Contemplating...

My friend Mandy wrote this as a blog on her myspace... It's a little long, but read through it anyway :) I've been having the same thoughts, emotions, struggles as she writes here... but I don't think I could state it nearly as well as she has.

*...The End of Freshman Year...*

A year has past and now we stand on the brink of returning to a world
where we are surrounded by the paradox of everything yet nothing being
the same. In a few weeks we will reluctantly give our hugs and,
fighting the tears, say goodbye to the people who were once just names
on a door 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 places we came from and
go back to the same things we did last summer and every summer before.
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. Who will you call first? Where are you going to work? Who
will be at the party Saturday night? What has everyone been up to? Who
from school will you keep in touch with? How long before you actually
start missing people barging in without calling or knocking? Who
will get Trujillo's with you at two in the morning? How long until you
adjust to sleeping in a room by yourself, or how long before you
realize your best friends aren't in the bed next to your room?

Then you realize how much things have changed, you realize the hardest
part of college 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 traveling time, we will leave our world of living next door
to our best friends, walking across campus to eat, instant messenger,
8:00 classes, and perpetual procrastination to a world that will seem
foreign to us despite the fact that we have lived in it for eighteen
years.

But it is different now... We now know the meaning of true friendship.
We know whom we have kept in touch with over the past year and whom we
hold dearest to our hearts. We've left our high school worlds to deal
with the real world. We have had our hearts broken, we've fallen in
love, we've helped our best friends through the toughest times of
their lives, something their even best friends at home couldn't be
there for. We've stayed up all night just to be there for a friend.
We've partied the night away, doing stupid stuff, but we were always
there for each other afterwards. There have been times when we've felt
so helpless being hours away from home when we know our families or
friends needed us most, and there are times when we know we have made
a difference.

A few weeks from now we will leave. A few weeks 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
emails 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.

A few weeks from now we will arrive. A few weeks from now
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 laughter and tears over the past year. We will
unpack old memories and dreams that have been put away for the past
year.

A few weeks from now we will dig deep inside to find the strength and
conviction to adjust to change and still keep each other close. And
somehow, in someway, we will find our place between these two worlds