About a month ago while I was perusing the internet during my lunch break, I came across this New York Magazine post by Kevin Roose, who revealed a touching story of a Yale college student he knew named Marina Keegan. Roose wrote about Marina's great writing potential, which was tragically brought to a halt when she was killed in a car accident five days following her college graduation. Marina's essays and short stories were compiled by her friends, family and former teachers into a post-humorous book called "The Opposite of Loneliness," titled after an essay Marina wrote for her graduating class. An essay in which she fatefully wrote: "We're so young. We're twenty-two years old. We have so much time."
I was really afraid this book wouldn't live up to the hype following the accolades from Ms. Keegan's former mentors, but I can definitely say "The Opposite of Loneliness" was stunningly honest, captivating and terribly relatable, especially for me, a fellow twenty-something and recent-ish college graduate. I adored her fiction essays involving romantic relationships ("Cold Pastoral") and the changing dynamic between young adults and their parents ("Winter Break"). And her haunting observations about pursuing passions ("Even Artichokes Have Doubts") and her own death ("Song For the Special") gave me chills.
Most tragically of all, this book made me believe Marina and I could have been friends in real life. I could envision her future through this book, and I would not have been surprised if this talented young woman was capable of quickly reaching Lena Dunham fame in her post-graduate life. Marina's writing captured a piece of my own soul, and it's tragic her life was claimed before she could capture souls again and again, as her voice morphed with age.
"I used to think printing things made them permanent, but that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. That idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents!"
– Marina Keegan, "Song For the Special"
image via
