Scent Memory

Tonight was my first night locking up OCT after rehearsal. I went around to each of the rehearsal spaces to turn off lights. The last one I hit was the Acting Studio, which is furthest down the hall. I opened the door and WHAM a smell from my past hit me in the face. My first thought was a visual one: very clearly, my numbers comforter. My second thought was emotional: that clench in the pit of your stomach when you think of something you loved and can never have back, tinged with a dash of bitterness. I groped around my mind, trying to remember. At first I thought it was the smell of my apartment on E60th, that I shared with Ben and Caroline and Joanna. But that wasn't right. So I closed the door, put my bag down, shook myself out a bit and stepped back into the room. It hit me again, just as hard, but clearer.
It was the smell of the cardroom in Booth.  I remembered my comforter first because it was such a small room and my comforter was so bright, it dominated it. I again felt the sadness of that term, feeling like a ghost, having come back to Bennington after being so sure I never could and having Bennington stripped of what I loved: not being a house chair, not having a show. But then I remembered what that term was full of: turmoil and drama, sleepless nights, hysterical laughter, the morning light sloping across the lawn and through Booth's backdoor. I suddenly and deeply mourned everything I still had then: my friends, my house, my school, my place in it all.
I just stood in the dark rehearsal hall, breathing through my nose like a race horse and muttering "oh god oh god oh god."
I tried to leave twice but both times turned around, just to smell my 5th term cardroom one last time.