It was mid-August, and within the next few weeks recently proclaimed high school graduates would be leaving home and starting their first semester of college. They were the weeks of ‘lasts’ and most heartbreakingly, they were the weeks of goodbyes, each one becoming increasingly harder than the last. And for those who come from a close knit family like myself, the goodbyes were even more difficult. I had never gone to sleep away camp, I had never gone away from home unless I was with my family; ultimately I had never been away from my family for more than three days for a church retreat that was ten minutes from my house. How was I supposed to live away from home and away from all of the people who have been there for me every day for the past 18 years, without being able to see them for weeks at a time? I would quickly find out that growing up having a close knit family, as well as people I was lucky enough to consider my family, has been both a blessing and a curse in college.
On one hand it is a curse. It is extremely difficult to adjust to life without seeing those people everyday, and without even being able to talk to them for long periods of time. The feeling of homesickness grows strong at times: it is not simply a matter of missing home, but it is the longing for the place where I would be surrounded by all the people I love and who also love me. Every time I look at the collage of pictures that hangs above my bed I feel nostalgic and a sense of sadness in all of the happy memories because I cannot be with those people to make new memories, at least for the time being. And then there comes the goodbyes after every visit at school or stay at home and they never get any easier no matter how many times they are said. I find a feeling of sadness once I get back to school after breaks and it is not because I don’t like my school- because believe me I love it- but it is because spending time with all the people I love over break is so amazing that I experience a sense of loneliness once I return to being away from them. Despite this, I have realized that there are so many people who are not close with their families or don’t have people that they can say they truly love, and thus aren’t able to reap the benefits that greatly outweigh the hardships.
On the other hand it is a blessing: Having a close knit family and people who care about you means an overwhelming amount of support: texts that read “miss you” , and “can’t wait to see you” and “I love you”. It means the anticipation to call or Facetime to talk about all that went on during the day. It means having people who are simply a text or a call away when you are having a bad day or simply want to blow off some steam. It means still being able to have a sense of home, no matter how far you are away from it. It means having people who want to be updated about your life at school, and people you want to update because they care about you too much to not know how and what you are doing. And most special of all, it means always having people waiting to welcome you home with an immense amount of love, because after all, these are the people you call family, blood-related or not, and having a close-knit family is the greatest blessing imaginable.
