It’s a gorgeous Monday evening in June, where summer is starting to push through. The sun goes down later, the birds are still chirping late into the evening, and it’s the perfect temperature to be outside with everyone. Just stepping out of La Clairiere, a smile starts to form on my face. Looking around, I see people throwing their heads back, emitting a sound of laughter only achieved by pure happiness. The majority of people are playing red-rover, which turns into two separated games of soccer mixed with tag. While the rest are sitting on a blanket laughing at a joke that was just told. They soon get up, and ironically dance. Closing my eyes, I hear individual voices rise and fall, laughter cutting through things be said, and voices singing along with the music playing. At this moment, we are infinite. There aren’t any more tests looming over our head, packing has been put on hold because nous passons du temps ensemble pour la derniere fois.

I open my eyes to find that hours have passed, and we’re all standing in the lobby of the dorm. The atmosphere isn’t light anymore – if anyone had walked in at that moment they would have thought someone had died. And in truth, something did die. We had to accept the truth that when the sun comes up, everything will become a memory.

Reality is at the door, knocking.

The guys are standing at the edge of the room, occasionally walking over to someone, hugging them while trying to make them laugh. However, once their arms fall to their sides, they silently slide back to their spot on the wall, and watch their feet, uncomfortably. They want to make everything better, but they know they can’t. We’re all hugging each other, saying promising phrases like, “we’ll stay in touch” but the tears just roll down our faces saying the truth we can’t bring ourselves to say aloud.

Although it’s been four months since our last moment together in France, it still feels like a dream. I know most people expect me to be over that whole year, but that was one of my best years of my life. I’ve made so many memories, experienced a lot of new things, and made a ton of friends who were my family for nine months. Now miles separate us from the chats we had, the surprise parties, and the trips we made into Geneva; I long for those days to be with them, unfortunately that year’s gone. I can only hope that we have become stronger and will remember the memories we made together.

Je vous aime tellement.