Received this in email a while back! it really stuck a cord with me, and wanted to share it.
“A year has passed
and now we stand on the brink of
returning to a world where we are
surrounded by the paradox of everything,
and yet nothing being the same.
In two months
we will reluctantly give our hugs and,
fighting the tears,
say goodbye to people who
were once just names on a sheet of paper
to return to people
that we hugged and fought tears to
say goodbye to before we ever left.
We will leave our best friends
to return to our best friends.
We will go back to the places
we came from
and go back to the same things we did last summer
and every summer before that.
We will come into town on that same familiar road,
and even though it has been months,
it will seem like only yesterday.
As you walk
into your old bedroom,
every emotion will pass through you
as you reflect on the way your life has changed
and the person you have become.
You suddenly realize
that the things that were most important to you a year ago
don’t seem to matter so much anymore,
and the things you hold highest now,
no one at home will completely understand.
The memories and the stories from school
won’t mean anything to anyone at home
and yet you resent them for that,
that they can’t share that happiness with you.
Who will you call first?
What will you do your first weekend home with your friends?
How long before you actually start missing
people barging in without calling or knocking?
Who will get pizza at three in the morning with you now?
How long until you adjust
to sleeping alone in a room again?
Then you start to realize
how much
things have changed,
and you realize the hardest part of university
is balancing the two completely different worlds you now live in,
trying desperately to hold on to everything
all the while trying to figure out
what you have to leave behind.
In the matter of one day’s travelling time,
we will leave our world of living next door to our best friends,
walking across campus to eat,
instant messenger,
8:00am classes,
and the perpetual procrastination to a world
that will seem foreign to us
despite the fact that we lived in it for eighteen years.
But it is different now.
We now know the meaning of true friendship.
We know who we have kept in touch with over the past year
and who we hold dearest in our hearts.
We’ve left our high school world
to deal with the real world.
We’ve had our hearts broken,
we’ve fallen in love,
we’ve helped our best
friends overcome depression, stress and death,
and we’ve stayed up all night on the phone
just to talk to a friend in need.
There have been times when we’ve felt so helpless
being hours away from home
when we know our families needed us,
and there are times we know
we have made a difference.
Two months from now we will leave.
Two months from now we take down our pictures,
and pack up our clothes.
No more going next door to do nothing for hours on end.
We will leave our friends
whose random email and phone calls
will bring us to laughter and tears this summer.
We will take our memories and dreams
and put them away for now,
saving them for our return to this world.
Two months from now we will arrive.
We will unpack our bags
and have dinner with our families.
We will drive over to our best friend’s house
and do
nothing for hours on end.
We will return to the same friends
whose random emails and phone calls
have brought us to laughter and tears over the year.
We will unpack old dreams and memories
that have been put away for the past year.
In two months
we will dig deep inside to find the strength and
conviction to adjust to change
and still keep each other close.
And somehow,
in some way,
we will find our place between these two
completely different worlds.
Are you ready?”
