Thunderstruck.
Do you ever get broadsided with the realization that your world is about to change?
Exactly one year ago, I wept for the end of college and boarded my first transatlantic flight. I toured Italy with the most warm-hearted, intelligent, passionate, life-loving orchestra in the world and looked forward to my new life in Providence with giddy anticipation. I had a healthy horse and a healthy future back then.
Exactly one week from today, my Providence life will end, and I will begin the long journey back to Michigan, back to where I came from. Where I come from. My horse is still recovering from an injury sustained last fall, and my future is uncertain.
Exactly one year from today, I will hopefully be looking forward to graduate school with giddy anticipation. But I would like to fill the interim year with something other than my childhood home. Try as I might, I cannot shake the stigma of returning to the house I grew up in, of indefinite unemployment in the Midwest while my college classmates work as admissions officers and teachers and consultants and paralegals and journalists and nonprofit crusaders and luxury brand managers and hell, even grad students. Granted, I will be managing the farm, studying for the GREs, and applying to grad schools, so there's no lack of work to be done. I also have to remember that I chose to return to Michigan, that I want to return to Michigan for awhile. It's just the lack of prescribed departure date that I find so worrisome.
And, as always, I'm having trouble letting people go. Some I know I will see again, some whom I'll visit in Providence in the fall or spring. Others are leaving shortly before or after me, and their destinations are just as uncertain as my own. It is the thought of losing touch with these people that kills me. Sure, there's always facebook, gchat, and email - and I know I said earlier that electronic communication diminishes goodbyes - but some friends are not particularly virtually communicative. Phone numbers and email addresses change as people scatter about the world. I can only hope, just as I did a year ago, that I'll remain in contact with those I love most here, and that they'll attempt to keep in touch with me as well. If this year is anything like the last, then I can look forward to healthy long-distance communication with a few more tremendous friends. And even if that's not the case, I will love and remember these people for the rest of my life.