Cement Girl

I just finally let myself cry about it. I was putting the very end part on a scrapbook about our house, and it just all came out. When you're working so hard to get a semester finished, and you're running around like crazy, you don't let yourself think about it. A myriad of reasons are behind this anxiety.

-I am leaving a place I have known as a home. More consistent than the churches I have gone to, and not subject to moving (like my homes), this college has been a part of my life for nearly all of it. It seems ridiculous but I grew up anticipating attending this college. We lived on campus when I was a small child, I sold lemonade in the faculty building, I scraped knees riding down the hill, and got dizzy rolling down the front lawn. I went to homecoming after homecoming, orientation barbeques, and new student retreats (which my mom said were cheaper to go to than staying home)... all as a kid not of college age. My grandparents have gone here, my mom went here, my brother went here, now I have gone here. I entered as a very shy, quiet freshman, and have developed leadership and independence skills I could not have imagined. oh sigh college, i really like you.

-I'm going to Mexico for 6-8 weeks and I leave next Wednesday. I have to pack up all of my belongings, mark them to organize this summer, throw it away, or give it away.

-At the end of my time in Mexico my parents will be moving down to the same exact place. I'll spend a few weeks with them, and then head back here. When I leave Mexico, and my parents, it will probably be the last time I see them for over a year. I love and adore my parents, and this will be so hard for me.

-I'm graduating! They're giving me a diploma AND a teaching license! It's like I'm an actual adult! All those frustrations of papers and projects and long homework weekends, and 410, and all of that... culminates into this? yes, please, i'll take it.

-i'm leaving my beloved house of roommates. we are truly awesome. I wrote in our scrapbook that it's for a good reason that we talk about how great we are- we are all friends, and beyond that we are friends who have lived together VERY peacefully for 2 years. How rare is that? Very.

let me say that it is often hard to reconcile the excitement for the future and anxiety of leaving the wonderful past behind.

"it's not the same without you around"-MoS