back@dartmouth

I think there's been too much space between posts. Too much time has passed to be able to go back, and with fierce authenticity re-present each Important Event as it occurred in its entirety - render it meaningful in retrospect, draw a broader conclusion about the past when I'm so focused-looking forward. Strange, to think that I wrote the previous post while I was still at home. And now, sitting here in my dorm eating a box of cookies, pajama'd and crosslegged, circling the possibility of going to bed sometime before 4 am (a first for this week), I know that I'm writing this post from home, too.

My friends who are freshmen ('14s- hooray!) have been recently expressing to me feelings of homesickness.
"I don't know, I miss my friends, I miss my hometown," she said.
I counter with, "Well, my friends and I have drifted apart, and I like this place much better than my home town."
"You don't understand- I've lived in the same house since I was little and- "
"So have I." I cut her off, more for me than for her.

What is it, then, that keeps me from feeling homesick? Because, at the end of the day, I have everything I love right here. My parents are a phonecall away, my best friends are a bikeride down the block, the sun rises so beautifully outside my window every morning. Knowing these things makes me realize: feeling at home is not necessarily feeling happy as much as it is feeling content - satisfied, but just enough to want a bit more; safe, but just enough to risk pushing the bounds a bit further; happy, but just as much with the possibility as with the fact.

Yes, I am no longer a freshman, searching frantically for a foothold, or resigned to not-knowing, or waiting for opportunities to present themselves; I no longer so easily believe the stereotypes presented to me, no longer consider homework all-important, no longer linger at the threshold of Food Court with a look of terror splashed across my brimming cheeks. But yes, too, that I am a sophomore; I am of the youngest class of upperclassmen, the youngest to be able to do what the oldest does, the least experienced to be presented with the most experiences, I am the 1,094th of 1,094 of my peers to stand at the threshold of leadership, of responsibility, of knowing, changing, growing, labeling, erasing, destroying, and creating. Last year it was my chance to stand in awe of of what lay before me; now, it is my turn to change what others see before them.

Home - that grey, white-walled homage to childhood in Maryland. Home - the endless, rolling, fiery hills, ignited by autumn, tumbling across New England; the proud, defiant brick and the obdurate, pensive glass that give me place; the thousands of smiles and hands, waved and raised, bikes, peddled and parked, the affectionate embraces of friendship, the sound of music with your eyes closed; these great testaments to possibility; this small college on the hill.