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