My problem is

that I concentrate too much on the future. Real life is right here, and it's happening right now.

Hello, Irene.

I've been stuck between a rock and a hard place for the past couple of days. Everyone's been packing up and shipping out, and saying goodbye so often in such a short amount of time makes my head spin. At first, I tried to seek refuge in my old haunts - the hallways of NU, the sales counter at Porter's - but for some reason, the places that I used to call "home" have suddenly taken on a new and unfamiliar feeling. Conversations with friends now directly revolve around their new lives in wondrous cities and on vast college campuses. And my family, love them as I do, has unknowingly been suffocating me more and more as each day inches closer to my freedom. The diagnosis is simple: I'm going stir-crazy, and it's time for me to leave.

The feeling's bittersweet. The more I ponder the adventures the future most certainly must hold, the deeper the fear within me sounds. I am a w f u l at meeting new people, and although I know I shouldn't, I rely way too much on my relationships with others, simple and straightforward as they may be. When I think about college, my one thought is this: please let these first few awkward weeks pass by quickly; let me meet people I can relate to, be comfortable around, have fun with, become friends with.

I've been giving myself the good old pre-social interaction pep talk: just be friendly. Talk to people. Relate and connect and discover and explore. But it's all just simply easier said than done. My roommate, the only person I've talked to extensively, already knows people on campus, which puts me in what I seem to look at as a slightly awkward social position. I know that it is anything but, yet convincing myself of that fact is difficult, if not impossible.

All of this, then, brings me to present day. I packed up my bags three days ago, said one last "adios" to Cedar Falls, and airplane'd it up to NYC for some quality family time pre-move in. And then, two days before the big official countdown-day, Conn sends out a mass bulletin: "College delayed."

Hurricane Irene is making her way up the coast, and she is deadly. With 85 mph winds and rainstorms up the fritz, Conn had decided to delay move-in, freshman orientation, and the official start of semester classes by five days. Five days?! To me, it might as well have been a year. However, according to the school, "accommodations will be made" for students with irreversible travel plans, of which I am. So the plan now? Head to school and bunk there for a whole week ahead of schedule!

The whole concept is somewhat terrifying - a category three hurricane is rushing its way to the Constitution State the same weekend I am slotted to experience what is supposedly known as the most "liberating" experience of any young adolescent's life? It's at times like these that I wish for a normal college experience, complete with a cross-country road trip and a million-plus cardboard boxes. Yet, admist the black hole of fear Hurricane Irene is conjuring in all our heads, there's also a small ray of light in my mind's eye: hope. Maybe, just maybe, making friends won't be that bad. After all, what better way to get to know someone than to spend five days together in refugee-like conditions, trapped under the watchful eye (and then some) of the decade's most dangerous storm?

This girl is about to find out.

----

I had a really great talk with Devon earlier tonight. We haven't seen each other very much this summer, but somehow we always reconnect in the simplest fashion. She leaves for college tomorrow, and as I was driving home, it hit me for the first time: I won't see these people for weeks. Months. Years. The people that I've grown to call my friends, my family, my home, my base - the trust and dreams and experiences we've instilled in each other and encountered with alongside one another - has all that really culminated to this final moment?

So many things. Friendships and relationships and moments and emotions. Eighteen solid years of change and construction, nostalgia as rich as reality itself. People and places and names and long-forgotten sentences and often-repeated stories and instances of hilarity and terror and fear and hope, all running through my mind on a continuous and never-ending loop.

I've said goodbye before. These days, who hasn't? But somehow, this feels deeper. Harder. Rough, like the feeling of sandpaper against skin. Pained, like the sensation of getting the wind knocked out of you. It feels...different.

Of course I'm scared. Hell, I'm terrified. But this is life, and it goes on and on and on and on, and I'm just along for the ride.

Goal:

Be better.

I can tell you,

we swaggered and swayed.