College.
Home.
I remember moving in last year, freshman year. I had so many mixed feelings. I was so ready to start a chapter of my life of independence, responsibility, and freedom. Yet I did not want to leave my family, the only place and people I had ever known, to grow up.
Now as I get ready to move in for the second time, I have recognized the double life a college kid lives and the struggle each one possesses to keep up both lives.
At one end, you have your hometown- family, high school friends, old hangouts, inside jokes, etc. These are the people and the things you grew up with. The things that have made you who you were for the past eighteen or nineteen years. These things, these people, have been a part of your life and now you must leave them and start a new life, a new "chapter."
At the other end, you have your new beginnings. Your new friends who are going through the same transition you are. The new atmosphere of "study more" and "party harder" college. The independence, the choices, the food, the freedom. All of it flies at you all at once and you are expected to automatically choose the right answer, or call the right decision.
And yet you must leave both of these worlds multiple times. You go home for break for a month and you're expected to pick up at home from where you left off but as soon as you return to college, it is the same scenario.
Personally, my college life is not that much different than my home life. I am still not a partier, I study a ridiculous amount, and enjoy doing the same things I did at home. But I still struggle to find the balance between these two. There is a big enough gap between the two that I cannot do both.
Some things that I have discovered great difficulty in adapting are my running habits and my spiritual devotion. Before college, I was running frequently. I was used to running in the rural country where cars would nonchalantly pass me and I could spot a deer a few yards ahead. Then I moved to aa ... which is the complete opposite of rural. I had to worry about traffic lights, crosswalks, and other pedestrians roaming the sidewalks. For a while, my running experienced quite a drought as I adjusted to the new environment I was training. Eventually, I came to love running the city blocks. I had loops I had made up depending on my mood for the day. Happy, run in the suburbs past the high school. Stressed, run alongside N. State where there was a lot of traffic and a few hills. Content, run the Tappan loop over to Washtenaw. I loved running in the city. Then I moved back home for the summer and found myself experiencing yet another running drought, I hated running in the country.
The same has occurred in my spiritual life. I loved my smaller church where I knew everyone and everyone knew me. I loved going to church and worshiping and listening to our wonderful pastor deliver his message. When I moved to aa, I attended a nondenominational church with my roommates to find that the concert like setting specifically targeting students was quite attractive to me. I grew to love and look forward to Sunday mornings simply because I would attend New Life and sing my heart out for an hour straight. Now I have attended my home church less and less all summer and I feel like I have missed out on seeing the people I love and used to see every week.
It is difficult to balance these two lives... I know someday I will get it down. Or I will just pick one over the other. But that isn't happening...
ps- I miss you.
