Going home for breaks is always a mixed blessing for me. I love the opportunity to get more sleep, to eat home-cooked meals, and to spend time with my family, but it’s hard to spend time away from friends. Not all, but a lot of the people I know are within easy reach of high school or hometown friends. I’m a little more isolated, which gets hard.
I went away to high school starting in my sophomore year and gradually lost touch with people I grew up with. During my time at boarding school I met a ton of amazing people from all over the country and the world, but few from my neck of the woods.
I say all this not to throw a pity party for myself, but because my extended periods away from people I’m close to has given me a pragmatic view of loneliness. It’s a downer of an emotion, but everyone will go through a lonely period at some point. I’ve made my peace with it, and while I still think extended periods of isolation are horrible, I’m basically okay with school breaks and summers. A few things have helped me reach this conclusion and continue to reassure me when I do start feeling sorry for myself. One of the biggest ones is a YouTube channel some college friends and I started the summer after sophomore year. It came about because five of us were planning (at the time) to be away for all of junior year and we wanted to keep in touch beyond the occasional Facebook message and Skype chat.
Essentially we each made a weekly video about things that were going in our lives. They ranged from talking head monologues to artsy montages of cool places we’d visited. Having almost daily videos from friends to look forward to made that summer much more enjoyable. I felt like I was able to get to know people more, and when I got to Exeter I was more comfortable getting back into a social rhythm than I had normally been after the long break. When I took a semester off, Contact (our channel) was a true lifeline.
The miracle of technology is immensely helpful, but for the times when I’m not on social media, I’ve become adept at finding ways to occupy my time at home. I absolutely love reading for fun—my defining character trait for much of my life has been how much I read—and breaks present the perfect opportunity to catch up on fun reading. I just finished The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, which is an absolutely lovely, lyrical, fantasy novel. I also love catching up on TV shows and going for long walks on the paths near my house. I do regret not being more in touch with more people at home, but I always appreciate having conversations with people when I see them. I’m getting better at doing little things to keep in touch with people from school, even if it’s just liking a status or photo on Instagram or using Snapchat more. I try to get down to see a friend in Boston whenever our schedules align, and whenever I do it’s always great.
Though I’ve largely made my peace with loneliness, I can’t say it’s always easy, or that I know the perfect cure for it. Sometimes I just want to hang out with a group of friends. Sometimes I worry that I’ve gotten too used to being alone a lot. Sometimes I worry I’ve forgotten how to plan to get together with people, or I pass up the chance to reach out because it seems too difficult.
I don’t want to end this on a downer, so a few good tidbits: this year I found out that one of my friends from Kenyon only lives forty-five minutes away from me! I’m excited for Winter break. I’m also determined to, in the future, live somewhere I can see lots of people easily (a city most likely) and to make more of an effort to keep bonds alive. And when loneliness inevitably strikes, as I know it will even in a city of millions, I know I have the tools to deal with it. Periods of loneliness, though hard, are something I know I can get through.
Image Credit: Katie Dembinski, The Mountain Echo