O

n March 25, I boarded a flight from Detroit 
to Southern California, where I grew up. The 
airport was eerily empty, the Transportation 

Security Administration workers wore masks and 
televisions throughout the terminal were broadcasting the 
latest fatality numbers of COVID-19. Rolling my suitcase 
to my gate, the few people in the terminal gave each other 
a wide berth, exchanging nervous yet empathetic half-
smiles. This is weird, everyone said wordlessly to each 
other. Things are not as they should be.

I found my seat on the mostly empty plane, leaned 

my head against the freshly disinfected (courtesy of 
my antibacterial wipes) window and queued up Peter, 
Paul and Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Cliche? Most 
definitely. Yet the lyrics, describing leaving behind a lover 
for some future unknown — “I’m leaving, on a jet plane 
/ don’t know when I’ll be back again / Oh babe, I hate to 
go” — hit a little too close to home, and I cried, hard, the 
continuation of the past three days of non-stop tears since 
I’d made the decision it was time for me to leave Ann Arbor. 

As the clouds soared beneath me, I allowed myself to 

fully delve into the melodramatic-film-end-scene mood 
of the moment, indulging in feeling shamelessly sorry for 
myself. This global pandemic has unlocked a whole lot of 
weird, big-picture feelings — a sense of uprootedness, a 
floaty kind of dread, grief on a broad, existential scale — all 
emotions I hadn’t experienced before and didn’t (and still 
don’t) really know how to put into more explicit words. 

In a perhaps futile effort to make sense of it all, though, 

I’ve come to the realization that many of these feelings 
resonate as variations on one, nastily familiar one: 
heartbreak. Leaving Ann Arbor feels, for lack of a better 
comparison, like a breakup — and a pretty shitty one at 
that. 

Everyone has their own tragedies right now, a friend of 

mine aptly put it, whether it be a canceled commencement, 
a postponed performance or a more immediate and life-
threatening threat such as loss of a job, a bad home 
environment that’s impossible to escape or the disease 
itself. In the grand scheme of people who are impacted by 
COVID-19, my exodus from Ann Arbor is not a big deal. I 
know this. Yet, I’m struggling.

I know the virus is all everyone’s writing about right 

now, in a way that can sometimes feel like a desperate race 

to draw the proper conclusions or 
make the most profound creative 
statement about the current state 
of the world. Sloane Crosley of 
The New York Times somewhat 
ironically 
warns 
against 
this 

phenomenon, pointing out that 
“from an artistic standpoint, it’s 
best to let tragedy cool before 
gulping it down and spitting it back 
into everyone’s faces.” 

But while this virus is a big 

collective experience, it’s also 
inherently solitary — as from our 
little self-isolation bubbles we 
attempt to conceptualize where, as 
individuals, we stand with this new 
reality. So this is me attempting not 
to draw any big picture conclusions 
or spit in anyone’s face, but rather 
put 
words 
to 
an 
experience 

that — like any heartbreak — is 
immensely personal. I’m dealing 

with the loss of Ann Arbor in the way that I’ve dealt with 
every previous heartbreak I’ve gone through — writing 
about it, breaking it down, hoping that doing so will help 
make sense of the current moment in some small way. 

Leaving Ann Arbor was a conscious choice on my behalf, 

which is in large part why it was so difficult to go. Students 
were urged to leave campus, but I was living in off-campus 
housing. I had an apartment, I had access to a roommates’ 
car, I had friends living around me I could lean on in case 
of emergency. I could have stayed through the summer 
as I’d previously been planning on. I could have tried to 
prolong my college experience as long as possible, tried to 
take in every last drop of Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor has been my home for the past four years. I 

have grown into the person I am in this city — in fraternity 
basements and dingy bars, Mason Hall class discussions 
on the modern political system where I can’t help but be 
distracted by the orange-hued leaves of the Diag trees 
outside the window, strategizing meetings with friends 
from various campus orgs over Espresso Royale’s watered-
down Hazelnut blend, late night roommate talks on 
fraying, passed-down couches in run-down college houses 
weakly lit by a bulb the landlord insists is sufficient for the 
space. I’ve met people that inspire me to take action and 
advocate for others, people that taught me to love deeply, 
people I now consider my best friends. 

This year, my senior year, full of evenings gathered 

around the living room TV with roommates to do The 
New York Times crossword puzzle, weekly wine-fueled 
book clubs with friends, and familiar friendly faces in my 
regular coffee shop haunts, Ann Arbor has felt like exactly 
where I needed to be. It’s felt like where I am supposed to 
be — surrounded by a community that knows me well, that 
supports me, that sees me for who I am.

Ann Arbor and I have had a good relationship, a healthy 

one, for the most part. But as in any relationship, things 
change. Ann Arbor has changed — it’s shuttered, quiet, 
isolated. It’s not the same brimming, full of energy city 
that I know and love, with coffee shops overflowing with 
friends, young parents walking their dogs in the Nichols 
Arboretum with offspring in tow, flocks of students toting 
backpacks and bemoaning upcoming midterms crossing 
the Diag on their way to class. The community, the 
collective being, has become a shadow of what it once was, 

reduced to a few solitary joggers and roommates braving 
the outdoors for aimless socially responsible walks. 

Surrounded by the echoes of the past four years of 

my life, it took everything in me not to play dumb, to let 
myself be convinced that this new status quo was anything 
close to what had once been. I wanted, so badly, to believe 
that the community and support I’d felt in this town was 
still there. It would have been easier, perhaps, to stay. To 
prolong the stage of life that was Ann Arbor. But, I quite 
reluctantly forced myself to recognize that staying in Ann 
Arbor was hurting me more than it was helping me — it 
was just a constant reminder of what was and what could 
have been. 

I chose to come home to California. I chose to be with 

my family in a time of widespread uncertainty, to let 
myself have some stability for the moment, to spend time 
in the sunshine, read and wait. Still, though, letting go 
wasn’t — and isn’t — easy.

Having to make the choice to leave, to break-up with 

not only this city, but the person I am there, is terrifying. 
I’ve left before of course, for summers or study abroad, but 
I’ve always come back. Who am I without even the future 
promise of Ann Arbor to remind me? Ann Arbor is where 
I’ve had the space to question who I am as an independent 
human being, to shape an identity free of the constraints 
of my hometown. The person I am in Ann Arbor is self-
assured, knows who and what she values and is confident 
in her role in her friendships and her own ability to take 
on the world. Is that person still there, if Ann Arbor isn’t 
anymore?

This transition was going to come anyways. I wasn’t 

going to stay in college, and in Ann Arbor, forever. But 
the suddenness, the lack of resolution or clarity has made 
the change hit so much harder. I wanted this relationship 
to end with some real closure, where Ann Arbor and I 
could reflect on all the growth and good experiences 
we’d had with our time, celebrating the end of an era 
with graduation caps and champagne. I was planning on 
leaving Ann Arbor with my friends in tow, an entire class 
of college graduates entering the post-graduate world 
with each other to lean on. Instead, we’re all scattered 
back to our parents’ houses, hiding from the shadow of our 
17-year-old selves — prematurely leaving behind the city 
that’s given us so much, the friends we’ve made, the sense 
of self we’ve forged in this place.

Despite how unfair it feels and how badly I wish I could 

get those last two months back, I’m trying to come with 
terms with the fact that it’s time for me to let go. Maybe 
someday Ann Arbor and I can reconcile — but I don’t 
know, and I’m not counting on it. So for now, I’m saying my 
goodbyes, while retaining what I can of the person Ann 
Arbor has taught me to become.

Now, at home, I’m trying to make sense of what my new 

role is in this weird in-between stage of life, while the 
world does the same around me. Unlike most conventional 
breakups, I can’t really rebound right now. I can’t go out to 
my town’s movie theater, sit in the square outside the café 
and have my cup of coffee, fall in love with the laughter 
and community and collective being of another place. 

So I’m doing what I can. Writing, lots. Processing 

in the only way I know how. Talking to friends on the 
phone. Trying to not beat myself up for the days when 
productivity seems near impossible, when I give in to 
consuming various forms of mind-numbing media from 
the comforts of my couch. Recognizing that, as with all 
heartbreaks, I will heal — it’s just going to take some time 
to get over this one.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement 
7B
Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement
7B
Leaving on a jet plane

BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

PHOTO COURTESY OF MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT

