Like many students, I arrived home a few months back for my summer break. My first summer break, I might add, since leaving for college. Many of my friends stuck close to home, making weekend, if not daily, trips back home to their humble abode. But not me. I chose a college all the way down the East Coast. 12 hours by car and 2 by a $500 airplane ticket. Needless to say, I had not been at home for an extended period of time.
But what about winter break? You might ask. Yes. I came home for winter break. But that was filled with cookies and Christmas shopping and decorating and more shopping and the first real chance to talk to my friends about my new life. It all fit so conveniently into that tiny little block of time. I arrived back at college in January just as I was starting to get bored and/or fed up with being home.
Now, summer break is an entirely different monster. After making the 12 hour trek home with all my belongings not-so-neatly shoved in my 4door Jeep Wrangler I was hoping for more of a welcome than what I received. Sure, I drove to the close-by college where a few of my friends were attending. (Their classes were still in session. HA.) But that was uneventful. I quickly realized that if this was how my summer was going to go, then I needed to get back down South ASAP. But, for a few weeks, it was fine. I saw a couple friends here and there until finally they all but stopped calling. My life wasn’t new or interesting or exotic anymore. They had caught up on all my party tricks and they went back to living their life exactly how it was before. I hadn’t existed all school year, and except for a half hearted “Wats up” text on the rare occasion, I still didn’t exist.
I found myself missing friends from back at college that I didn’t even have. That girl who ran through the middle of campus everyday right as I was walking to lunch. I missed her. The guy who was always seen with a strangely large handful of packages from the post office. I missed him. I missed the post office guy. I missed picking up my own mail. I missed the Margherita Pizza at my favorite downtown pizza joint. I missed the club by the downtown pizza joint. I missed the bouncer at that club who always flirted with me when I walked in. I missed being able to go to that club at 1 in the morning. I missed my roommate (although that took a while). I missed my brunch friends. I missed my big. I missed my complete and total freedom.
You see, I had never known freedom for as long as I lived in my parents house. I was always a minor. I turned 18 while I was in college. I turned 18 in a dorm room. So coming home after all this freedom was literally just handed to me, asking nothing in return, is a difficult “transition”. Nothing is how I expected it to be. Although I did sorta kinda half-expect ice cream and netflix all day (which has been fulfilled), I also expected my perfect “18” summer. With the bonfires and the group of friends I have known for forever and nothing has changed even though we all went our separate ways and the beach trips and the late nights and every other movie-worhty cliche imaginable.
When in actuality…
it kinda sucks.
I want to be back in college. I want to be an individual. I want my friends. And I want my 2am Margherita pizza downtown. None of that seems achievable anymore. Its like I came back from a fantasy land. Not saying that my parents haven’t been good with giving me my freedom.. because they have been… mostly… kind of… But I actually have to ask. I can no longer just grab my keys and waltz off to get ice cream in my slippers (which happened a lot for me in college). It’s weird. And not the good weird. The I-want-my-life-back-where-am-I weird.
My first summer back home from college has not been anything like what I expected. It’s been a lot more family time than I expected. And let me say this, I cannot believe how much my siblings have changed. They’ve grown up so much and its weird to think that I am going to miss the next three years of growing up. My middle sister might think she doesn’t have much more growing up to do, but looking back at myself at that age… thank God I grew up so much more after that. And the baby is going into middle school. Absolutely unbelievable. I have (almost) completely fallen back into the same rhythm I was in my senior year of high school (sans the friends and the classes and homework and college stress). And although I do love being with my family, I’m starting to go on a family/icecream/netflix overload.
xo
An Angry Princess
Angry Princesses 