If you are at all familiar with indie-rock or folk music, or have listened to some form of radio in the past few years, or know of the American indie band The Head and The Heart, you have probably been acquainted with their 2011 song “Rivers and Roads” at some point.

If you are still racking your internal playlist for the song, once you google it and have a listen I am sure you will have a bit of an “Aha, oh yeah, that song” moment and then proceed to have the repetitive chorus of “Rivers and roads / Rivers and roads / Rivers ‘til I reach you” running on repeat in your head, as I am right now.

This song with its lyrics became the soundtrack to my first year at college and will continue to be a part of my next three years. It was first brought to my attention (more so than just absentmindedly hearing it on Pandora) when I got a snap chat in the first few months of college from my best friend from high school that said something to the extent of “If you want to cry right now, listen to this song.”

So, of course, I did and as I paid closer attention to the lyrics, I recognized how much the song hit home for me, and soon tears were most certainly on my cheeks. From then on, I would pull it up on YouTube when I was missing home, my family and friends. It was not until a couple of nights in February when I listened to it, tears streaming down my face more than usual that it gave my perspective on my first year away from home and helped me acknowledge the time of change I was enduring and provided me with a better, more positive outlook on that change.

“A year from now we’ll all be gone / All our fiends will move away / And they’re going to better places / But our friends will be gone away”

When I had my epiphany about how relatable this song was to me, the first thing that I thought of was how different my life, and the lives of my friends were, compared to where we had been a year before. We had left the familiar hallways of our small high school where for five out of the seven days of the week we would have the chance to spend hours with one another.

But now we had all left the city where we had spent 18 years and scattered ourselves to Colorado, Connecticut, New York and Washington, D.C. Thankfully, four out of the six of us landed in the same time zone which made coordinating weekly Facetime calls easier, but those hour-long calls, that if we were lucky, happened every week, were a small sliver of time compared to what we used to get each week of true, face to face contact.

But while we were all missing each other, it was for the best for each of us to be where we each had ended up. The reason I fell asleep for two straight nights to this song with more tears than usual streaming down my face was because the friend who had introduced me to this song had decided she was going to stay in New York for the summer instead of coming home to Seattle.

At the time, I couldn’t fathom not having her home for summer dinner parties, outdoor adventures, and long conversations. However, what I realized was how for her this was her “better place” for the summer. She would be managing a farm, her dream job, and after the initial melancholy passed I realized how proud I was of her.

It takes guts to spend your first summer all the way across the country from home and she is doing it while putting in hours of hard work following a passion of hers and that is something I can do nothing but applaud.

It’s not just this one friend either. I am so lucky to see my other friends becoming the only freshman at the Air Force Academy to go to nationals for rock climbing, another friend having an experience of a lifetime while taking a gap year with AmeriCorps, another becoming super psyched about microbiology and another writing articles for her school newspaper. To have these girls as my friends is so motivating and allows me to appreciate our friendship even more.

“Rivers and roads / Oh rivers and roads / Oh rivers ‘til I meet you”

But what makes this “girl squad” even more special is the time we get to spend together now. Currently, we are in a two-week window where our friends who are off at the Air Force Academy and being farm managers are coming home for quick trips. The other week the four of us that were home at the time spent hours just talking outside by the fire and in beds before we fell asleep. Then again, we spent a long summer evening outside by the water just enjoying a picnic and each other’s company after such a long time of being separated.

These two nights will remain in my memory for a very long time, thinking fondly about the appreciation I had for being with everyone once again. These long afternoons and evenings are worth all the long, drawn out coordination over text because it means spending time with some of the people who have such an important place in my life.

“And I miss your face like Hell / And I guess it’s just as well / But I miss your face like Hell”

So, while when we are hundreds of miles apart and thousands of miles away from home, we are all missing each other and wishing we could be in the classroom next to one another, it is for the best to be alone on our separate paths.

This time apart allows us all to grow individually while also observing the growth of each other as we discover what we are each most passionate about. But also, having the constant nagging desire to see each other that is the feeling of missing someone makes the next opportunity to spend time with everyone even better and more enjoyable.

So, until our rivers meet again, I’ll be missing their faces like Hell.