Even though I get weary of homework and classes after a whole semester, just like nearly everyone else in college does, I do not look forward to Christmas and summer breaks with the same excitement that many of my school mates do. Most of my friends talk of looking forward to enjoying friends and activities that they don't have time for during the semester, and even though some of them don't like the jobs they go back to on breaks, they still look forward to the chance to earn money and be away from school for awhile. It's different for me. When I get out of school, I am forced to leave most of my friends behind. I have only a couple friends near home and they are very busy over breaks as well as during the semester. I am unable to work because my MCS (multiple chemical sensitivities) have made it impossible, so far, to find a steady job that will not make me sick or run down and because of my allergies I am unable to do a lot of activities that my friends keep busy with. I miss my friends horribly over breaks. I get extremely attached to people and feel a strong need to be regularly with the teachers and students that I have become close to and having to wait a month, or several months to see them, is pure torture. People have said things to me like, "You can keep in touch with your friends, that's why cell phones and Facetime are so great." "You can meet up with people and do things, "Breaks go by so fast." I know they mean well and are trying to be comforting, but they are wrong. No, I can't really keep in touch with my friends or meet up with them, because they are so occupied and busy and very reasonably distracted with all their jobs, friends and family that they don't get to see during the semester, and I hardly ever hear back from any of them. And no, breaks do not go by fast for me, they are very very slow. I almost always lose my mind with restlessness and with missing my school family. A week long break now and then is long enough, after that, I am very ready to go back. Yes, I get tired of homework, yes, school has things that exhaust me and make me upset, but for me, the worst feelings are loneliness, restlessness and insecurity and that's what breaks from school are full of. Not only do I have to fight feelings of missing my friends over breaks, my ugly insecurity issues get even stronger and I have to fight fears that maybe my friends will stop caring about me, will become less close to me or will forget about me when they are gone from me for awhile, I've had all those things happen several times before. I have had friends tell me over and over when I was saying a tearful goodbye to them at the end of the semester, that they would keep in touch, that they would make time to get together (if they were friends who lived close enough.) And it almost never happens. Now don't get me wrong, I totally understand that life is busy for a lot of people, and that a lot of my friends struggle with juggling everything and I know I am clingy and oversensitive and that I need to not expect so much from my friends. But I do wish that they missed me and needed me as much as I miss and need them and I do wish that breaks were not so long.