I didn’t realize how different my college life was from my home life until I came home for the Summer. Before then, the ways in which I was changing, progressing, and adapting to my surroundings were constantly in motion, and therefore, I couldn’t quite understand the shape and extent of them. I felt that I was different, but I didn’t exactly know how or why. It was just a general feeling that things had changed, which is exactly what I wanted out of college as this is the exact time we should be changing, growing, and progressing.
About a week into being home for the summer, I was talking to a friend on the phone about how strange it is to be home from school (which is what most conversations with college friends generally revolve around when you’re all home) and she said something that struck me. She said that she feels like her college self and her home self don’t like each other and that’s what makes being home so difficult. This resonated with me because it put words to a feeling that I, too, had been experiencing. For me, however, the emotions were much more complex than like or dislike. I felt that my college self pitied my home self as though it were a boring, less-experienced younger sister and that my home self felt that my college self was an unhealthy, emotionally unstable friend that she secretly longed to be close with again.
Over the summer, I felt this sensation most strongly in situations that I knew would be very different at school. For instance, on a Saturday night at school I would be out with friends at a party or roaming around Boston, but at home am generally in bed eating baby carrots and watching New Girl wondering where my life went wrong. In these moments, I feel a brand of self-pity that isn’t entirely coming from myself, but also from what I think I should be feeling.
The magnitude of the feelings between these two parts of myself that are both still objectively me has struck me each time I’ve come home from school. Before the summer break, I hadn’t yet experienced the depth of my identity confusion, but after having been home for the summer, I feel how the relationship between the old parts of myself and the new, evolving parts of me are endlessly complicated.