The Orphans Vs Decision Making

Look, it’s no secret I love the Orphans. Everyone knows it, to the point where when I say “the orphans”, everyone from my family members to my roommates to my boss at work know who I’m talking about. I’ve run out of time with them –I say goodbye to Ruby and Kenzi this Tuesday — but if there’s one thing we do right, it’s an insane last hurrah. And by that I mean we made an awful, awful decision that ruled so much.

They came over to my apartment for dinner. That was our original plan: dinner and a little secret santa gift exchange. We all needed a break from studying for finals (which were due to start the next day), and we all wanted to hang out a little longer before the dreaded separation.

After the gift exchange (El gifted me a wonderful stuffed dinosaur whom I have named Tortilla and I love so much), we decided to watch Twilight.

Okay, listen, I know. Twilight. But we had recently watched the first two, because only Kenzi and I had seen them and we wanted El and Ruby to suffer the way we had. But there’s three other movies, with a combined runtime of 5 hours and 56 minutes. So…

We originally just wanted to watch one. But we finished the first of them and it wasn’t all that late yet (only midnight!) so we almost jokingly started the second. The night devolved into a cuddle puddle and sheer terror at the Cullen’s CGI nightmare baby. Soon it was 3:00 in the morning, and…

"Should we just finish the franchise?" 
"We don't have a lot of time left together..."
"Weeeeeeelll..." 

And before we knew it, it was 5 am of the next day, finals lined up and waiting, snow blowing around outside, and bloodshot eyes looking around in shock at what we had done.

But wait! There’s more!

You see, we had already made plans the night prior, before we knew it was going to be an all-nighter. So as everyone bundled up and blearily marched off to war, it was with the knowledge that we would be seeing each other again in less than 15 hours, because we were going to do an escape room.

A few finals later, — and about four hours of sleep on my end — we did just that.

Heist-themed escape rooms are delightful by the way, especially when most of it involved us holding flashlights at various angles for Kenzi, our resident code breaker. (Although for the record, we each solved at least one puzzle on our own. My highlight being Finding a Hole, Ruby’s being Sudden Onset Knowledge of Golf Clubs, and El’s being Obtaining a Gun)

With the heist conquered, we went to The Social (where we had one of our first actual hangouts!) and celebrated with lemonade and getting roped into watching a stranger’s instruments.

Then it was time to go home. I gave Ruby and Kenzi their letters (with “strict” instructions not to open them till they’ve left their apartments) and got a nice group hug right there on the sidewalk. I walked El home (it was late and I didn’t really want to go back to my apartment yet) and then began my trek home.

From this point forward, we are going to embark on something really great called: “Anna Hates Crying and Does It So, So Much!”

I cried on the way home from walking El, because the finality was really starting to hit me. (And because Dancing on My Own came on my shuffle, and that song injects melancholy and tearful goodbyes into your heart like it’s trying to stab you to death).

I cried in bed after I got changed, because we were texting and Ruby had the audacity to send a playlist she made for us.

Then I cried today in the shower.

JEEZ DUDE. At this rate I am going to become a withered husk. That is more crying than I’ve done in the past year, and more of it is on the way come Tuesday. Normally I’m very bad at crying! Unfortunately I inherited Dad’s same feelings about crying: “I HATE THIS, EVERYONE LOOK AWAY!!”

But, oh well.

What a note to end on. I’m going to save the rest of my heartbroken Orphans posting till after I say goodbye. I didn’t start out wanting to create this blog as quite the public diary it’s become — don’t worry, Loyal Readers Consisting of Sometimes My Mother and Pretty Much No One Else — I’ve got other thoughts I’m writing about soon. But in the meantime, you get this. Enjoy! (?)