Last week, I packed up my stuff from college and came home from my freshman year just like everyone else. It's a confusing experience and I’m not really sure what to think.
Before I left, I went to all of my favorite restaurants, hiked to my favorite waterfall, and sat at the lake for one last time. In the past nine months, my dorm room had become my home, and I’m going to miss it more than anything. But more disconcerting than that was to realize that I didn’t want to go home.
The freedom that was college is all but gone after coming home. Suddenly there's people who care about where I am and what I am doing at all times, and it takes some getting used to. Going to college is this new-found freedom and this ability to make my own choices and build my own life, and then abruptly, I am sent home. There's this whole new life that was created in the past year, new friends, new schedule, new support system, and it's as though it never happened when you come home. I feel a bit like Harry Potter, who suddenly discovered the world that I am a part of, and then school ends and I have to go back (Although my family cannot be compared to the Dursleys).
It seems as though everyone who is in college will go home for the summer at some point. This leaves a dilemma, because everything I had built isn’t even there to visit with over the summer. To visit my friends, I would have to visit individual friends in their own places. College brings together the masses of people, and that's great! I have friends who live in many states, and even international friends. Almost all of these people went home with the final exams of last week. It's almost as though the past year never happened, we all just end up back where we started, nothing has changed. It's sad really.
But there's happiness to coming home also. With coming home comes finally seeing old friends, and telling them all about the year that I have had, and hearing their stories about the year that they had. I realize that because of the separation of your lives, you really have gone your separate ways, and you’ve both grown up to be better people for it.
Familiy is the best part to coming home, there are so many things that have changed. Siblings grow older in one year, and cousins and parents have too. They did so much for me as I grew up, but in learning to be an independent person, I find that I’ve grown apart from even my family who I still speak to every day. No longer do I need help folding laundry or doing the dishes, the things that were necessary at school that I just got used to doing.
The world has moved on while I was gone, but that may not be the worst thing. I have moved on also, and there was a reason that I was able to survive my entire year on my own. Everything has changed, so what do I do when everything goes back to normal? It's strange to come home after summer in a bittersweet kind of way.
