For Better or For Worse

By Max Troiano

"The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward."
~ Steve Maraboli

     Friends who encourage you to do more help you to be more, for better or for worse. My newfound friends over my past three years Fenn have done just that to me. It took a year and a half or so for me to find the groove of things with them, but it had all neatly fallen into place by Halloween of last year when Max Merhige invited me over to his house along with four or five others. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew from the start it was going to be different. It was a slick dark night, the kind of night where every light shone off the wet pavement and the trees still slowly dripped with the afternoon rain. I softly pulled up to the house and got out of the car, the doorlight casting a weak glow onto the grass. I tentatively stepped in the door, and we were off.
     Max Merhige, Max Libby-Grantham, Will Simon, Nathaniel Pynchon, Ethan Rich, and I sprinted around the questionably grippy pavement, nearly sliding into telephone poles and each other as we tried to be the first to get the candy bars. There was no plan, I was completely out of my comfort zone, and I was without a doubt having the time of my life. My friends bring out the best and the worst in me, inspiring me to both confidence and recklessness, on the one hand invigorating and on the other worryingly flippant of the consequences of our actions. I will never again be the fearful boy with a head stuck inside a book that I was at the start of my time here at Fenn. I have only spent three years, a small fraction of my life, with these people, and for better and for worse will not spend much more time with them. But that time which I have has undoubtedly changed me — and for the better.