It’s a strange thought - practically being done with college.
I suppose I can’t say I left very far from home (forty minutes, anyone?). but it does make me feel a little bit sad knowing I’m already over halfway done with my college career. I met a good amount of people and I can proudly say I got that ‘college experience’ by living in the dorms and joining multitudes of things since freshmen year. I’ve done a lot. I’ve made a lot of lasting bonds. All those late night parties, sleepovers, and study nights will soon come to an end when the people that have walked into my life will walk their own paths in the world.
Hometowns, probably won’t really be hometowns anymore as more and more people move away from the seventeen years they’ve spent in the same town, with the same faces, walking down the same streets. It’d be naive to think that I can just mass text the twenty friends I suffered through adolescence with to just meet up at the local coffee shop or restaurant. That’s what really makes a hometown..the childhood friends that know the city like you do. I’ve moved away already physically, but that close knit circle of mine keeps drawing me back to the most boring city in California. I’m going to miss our twilight antics and get togethers. I’m going to cry when the aunties & uncles that have watched me mature, begin to grow weak and frail. I’m going to make faces as middle schoolers with make-up and high heels trip over themselves at holographic vampire/mermaid/superhero movies. And I’m going to grow up and move away and hope. Hope that someday, I could come back to this little town and be able to meet up with the childhood loves of my life at the familiar high school parking lot or basement of house that still smells like the captain morgan I threw up.
I also want to make this clear. I pray everyone that I knew growing up will at some point leave the city and follow interesting journeys of their own to reach their dreams. I pray that no one will be forever sheltered by the comfort of their memories.
There just isn’t enough time to be living mundane lives in the same place, doing the same thing.
The “best part of my life” is soon coming to an end - the next year will pass in the blink of an eye - and I wonder if I am proud of what I accomplished in college… The prime time for my window of opportunities is closing and I have to start living that solitary life of a working adult. Was what I decided to do in college “worth it”? I hope I will be able to walk the path I have built with the bricks of higher education. I wonder if I did enough internships? Joined enough different organizations? While I am proud of my experiences, there’s always the 'what if’s’ in the back of my mind. What if I went to USC? Or Yale? or NYU? What if I went into college single? What if I became an English major?
I don’t regret anything though, my mind just wanders.
College.
It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. I’ve had many good times, probably even more laughs. And there’s probably a reason if things didn’t work out or I didn’t do everything according to plan. Nothing ever goes according to plan, damn it. But that’s the beauty of it, I suppose. Being scared for what comes next, embracing what’s gotten you this far.
Note to self: Enjoy life in its present moment, live in the now. If you constantly worry and plan ahead for the future, you’ll miss the fun that’s happening now.