College is a time of change, a time of transition and wondering. The sky is the limit. This is where I get to dream.

I often get so incredibly caught up in the people I’m around at school in the best way possible because they make me a better version of myself.

I have been so deeply challenged, mentored and loved by my friends who have come from all over the country to rest in our current home of Nashville, Tennessee.

Time here seems perfect. Between our formals and functions, our sleepovers and road trips, our hours of studying in the library, there is this immense contentment and happiness. It’s the opposite of loneliness, as I heard someone once call it.

And just when I’m settled in my newfound home, something interrupts it all -- this thing called break. Fall Break, Christmas Break, Easter Break -- you get the picture. A few weeks of college go by, and I find myself right back home in the midst of my old life.

And all of a sudden, my world is wrecked because for a few days, I get to pretend I am back home for good. I’m surrounded by my hometown friends, my summer coworkers and my perfect family, which makes me so happy.

A few days later, I am snatched back out of it. It’s like waking up from a really good dream only to find yourself in a nightmare, this switching of cities. I feel like two people have taken stake in my heart, and they’re pulling it in opposite directions.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for both halves of my life, but something about being pulled back and forth so often seems so cruel.

“Growing pains,” my mother calls it, referring to every potential hurt of any kind that could go wrong in this transition to adulthood. I have to say, I never imagined my first heartache would come from being torn to shreds by two towns that mean so much to me.

The old and the new stand before me like a fork in the road, and I feel like I have to pick one. That loving one is hating another, and that by leaving the roots of who I am physically, they’re also fading in my heart.

I’m caught between my best yet and my most beloved, the shining new and the antique nostalgia, my endless possibilities and my comfort zone.

And for what seemed the longest time, I felt guilty. To be honest, I still feel it from time to time.

I used to never let my guard down on my trips home for the pain I knew it’d cause me, and I equally held myself back from the people I met in college as to not become too attached.

But in this collision and haphazardness is still a sense of beauty to be found, for I have double the love, double the family, double the excitement and double the learning.

I’m starting to realize that finding new doesn’t mean forsaking the old, and that moving on doesn’t mean I have to stop looking back.

The reason I left is because the people who love me dearly from my past knew I had a bright future.

So this one goes out to my hometown, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and to all the people who made it so difficult for me to leave. Thanks for holding on to my one hand while I outstretched the other, and for always having my back as I take new steps forward.