Unedited, Unproofread, Unwarranted

It's humbling to see what people I don't know as well are saying to each other on Facebook when they are separated by Harlaxton. When it was me I was sure no one could miss anyone like I did, but that's ridiculous. Maybe I was more physically affected than average, but there are always people who love each other and are torn apart. It is such an uncommon experience to go to a school where such a huge majority studies abroad. What is the national average? Like 6%? I think here we learn something other colleges miss. How do you communicate over 4000 miles? How do you not drift apart? All college is cruel though and tricks us into believing we can live this way, within one square mile of the people we'd die for, and at the end points and laughs and hires its geographical cronies to interrupt our hand-holding and drag us though we kick and scream away from each other. I am not unique here. We share this, and that is how we stay together. Across the country and the world young people are figuring out what to do with their lives, and once they get it, once they find where they're comfortable, everything changes. Everything always changes. It is a hard lesson. Hard meaning both painful and complicated. I haven't figured it out yet, but it's coming. Some were even more a part of me when they were gone, were closer and more honest. It's been almost a full year since the end of the bad semester, and tonight I spent some time, just a little while, looking at pictures from my friends' travels, and in maybe 15 minutes I forgot they were back. "In some ways it gets worse. That's what I would say." I don't know. I hope this is what I learn in college, besides how to write nonfiction and how Midwestern farmers used to be—how to be apart and still stay together. We'll find out soon; next month or a few after that will be the test, and we'll see. Until then, remember that I am one of many. Other people also have dreams of seeing their distant friends and wake up miserable to find them false. For now we are all together. Let us revel.

(We didn't know—no, we didn't even try.
One minute there was road beneath us, and the next just sky.)