We just miss our animals.

Leaving home for college is hard in general, but it is a nightmare if we have pets that we are leaving behind as well. We have to learn to function on our own in the world with no constant parental guidance and no pet to cuddle with at night? That's just cruel. Come on world give us a break.

Humans do not deserve pets. Pets are so loyal to us and want nothing more than our affection. So leaving them is so heartbreaking. They don't know when or if we are ever coming home. We can't explain to them where we are going to or why we are going away, they don't understand. We find ourselves asking how they are when we are on the phone with our parents and may even ask our parents to give them a treat for us. But let's face it, long distance with pets is way worse than long distance with any human being. We can't text our cat that we miss them or virtually pet them. We can't FaceTime our dog. Trust me I think we've all tried and failed.

So we resort to flipping through pictures of them on our phone and tweeting about how much we miss them with a bunch of crying emojis. When people ask us what's wrong we respond with, "nothing, I just miss my dogs a lot". We get weird responses from people who claim they aren't "pet people". And angry responses from our parents when they think we only come home to see our pets. But they still send us random pictures of our pets in text messages with captions like "Hey honey, the puppies miss you!!!" and we immediately start to cry.

(even if it's this)

So what's a student to do? Suffer.

If I was able to have my dog on campus I would be so much happier and I would be a lot less stressed out. Why do so many college students develop disorders related to depression and anxiety? Because college is taking them away from home, throwing enormous amounts of work and stress at them, and taking their dogs and cats away from them. I don't think I'm being dramatic here... maybe I am but I don't care.

Till the day comes where students can bring their pets with them to college...parents keep sending us pictures of them (no matter how ridiculous). And we will keep coming home to see them (and our parents too).