The Graduate: A Disclaimer

On a warm evening in April, I went out for a drink with a boy I barely knew. Spring had sprung, and I was growing increasingly excited about my impending year at Berkeley. I had very few preconceptions about the year, except one absolute conviction- that when I crossed the Atlantic I would be doing it on my own. Teetering down to the pub in my stupidly high heels, I reasoned with myself that the odds of falling head over heels for someone with only four months to spare before leaving the country were too slim to even take into consideration. 

In the weeks that followed, as he swept me along winding alleyways to obscure pubs and rickety coffee shops, I persuaded myself that the situation was totally under control. Yes, he was gorgeous, clever, and he had a tweed jacket: but he was still only a boy, with all the correct limbs and relatively symmetrical features. He was nothing to get excited about. I attributed the strange lurching sensation that gripped my diaphragm every time I saw him to heatstroke, and spent hours puzzling over why- having seen brown eyes and curly dark hair on many other men before- these particular features were suddenly making me feel a little delirious. 

It was only when I found myself sitting on the white stone steps of the Berkeley National Sciences building, unable to stop myself thinking about the boy I was leaving behind, that I realised I had a problem. 

When I returned to Norwich, sunburnt and overwhelmed with a future that was suddenly much more real: I realised I was frightened of walking away from him. After much stammering I managed to vocalise this sentiment, and between us we resolved that, although neither of us knew where this relationship was taking us, we didn’t want it to end. Now a map of the USA covers one wall of his bedroom, slowly being covered in sharpie annotations, coloured stickers, and arrows following the main highways. 

Romantic attachment is not something I’m used to exploring in my writing, but I can’t shake the feeling that this boy may be around for a while.