I'm feeling quite nostalgic like I'm in some cheesy teen drama. Visiting home is exciting for sure, but also so surreal. Sometimes college feels like summer camp and I think, "Once I get home, that's it!" But in the few moments in-between, I'm hyper-aware of myself and what comes with that. I'm at college and this is my life now. It's crazy to think about. I tend to quantify myself by my accomplishments, and it's just the perfect season, time, place, I don't know, to think about that kind of thing. What have I done? What have I added to the world?

An entire year has almost passed, and it appalls me to no end to know that just a few months ago I was still in high school and I've done, seen, gone so far since then. I haven't stepped foot in my own house in two months. That's so weird. But maybe it gets easier. It would be better if it felt less like both my life is slipping away and that a new one was slipping in.

New Hampshire authors photo, Jocelyn Dennehy

In just a few hours, I'll be standing in the place where I stood for the first 18 years of my life and have the knowledge that I'm moving on. I feel like that scene in The Great Gatsby where Gatsby thinks that once he has Daisy again, everything will be perfect, but he's changed, she's changed, the world has changed. People carry one, so I must carry on too. Maybe I am just being cheesy and unreasonable but going home is more impactful than you'd think. You can't go back to the past, there is only the future and the present. I'll never forget the past because it holds all that I've learned.

In the end, this life is the same life I was living before, and once you realize that, you can't go back to "the days of yore," and you certainly can't look at yourself and the world the same way again. Dissociating and self-examination always ends the same for me: There is no answer. My existentialism can only stretch so far, and right now it's the tether simultaneously keeping me at Ithaca College and in New Hampshire.

Exeter River, Exeter, New Hampshire authors photo, Jocelyn Dennehy