I've lived in St. Louis for almost three years now for school, and while it has been such an amazing experience, with a ton of memories being made, I still miss home on the regular basis. This homesickness is due partially because of the fact that I miss my Louisianan food more than ever (Missouri just can't do gumbo or crawfish ettoufee), but the main reason is because I miss my family and friends back home.

Thankfully, it's not hard for me to make friends, so when I moved to St. Louis, I met a ton of new people and built great friendships. But for some reason, nothing could compare to my best friends back home. I recently went back home to visit for summer break, and let me tell you, when I reunited with my friends, it was like nothing had changed. We picked up right where we left off, still were up to our same old shenanigans, and just enjoyed basking in each other's presence.

When I was in the process of deciding whether or not it was a good idea to go out of state for college, one of my biggest concerns was how do I handle not being able to see my friends on the regular basis and what the heck would happen to our relationships now that I'm hours away. Who was going to binge watch Gossip Girl with me on Netflix? Get ice cream 5 days in a row with me after school? Be my partner in crime? Driving away on the day that I left for St. Louis, I had the song "All By Myself" playing on my headphones, while I waved goodbye to my friends standing in my drive way who came over to send me off. (disclaimer: yes, that was incredibly dramatic of me to play that song while waving good bye to my favorite people, but hey, a little dramaticness never killed anybody lol).

Little did I know, nothing was going to change. The only thing that did change was that I lived away, but my relationship with my friends remained solid. Yes, now when a friend is getting ready for a date, I give them pep talks via Facetime instead of in person. And there are a ton of times where we play phone tag because we all have busy schedules, but what I love is no matter how long we go without seeing each other or talking, whenever we do finally get to see one another we pick up right where we left off. That saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder has never proven truer for me until this stage in my life.

I love my Louisiana peeps. Thanks for being the greatest friends a girl can have.