I found my old favorite perfume the other day. It was packed between my jewelry box and curly hair products while I was moving in for my senior year. It’s called Salted Muse and has scents of sea salt, pink pepper, and olive tree with hints of woods and crisp amber. At least that’s what the packaging said. I think it smells like getting ready for the weekend in your college house with all of your friends and making plans for what places to go to first. There are hints of will he ask me to be his girlfriend tonight and play that Taylor song about the red scarf and turning 21. This perfume holds more than woody highlights and lavender notes. It is an entire year of my life bottled into a green and gold vessel. I started using it again recently.
Time is cool like that. Sometimes it feels like so much has passed and we’ve just been aging every minute. Other times I feel like the same 13-year-old dealing with mean girls in middle school and figuring out where to eat during lunch. This perfume has a time-bending ability to transport me back in time. And now, as I’m starting my senior year, I am reminded of some of the most transformative years of school. I learned a lot these past years — career things, life things, love things, everything things!
I’m such an emotional person. I think this is one of my superpowers but also one of my weaknesses. I just get so passionate about everything.
When you are someone who is or once was important to me, I’m incapable of forgetting you. This sounds romantic, like we’ll always be connected. The invisible string theory, or whatever it’s called. All of my friends and family will always be with me, and certain things remind me of them. Just like the perfume I found, I can never really forget anything.
While that is true and beautiful in its own way, it’s also an obstacle. When I form relationships, I build them around the things I love. Songs I play for people mean something special, and the perfumes I wore around them smell like us. The places I visit echo memories. The books I read come from their shelves. This way of living is lovely until that person becomes a stranger, or until that place or moment is just a memory.
We all can relate in some way. When we hear a certain song while waiting for watered-down coffee at Dunkin’ or see a book at Barnes & Noble, we are instantly transported to that season we once lived.
These days I get stressed about graduating and choosing a career. Is this something I love? How much money will I make? Do I have time to be a human? Am I making everyone proud? The questions bang around in my head and I’m sure they toss and turn in everyone’s brain. Senior year is a time for reflection. Who shaped me into who I am, and who do I want with me forever? I have a handful of people I can count on two hands who are truly my forever family. I have new places that remind me of old people. I re-read books and smile at lines I once highlighted to show someone. I cry to songs when I’m alone because the singer wrote them just for me.
And I wear my old favorite perfume, the one that always reminds me of you.
