This going to sound like some sappy journal entry but I decided that that’s okay for now. The end of my very first year in college has abruptly arrived and it’s time to pack up the little half of my dorm that I have come to adore.
But what’s strange is going home and not waiting to pack my suitcase to drive back to campus. This was the first time I had ever lived away from my small town, and I had become accustomed to my independence here, embracing who I am without the reminder of who I was.
Commuting is what I decided on for my next semester, so living at home is going to be a permanent solution for now. But it doesn’t feel the same.
I look around my four cornered bedroom covered in mediocre paintings I had created in my artist faze, and stack of Shakespeare plays on my bookshelf that radiated memories of falling in love with the beauty of words, and came to the realization with myself.
What they say about exploring your true self and uncovering your identity, you know the cliche “finding out who you are” speech you get before the first week of freshman orientation, is actually true. I never thought it would apply to me; I was so sure of myself that I rejected any ideas of changing that view. I kept the core of my identity, but I grew in ways I didn’t think I was able to. Figuring out who you are doesn’t mean you have to go on a crazy benders or party in different places until the sun comes up like I thought, the process is whatever you want it to be. Not some teenage indie movie idea of a come-to-jesus moment.
Which is why I looked around at the space that had sheltered me from my fears and protected me from my pain, and saw a place that seemed distant. I saw a high school version of myself, laying upside down on my lavender comforter skyping my best friend while a half-finished sheet of algebra homework stared up at me.
A past life where the only thing I had to worry about was how I was going to “accidentally” run into my crush at homecoming.
College changes you. Whether you want to admit it or not, whether you intended it to or not—it does anyway.
Nothing will ever be the same, even though I’m laying on the same lavender comforter, the world doesn’t look as easy as it did. I can’t just sit at a booth in Chipotle with my friends and think about Halloween parties and football games anymore.
It feels out of place for me to be home, like I’m in the room of high school Angelina who is just stepping out but is set to come back any minute. A stranger in my own room.
But that’s okay.
Part of growing up is letting go, of people you thought you knew and relationships you thought you were meant to be in, but also of the person you were before.
Before all the learning, growing and realizing.