Have you ever had that feeling when everything was exactly the same, but it all seemed completely different? Or maybe it was YOU who was different, or something like that? Whatever the feeling was, you were left sitting on your couch eating your favorite potato chips, relaxed for once, but terribly, uncontrollably bored. Or maybe unfulfilled? Your holiday break seemed to stretch forward without an end in sight. You even considered getting a job. And yet, the thought of going back still kind of made you sick.
Welcome to a college students' average winter break.
There are pluses and minuses to everything because, well, that's how the world kind of works. You miss home when you're at school, school when you're at home, typical. Or, if you're like me, you miss America when you're in Italy, then as soon as your plane takes flight for that 10 hour journey over the Atlantic, you start to miss Italy. Whether it's 10 hours or 10 minutes, that trip back home is a strange one, ending in a place that somehow feels completely new, even though it looks and feels and sounds and even smells the exact same as it always does. It's like the Upside Down, you know, the world that's connected to ours, but is kind of the opposite. The one introduced to us in Stranger Things, that show that I binge watched within 3 days of being home. Of course, there aren't actually any monsters here and it probably isn't a government conspiracy either. Still, you have to admit that something about this month feels decidedly wrong side up.
Maybe it's the wandering, both figurative and literal, from place to place, trying to find the rhythm that you used to know. Trying to get back to the daily schedule that probably doesn't even exist to you anymore. You're a college student after all. When has anything ever been normal? You sleep till noon one day just to get up, eat some breakfast, then lounge around some more. You might even get out and see your old town, I mean your current town, whatever it is. You see your family and your old friends and nothing has changed there, and nothing ever will. You just know that you have to leave them all in a few weeks to go back to that other family back at school, the ones you miss with every fiber of your being right now. See, upside down.
If there is one comfort in this whole ordeal, it's that you definitely aren't alone here. College is a time of transition and some serious soul searching. All of us are pretty much just bopping around, looking for some place to call home, getting lost, making mistakes, and eventually ending up somewhere near where we belong. Because here's the thing, home is not just a building and community doesn't stop when you leave state borders. Home is the people who care about you, the ones who support you no matter how lost you may feel, always tethering you down to the topsy turvy world around you. Those people are here, and there and everywhere, but it doesn't matter because it's not really about geography anyway. You belong here like you belong there, and nothing is wrong with that. So enjoy that feeling of restlessness while you can, because it means that you have your whole life in front of you, and man oh man is that awesome.
Take a deep breath, and enjoy the weightlessness that can only come from being upside down.
