Falling Out Of Fashion. Karen Yampolsky

meaning it. Then I gave her a bone-crushing hug. “Thank you for caring so much.”

      Once again, I felt so fortunate for having such understanding friends. Almost losing them wasn’t worth it, I realized, especially when Richard didn’t call. Sarah stayed up many nights listening to me whine and cry about it. I was completely infatuated, and I was constantly thinking about where he was and what he might be doing and with whom. I was convinced that I never should have left him to go back to school, that it was my fault for not being available to him. Thoughts that he might have met someone new tortured me. I’d plague Sarah with those fears on too many nights. And when she wasn’t talking me down from the ledge of heartbreak, she was convincing me that hitchhiking cross-country to find him wasn’t a sane thing to do. Looking back now, I’m so glad that I didn’t screw up my future—and my friendships—for a one-sided obsession. Sarah slapped a real epiphany into me, though, when I relapsed, moaning in a moment of temporary insanity about not wanting to be alone and that I should maybe even consider getting back with Joe.

      “What?!” Sarah screamed. “Now you’ve gone crazy. Listen to yourself. There’s nothing wrong with being single when you’re twenty-one years old, you idiot!”

      I laughed my head off when she said that, because she was right, I was acting like a loser. It hit me. Yes, I was twenty-one, and I had a long love life ahead of me. I hoped.

      While my time at Hillander stretched out like an endless ocean journey in an inflatable raft—with holes—the four years at Bennington felt like a cruise on a souped-up speedboat. I was amazed at graduation how quickly the time had passed. I was even more stunned at what had occurred over the span.

      I had come into Bennington a scared, overweight, insecure prep-school outcast. I left healthy, happy, and secure in knowing exactly who Jill White was. As hard as it was for me to let go of my college years, I felt ready for the real world.