My Double Life: College, Home, And The In-Between
Is it really the best of both worlds?
Remember when we were in grade school and we counted down the seconds until summer vacation?
Remember when we knew that even though we wouldn't be in school for the next few months, we would still hang out with our friends pretty much every day?
I miss that.
This is the weirdest feeling. It's truly so strange. I feel like there are two disparate worlds in which I exist. I bounce back and forth between the two and every time I go back to one, it feels like no time has passed since I left it.
No one from my high school decided on the same school as me, so I went off to college knowing basically no one. It was cool because it was like a fresh start for me. I could be whoever I wanted to be.
So, I was. It was exciting. I joined a lot of student organizations that I would have never had the courage to join in high school. But my crisis appeared when I realized that so many of the things that made me who I was in high school were no longer there. It was like the safety net was snatched from beneath me.
No one knew who I was. I almost didn't know who I was.
There was no more after-school choir. No more walking to rehearsal with my friends after class. No more of the things that I knew so well.
I spent so much time missing who I used to be. I missed my friends from home and all the places we used to hang out and all the traditions and inside jokes that we used to have. I was unbelievably homesick.
Once I realized this, I knew something had to change. It wasn't easy, but I worked hard and made a name for myself at my school. Now, there are new places to hang out, new routines and traditions, new amazingly wonderful friends. And now, I never want to leave them.
It is such a weird feeling to want, with your entire heart, to be in two places at once. I wish I could just pick up my entire campus with all my friends from school and drop it right in my hometown. Or I wish I could pick up my hometown along with all my friends from home and drop it right next to campus. Or something that blurs the line between these two places that I call home and the people that I call family.
It's funny. Part of me wants to never grow up and stay at home forever, but another part of me can't wait for life to begin. The transition to college was not seamless and quite honestly, I am still adjusting. And I'm definitely still trying to arrange some enormous road trip so that my school friends can meet my home friends. But I guess I should consider myself endlessly lucky that I have found myself not only one but two homes. And one great, big, happy family.
