:: Closing Time ::

:: Sunday, March 23, 2003 ::

A long time ago, I wrote a bunch of blogs. About basically, the future - which has rapidly become the present.

Did you realize it? This blog is 10 months old. I am literally less than two months away from my blogging anniversary. Most of my readers have five or six weeks left in their freshman years of college. Scarier still, some of you read this when I was still in high school, about to go on the craziest journey of my life. And now you are about to embark on that very journey. I think, I'd love to see you graduate.

I think most of us have said it, either by accident or intentionally. "When are you going back to school, Andrew?" ... "Oh, I'm going home on the.... " did you catch it?

We call college home.

This week, our president went to war. And I wanted to run out into the streets and protest, and then I realized I was in Wellesley. Not DC. I yearn to be back at school... it's my natural habitat. My fraternity brothers have become some of the closest friends I have - clearly, there are those of you who are closer. You know that. But they know things about me and about my life that previously only you were privvy to. I trust them implicitly, and they really are my surrogate family. Thirty eight brothers. Obviously, some more than others. In any group there will be those you are closer to. But I am still priviledged to be a part of that.

It's a part of my life that none of you are a part of. In a way... I wish one of you could be a Beta Theta Pi. I wish I had some link between the central focus of my high school life and the central focus of my college life. Because I really, really like what I've left behind here. A few of you are my silent support structures - without you in my lives, I simply do not think I could hold up. You are my everything, because we understand each other. You are my strength, because we are united. Even when we are divided by something else. Though for some of you I know little about your new life... when we went off to school, we really knew each other. The truth hasn't changed.

The shell has. Those of you who didn't really know me see a very different me... and more clearly, those of you I didn't really know are very, very different to me. A couple of you are scarily different because you're the same. I can honestly say there are people who haven't changed at all in almost seven months in a new environment. In my opinion that can't possibly be healthy... these people are too locked into the stratification of the Wellesley community. These people can't change.

That there are those of you who I expect to be at my wedding, I am truly thankful for. Having friends at that level is something I've started taking for granted, except every time I need them - and suddenly I realize they're there. It's a reminder.

I think, and I haven't -really- thought this out so don't call me on it, that with these friends... we don't talk about college. We don't talk about college because we talk about each other. There is absolutely no reason in the world I care about your neighbors in college, because I've never met them and never will - but with these true friends it's understood that what I care about is how your neighbors impact you. This is a huge difference that separates the narcisisstic from the actually friendly. I want to hear your stories, because I want to hear how you're having fun - not because I give a shit about what actually happened hundreds of miles away. To some extent, this situation is great - you're the star of the show, and people want to know what life is like for you. But they don't want to know what everything is like around you. Looking back, I realize that the actual friends talk about their lives, while the others talk about everybody's lives.

But I'm in my new life now. New surroundings, new people. And I desperately, desperately want to bring these two lives together. I honestly can't imagine how life could be different if we'd all pulled a Saved By The Bell and ended up at the same college - or at least in the same city. The way college works it's obviously impossible, but to have some of you in my life WHILE having this new life... I think I could have been complete.

The great difference is proportion. Here, I'm missing school - and my friends at school, and what has become the vast majority of my life. I miss all my daily routines, I miss a lot of my physical stuff, I miss the city, I miss the things we do. CATCHPHRASE damnit, and none of you get it ;) It's such a great game! But that's part of my other life. But there's so much MORE of it that I miss it far more often than when I'm at school. At school, I miss three things: my friends, my family, and my kitty. And honestly, because the time spans are so long between when I get to come home and when I see you all... I have to repress it, or I'd go nuts. Tonight we bounced a ball around for 10 minutes, and you had to be there to get it - but it was endlessly fun and incredibly STUPID and that's why it was so much fun. It was just a part of my life I can't have for great lengths of time, and when I'm finally back it's so fleeting, it's as if nothing's really happening. There's never enough time. I can't wait for summer, and yet I dread it. I absolutely dread it, being without the life I know for three months, and then having to restart it. And worse, having three months to get re-attached to the life I have here... maybe that's not a good idea. I considered staying in DC this summer, trying to find a job, or trying to work with one of the university's summer programs. But I thought I had to be home this first time. It's so crazy.

I have less than one year left as a teenager.

You can't be in two places at once - at home, and at college. Sometimes we seem to think we can though.... and sometimes we just want to be. And for those around us, it's critical that we disconnect from one, or the other. Because when we're in two places and once and those around us are in one place.... then we're not in that one place at all. Is it fair? Is it fair to me to give my half hearted attention to this life, when I'm really clinging to school? Is it fair to me to give half hearted attention to school, when all I want is to come home for the summer?

Do I really know how to live any more with just one half? Or the other?

And for each of us, the critical thing:

Do you?
:: Peter 3:22 AM [+] ::
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