Going home has to be one of the weirdest feelings.
I try to stay up to date with my friends and family, but it gets difficult with all our different schedules. I mean, it’s no one’s fault we don’t talk as much; we are all at different points in our lives, with different focuses and end goals.
This past break, when I went home, I discovered that my friend group, which used to be four of us, had turned into a 12-person group. This is something completely new to me, I’ve always been in smaller groups, even four people was a lot.
The people added to the group weren’t new faces either; I knew them all previously. It was actually pretty funny to us when we realized our paths were crossing again so many years later.
The problem with this wasn’t that we added new people, though; the problem was realizing how much I had missed out on while being away.
It was only one semester, and in those three to four months, so many things had changed when I was so obliviously unaware that they were changing. It was a hard reality to come to, but I think it was a well-needed reality check.
I have, like so many others, a love/hate relationship with the concept of change. And realizing that it was happening when I didn’t know, it only made the hate for it grow. I mean, I’m not mad about the changes that were made; I’m just mad at the fact that I was in the dark while it was going on.
That’s no one’s fault, though, not even my own. We are all living different lives now, and it’s hard to come to terms with that sometimes. Part of me likes to live in this little bubble and pretend nothing within my bubble will ever be different, but that’s not possible.
Things will always be changing, growing, advancing, no matter how hard I may try to stop it. My bubble was burst years ago, and I’ve tried acting like it wasn’t, but that needs to stop. Now I need to learn to accept it and keep moving forward, no matter how hard that may be or how much time it may take.
Time is a killer, and while I can’t pause it like a TV show, I can move with it. That’s what we are all doing, moving with the time that we have.
Jumping back into a timeline I wasn’t a part of for that long is hard to do, and as much as I want to fill in the gaps, I know they will never fully be closed. Learning to live with the gaps is a part of adulthood, and I guess I’m still scared of growing up.