I've spent the last several hours walking around the ISU Campus. It's eeriely the same, yet different. For example, the place where I am currently sitting (in the main library) was once where the card catalog sat! Actual cards in drawers that you could go through. Of course, all that's given way to computer technology (as well it should) but it's still pretty funny to think about.
I went up to the dorm floor where I lived when I was here--Lorch-Russell house in Friley Hall. It was pretty much the same except the walls have been repainted (one would hope that they would have been repainted in the 12 years since I last lived there!) And next to the rooms they have little paintings of people a la Keith Haring (one person next to single rooms, two people next to double rooms.) It still smells the same all through Friley Hall. I was worried for a little bit because every door that I was trying was locked. But then I went to the main entrance and it was open and that allowed me access to the floor where I lived.
It's funny how everything smells the same. The library, Friley Hall, Fisher-Nickell Hall (where Jeff & Holly lived while they were here and I just found out IS CLOSING!!)--everything. That's the part that doesn't change. Sure there are a lot of new buildings and things have definitely been updated for the 21st century, but so much is the same.
It's a little bit bittersweet to come here, as I was telling Heidi earlier, because I spent a lot of time on this campus feeling very lonely and sad. I probably have no one to blame but myself, but I still feel that way when I come here. I find myself wandering through the campus and seeing younger versions of what I must have been like at that time, and I wonder "Are they lonely too? Do they feel like they're the weird ones? Or if they are weird, do they at least have other people to be weird with?" There are times that I wish I could go back and do it differently, but you really do have to be careful with that wish. It's a silly and overdone movie cliche, but changing just one thing can change everything around you in ways you can't even imagine. Kinda like that new movie with Ashton Kutcher called The Butterfly Effect.
I did spend a lot of time feeling so lonely and sad. I was also angry. Angry at people for not understanding me and for not taking the time to get to know me. Truthfully, it was probably me that was the problem there--I had this insurmountable wall built around myself. And I basically damned people before I even got to know them. That was pretty silly, but I was 18 and what can I say?
Still in shock that Fisher-Nickell is closing. I wonder if Jeff knows that. It makes me want to walk back over there and take a picture of it just for the nuts of it.
More later if I can manage it. I'm going to go try to find Heidi.
