This past week I've watched my best friends leave for college, for a brand new life. I have another week before I begin my journey to the university universe, so I find myself in a very strange place. The goodbye is hard but I think social media makes it even harder. There's the person that I spent the last year with and they're with a completely new group of friends. Part of me just wants to interrogate them to make sure they're a good fit. But friends are not shoes, so I know I can't tie them down.
At the same time, I'm rushing the time between now and when I leave because I feel left out of this whole college thing. But yet I'm telling the time to slow down, because I want to enjoy my last moments here at home. We may cry saying goodbye to our friends and our parents and siblings, but I think what we don't realize is how much we're going to miss the entire experience. The lifestyle that we've lived for the past 18 years is now going to go away forever. We're trading that in for a new lifestyle with more freedom and responsibility, to feel more like an adult, like we've all begged for over the past year. But despite the endless complaining about high school, we all tend to shut up these weeks leading up to college, because it's finally time to believe what we never thought was coming.
This past week was my last week on my babysitting job this summer (for more info on that see: My Run With the Rooster). I drive about 25 minutes each morning to get there and I take probably one of the most scenic ways I could to get there. I'm blessed to live in probably one of the most beautiful places in Pennsylvania and I had taken that for granted until this week. Each morning I drove up there I enjoyed the views and the beauty in the area surrounding me. But hey, we don't know what we got until it's gone, right?
But it's this. This is what I'm going to miss the most. I'm going to miss the drives that I would take out of nowhere to clear my head. I'm going to miss home cooked meals. I'm going to miss going to all of our favorite places with my friends. I'm going to miss how easy it was to just text someone and ask them to hang out, because now it's going to be long term planning. I'm going to miss seeing my best friends everyday at school and talking about surviving certain classes together. I'm going to miss my mom nagging me to do laundry or something that I would probably never think about doing that I have to. I'm going to miss private bathrooms. I'm going to miss coming home to my dogs greeting me through the door like they haven't seen me in months and now that'll be true. I'm going to miss the little things that I've always taken for granted. I'm going to miss this life that I currently live until it dies a few days from now and a new one sprouts from it.
But as I watch my friends make new friends and begin their new lives on Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat or whatever, I become that much readier to begin my own life. And I'm terrified to leave the comfort of everything that I've ever known for something completely unknown. I don't know what will come, but the freedom is what gives me comfort. I am now an adult (or at least like half an adult). I have the freedom to do what I want with my life from this point on. It's my choices that are going to shape and make me into what I want to be. And this is the second step. The first step was a long one, expanding the length of my whole life, with millions of teeny tiny little steps in between. But here comes the leap. It's time to jump into this abyss of unknown and see what's up.
So, we've hit our peak. It's time to move on and embrace the new. But don't forget the old. The old is what got you to the new, so don't disregard that, no matter how much you hate the old. Find the balance between the old and the new and be the happiest you've ever been.
"So scared of getting older, I'm only good at being young."- John Mayer, "Stop This Train"
