At some point in most teenager’s lives, they get a feeling of wanting to be alone. They want to move out and do something on their own. More often than not, this feeling goes into college. Often, as a way of gaining independence, or just as a way to get away from what they grew up in, teenagers will apply to go to a college far away from where they used to live. I was one of these teenagers. I thought I wanted to go far away from my family, from my neighborhood. At the time it was because I wanted to see new things and get out of the environment I spent 18 years in. I didn’t realize how wrong I was.
During my last year in high school, I suffered from a little thing we liked to call “senioritis.” I got insanely tired of the work we were doing, I started to lose interest in high school as a whole, and I risked failing a class for the first half of the year. It wasn’t too major. I ended up getting back on track, but there was one part of the “sickness” that I didn’t enjoy so much. I started to argue with my family a lot more. Most of it, from what I could see, was primarily the stress of the whole college process, but I hated it, regardless. Personally, I have an issue with venting anger towards other people. I don’t necessarily talk about my problems, but instead I throw it on them. I never really realized it up until I actually graduated high school and went on to my first semester of college. I continued to argue with my parents and my brother for a bit up until I got to campus, and I didn’t actually think about any of it until I spent my first night here.
I originally thought it would be a good idea and fun opportunity to go to a college far away from where I lived and for the first week it was. As time went on, as the days went by, I kept feeling as if something was off. At first, I didn’t realize what it was, so I ignored it by doing my usual thing. I kept playing video games, kept meeting new people on campus, and I kept talking to my friends back home over Skype. It took me a day or two to realize that was the issue. I kept talking to my friends from back home, but not my family. So I did just that. I stopped what I was doing and I called home. I was shocked at myself when I realized how hard it was for me to talk to my mother when she picked up the phone. Regardless, we talked, we laughed, I told her about how I was feeling about the campus, about my roommates, and after a few minutes she gave the phone to my little brother. That’s where I had the most trouble.
After all 18 years of my life, I never considered my brother to be more than just a sibling. The more I thought about it, I realized he was my best friend. We’ve always done everything together since I was 8 and he was 6, and once it really processed that I was so far away from him, I felt a little lost. Once I hung up the phone with him I realized that I really was in college. I wasn’t home anymore. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was different from what I knew. What I also reminded myself of was how much I really appreciate my family, and how much I deeply regret how I acted during during my last year of high school. I just need to remind myself that even though they’re not here in person, they’re not far away at all.
