nostalgia .

There aren't a lot of people that I would truly consider my friends from home. I'm not even sure if I should call New Jersey my home, since I don't even live here for 9 months out of the year. It almost feels like a vacation when I'm in the house I was raised in... But anyways, for a lot of the people I used to hang out with in high school, we don't talk during the school year. We can never feasibly get together and I guess since my discontinuation of social media outlets like facebook, we don't really have the opportunity to communicate -- if only indirectly.


But tonight was different; it just felt like high school all over again. The same easy-going atmosphere and carefree feel; it was like being kids again. College is such a different place than high school... In high school you can see the age difference, and it's quite obvious. There are the cliques and the groups and eating lunch in a tiny cafeteria. There's only one building (unless you go to a ritzy high school...) and there are so many stupid rules; i.e. not allowed to wear a hat...

In college there are groups, but the schools are just too big to form cliques. You're on your own, left to decide your own ways of spending your time and how much you study, who you hang out with and what events and activities you go to. Everyone feels pretty much the same age, and dating out of your year is not so much as unheard of. There are virtually no rules... unless made by an individual teacher. But for most large lectures; don't feel like going today? Feel free to walk out early. The teacher may just write down an absence, but you won't be penalized for cutting or anything.

Being with these people again basically brought me back to a different time period. A time that in my eyes was a lot easier to live -- though as the saying goes, you never know what you got til it's gone. It's just so true.

Probably the most unfortunate thing is that these are people I really enjoy spending time with. These are people who it would be really good to keep in contact with -- it almost, almost, hurts when people ask 'when are you leaving?' because I know I'll be back to my other world and other life, watching the ends of the ropes I leave behind me fray and disintegrate. In some instances, I really don't want that. But I'm done putting in so much effort to fight just to keep in contact. There are a select few who are worth the trouble -- others, it's just not clear whether they even care.

But with those depressing thoughts out of sight and out of mind tonight, I was glad to have rekindled a flame long ago extinguished -- saw some people I hadn't seen in oh so long, and just had a genuinely fun time. This is what summer is all about to me; being able to break from school and working, but also really being able to focus on the people around you, and enhancing the relationships you have with them.

Oh, summer nights. Sometimes I just wish they'd never end.