd never known anyone from before; and certainly from places I could not identify on a map. Brennan was a hodge-podge of so many different ethnicities and nationalities, due in part to its close location to the International Education office, and also because it had the cheapest housing rates available. Throwing so many international students and domestic students together in two buildings certainly had its quirks.
Although we came from many different cultures individually, the combined culture of Brennan was one rich in brutal honesty, immense sexual innuendo, racist jokes, and mild sexism. We all spent entirely too much time together, frequently invaded one another's personal space, knew terrible truths about each other, and at some point everyone had been pissed off at someone else. Despite all of our various differences, what kept us together were the things we had in common. We were one giant, usually loving, always misbehaving, slightly dysfunctional, multi-colored family.
I have this big world map on my wall right above my bed this year, where I put little adhesive tags with the names of my loved ones on it. I am a visual learner and seeing my friends spread out geographically like that really puts it into context for me. There are some tabs on the map which represent people who I did not meet through Brennan, and I cherish those international friendships just as dearly. I know by my age, plenty of people have accomplished much more. But I'm quite proud of being twenty-one-and-a-half years old and having friends from six out of seven continents. (Does anyone really live in Antarctica anyway?)
The Brennan residence hall has since been shut down by the administration, and we dispersed in different directions. We all feel collectively pretty sad and even a little bitter about it, but I remember what a friend told me last year: "Brennan's not a building. It's a community." A group of us moved together into another residence hall after it closed, and we still hang out regularly. It's not quite the same as it was before, but just like anything else in life, it has evolved as time has gone on. A few of the members of my Brennan family have since returned back to their home countries, and while I always hate it when the international students leave, Facebook does help keep us close. And I doubt if they know this, but I assume that I have a place to stay in any of their home countries if ever I should need it.
I look at this map on my wall, and I think back to my freshman year in Wichita. I spent that first lonely night in my empty dorm room, just a few doors down in the very hall where I sleep now. I didn't know a single person when I moved to (what I thought was) a big city three years ago. Wichita seemed cold and lonely and truly terrifying to even the most headstrong of eighteen-year-old girls.
Apart from my time spent cultivating international relationships at Brennan, I did travel abroad for the first time in college, which inspired me to take a solo trip to check out an even bigger city later. When I look at my map of friends and see how far away the places I've been are located from the tag that says "Mom & Zane", I realize that the one hour drive from home to Wichita in 2012 was not so far, afterall.
I have grown an incredible amount in such a short span of time during my college years. I know I'm responsible for most of it myself, but I don't pretend that at least part of that growth has been due to them; those little adhesive tags littered all over my map, which represent living, breathing people, with whom I've lived, slept, ate, argued, and known on a very real level. Without even one of those people in my life, I would not be the very person I am today. Nobody can do everything in this world on their own, least of all grow.
Three years ago when I made that interminable drive to Wichita with all my belongings, the thought never once crossed my mind that I was driving toward such meaningful friendships and such varied cultural exposure. I felt so alone in a city of 380,000. I knew no one. Now, a short time later, I feel so at home all over the world; and it all changed within the same city limits.
Now I feel I'm outgrowing Wichita, just as I felt when I outgrew Ark City. I made a big girl leap into a bigger city 50 miles away, even though I was scared. It took some time and adjustment, but I now know I survived. Having that knowledge and experience under my belt, I am now much more fearless to do it again, on a larger scale.
It's strange to think that so much has changed in such a short amount of time. But meeting so many people from so many places (along with my own traveling experience) has taught me that I can indeed go anywhere and do anything, because I now know I can make a home and find friends anywhere at all in this world, no matter how scared and alone I might feel when I first arrive. I've just got to look around to find my own little tribe of misfits and weirdos, wherever I may be. They look different and they come from different places, but no matter where I may go, they're there: friendships waiting to be made.
"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open." - Albus Dumbledore
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