I'd like to start this piece off by apologizing to anyone in my hometown who's seen me driving around Mechanicsville crying (like ugly crying, I'm talking "someone ran over my childhood dog on purpose" crying). Saying goodbye to the friends that have made me who I am, caused my emotionally stable, college freshman, beginning-my-life-while-I-act-like-I-have-it-together charade to come crashing down faster than a bookshelf from Bed Bath and Beyond that you thought you could build yourself, but turns out you need a drill. All jokes aside, there was indeed a sound and logical reason for all the tears and if my bad humor hasn't already scared you away, then I'd love to give you a break down of my breakdown.

Every high school graduate, thus far, can most likely admit to having at least one moment of heavy and heart dropping realization. Whether it is when you accept that your dog won't be coming with you to your dorm, or that you won't be eating your mom's cooking, when it hits you, it hits hard. You start questioning all aspects of your life because you begin to see how mindbogglingly different it's truly going to be. However, while that's difficult to take in, it's still not the worst of it, because it can be easily made up for when you consider all the exciting experiences you have ahead of you. I mean, who needs mom's cooking when you get to parade around the halls in your fancy new shower shoes, right? And then you get to school, and you love your roommates, you love your dorm, you love the food, you love EVERYTHING THIS IS SO AWESOME I'M ON MY OWN, WOW. Until. Until you have a moment to yourself to consider the real meaning of the next chapter of your life. As Dan Wilson once sang: "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I'm not saying my life abides by Semisonic lyrics, but they do have a point. You can only really be in one place at one time. Going to college, no matter where or how far, is a change. A new beginning. And of course, your old friends and town and home all await you, but they're changing too. Moving on, learning, improving: these are all goals right out of high school, and we'd like to think that we can accomplish them while keeping tabs on all that we've grown up with. Continuing and bettering our traditions as additions to our lives rather than replacements; which is possible. But not probable. The reality, the salt behind the tears, the wind sucked from your lungs when you start to cry, the weight on your chest when you start to think; is that your life will not be the same. Ever.

I'm sure I just lost half my audience with the dramatic italic letters above, but bear with me because I promised you an explanation and I'm only halfway there.

Yes, you will have breaks, holidays and summers to spend relishing in your comfort zone while keeping in touch with the new life you've made. Which will be great, but it will also be hard. You'll find that the gang of friends you could never get away from before you left, is now struggling to find common time for each other because so and so got an internship, and whomever is working now and such and such has a new boyfriend they just can't get away from. It's hard to imagine your life without your core group of people right out of high school, so we just don't. We don't imagine it until it becomes a reality. Years later, when we're trying to put a square peg into a round hole and realize it's just not the same. You'll never have that moment back of storming the field at a football game after a win. Looking around seeing everyone you've ever known in one place, at one time, feeling the same emotion. It's just that; a moment in time. It's not something you can get back, or recreate, as much as we try to reassure ourselves that we can. We can keep in touch, update each other on changes and journeys in our lives, but they're just that, our lives. We, as graduates, are each going to live our own life.

For me, the hardest part of going to college is that I've realized my life, is my life, and it is going to change.