Dear American University,
What I'm about to say is kind of difficult. We've been together for a long time and I honestly didn't think the time would ever come for us to part indefinitely. It feels like only yesterday we began our affair that hot August day in '03, after briefly flirting on a campus tour the November before, an overnight in April and orientation in June.
Our relationship was pretty open. You didn't reprove me the first time I didn't come home one night and showed up tired and sweaty from my first walk of shame the next morning. You showed only the mildest interest in my friends' sexiling, our secret hookups and fledgling romances. Though you were slightly concerned when you caught us fornicating in the library bathroom or laundry rooms, you said nothing about our off-campus activities, even when they involved a roadside rendezvous.
You were there to comfort us or help us celebrate when Kerry was defeated in the '04 election and when the Red Sox won the World Series. You politely didn't stare when my first college boyfriend broke my campus PDA virginity and didn't pull back the shades of my quad-side dorm room when we finally took our relationship to the next level. When it was time to go abroad, you silently absorbed my tears while I chain-smoked in the LA Quad.
Even in our time apart you were available to let me know what was going on: My friends' efforts to raise money for tsunami victims, only slightly overshadowed by pregnancy scares and devastating breakups. You kept me at an arm's length the summer after, and no private bathroom showers or laundry machines could remove the stains of displacement that accompany sexual behavior post-drought and predeparture for another semester abroad.
That time, it was my turn to report back to you on my activities. Though my commentaries lacked information on Ben Ladner's expenditures or the plight of the Katrina victims, I eagerly shared my weekly musings of flings in a foreign land. It wasn't until I came back to you that I realized others had actually followed my misadventures. My first semester back I tried in earnest to destabilize my status as a single, but all attempts, as recorded, were doomed to fail. In the wake of these failings our relationship once again began to flourish.
You were kind enough to disguise our old rooms each semester with new decorations, dulling the memories of what we gained and lost behind those closed doors. Of course you were there as I began my first internship, sunk my teeth back into my courses, and with newly-minted legality, painted the town bright red. I got a peek of your insides that summer when I worked with more of the people that make up your heart than ever before. With this intimate knowledge in tow, I was swept into senior year.
You gently nudged me along as the future opened up to me. You hardly seemed to notice that I was exploring more of the professional world, with neglect to any prospect of a relationship. Though hookups became less and less frequent, they continued to serve as mile makers in our relationship. Numerous unsuccessful attempts in wooing your other lovers made me so frustrated I wanted to hate you. As a senior, I felt entitled. You withheld, and forced me instead to look more closely at myself.
Now I can see why you held back, why you rebuffed my attempts to use you for my satisfaction. Because it wasn't you who could truly satisfy me, that lay somewhere outside your gates, beyond the limits of the District. I wasn't willing to be patient, but you knew that our relationship would end like this.
It is for all these reasons that I thank you, American University. I thank you for your unsolicited support and relentless appetite for my tales. I thank you for your resistance to my demands, and for the occasional acquiescence of my subtle delusions of grandeur. Thank you for allowing me to reinvent myself, redirecting my path to a more suitable companion.
As this chapter in my life comes to a close, it was easy to assume that it would be the people I missed the most. But as this letter testifies, my relationship with you, AU, encompasses events, minor and major, personal and public, and captures a collection of memories that contribute to a relationship more significant than with any one individual.
It may be hard to say goodbye, but I hope you will cherish all the times we've shared together. I know I will. I hope your life will continue to be filled with stories of love and redemption, heartbreak and revenge, of sexual encounters and failed attempts. It may sometimes be hard to share, or confess our wild experiences, but you must never forget that everybody does it - it just takes the brave to talk about it.
Thanks again for understanding why we must part, AU. I wish you the best of luck and happiness in the future.
Yours Truly, Blair Bryant
