23.

For the past forty minutes, I have unsuccessfully tried to write an essay about something other than how much I miss college, but I've failed. Clearly. Nobody should ever spend that ridiculous an amount of time to come up with a first paragraph, but since I have, I may as well write what I keep going back to. Otherwise, I'll just sit here and stalk my friends on Facebook and wish I was sitting on my bed surrounded by piles of clothes and semi-unpacked luggage, making plans for a reunion pizza dinner with them.

Let me first clarify that I don't actually want this. Actually, all I want is to find a place where I can have constant intellectual stimulation, beautiful surroundings, friends who live next door, a non-long distance relationship, family nearby and a real job. In other words, I want to be back in college without leaving either the people I love, or the financial security I am coming to love. I had already weighed all these pros and cons in my head about a million times before I left home for college and then again before I graduated. It would be wrong to say I didn't know how much I would miss it, because I knew exactly how much I would miss it. But oh, how I miss it. So much.

One thing I deliberately avoided thinking about before I left was that saying goodbye to Moho was a different kind of goodbye. It wasn't like saying goodbye to anyone or anything else, because I don't know if I'm ever going to see it again. I can hope to see it again, but if I do, I don't know when it will be. And when I go back, I don't know if it will mean anything to me anymore. I've never been so fiercely attached to any other place before and I've never knowingly left something I won't get back before. I know this is standard: people don't usually hope to go bounding back to college right after they graduate. I miss who the place let me become. I miss it because it was the first place that was just my own, with everything on my own terms. Perhaps I got used to being selfish, but it's a heady feeling to be used to. That's why, when we drove to Bradley Airport for the last time through the campus, I pretended I was going back, or I would have gone crazy with the private goodbyes to the only place where I have ever really been alone.

It's wrong to say alone, though. I was never alone and can hopefully count on never being alone. I hope one day, I am like a member of the class of 1940, who attended their seventieth reunion in all their ancient glory, all five of them who are still alive. I hope one day, I do see it again and it does still mean something to me. For now, I seriously need to grow up, but I do hate goodbyes. So much.