Ryan S

Summer Flings and New Beginnings (dedicated to a friend)

What a roller coaster ride this summer has been. Throughout the past two and a half months, the summer has brought joy, sadness, madness, and anger...and those are only a few of the emotions that have described the summer.

Throughout the summer, many of us have had love affairs with certain things, be they a boyfriend or girlfriend or partying or whatever. Many of us have found sides of ourselves we never knew before existed, and now we are faced with pulling our guts back in, standing up, and walking tall into the upcoming schoolyear.

For those of us going off to college, we are leaving behind many more things than our old room and our parents doing our laundry for us. We are leaving behind relationships we have had with nearly everybody that we know. Even our family relationships are changing from here on out. This change brings two feelings that seem mutually exlclusive but are in fact, mutually dependent. The first feeling is a feeling of utter excitement for the year ahead. The second, a feeling of utter dread. The thought of meeting new people and experiencing new things brings the thought of joy to anyone's mind, but the thought of losing what has already been built up so high and having to start anew with people that you don't know undoubtedly brings at least a slight feeling of dread to even the most intrepid social trailblazers.
At this exact point in our lives, when all intuition tells us that we should be starting to end work on these social edifices we currently have built up, it seems that we are picking up the pace. We are refusing to give up, and in spite of the situation, working even harder and faster. With this hard work, though, comes plenty of emotional baggage.
This is the baggage that holds all the fears and doubts we have about ourselves, other people, and our future. This is "reality" kicking us in the butt. This negativitly is in some cases the motivation that keeps us from falling into where it comes from, and although it feels pretty miserable, it is the pain from which gain is made.

When the end of the summer comes, we will most likely not even realize what happened exactly until the moment is long past gone. Then, our realization will be one of the many moot lessons that life teaches us, and it's meaning will elude us forever--but that's hopefully just the dread speaking.