Every year, we make the trudge home for break. And every year, it's a little different and seems less like the home we used to know. Let's face it: we're growing up. This feeling is extremely bittersweet.
Being at home was something that once felt so comfortable, and still does... kinda. This was the house you grew up in, completed elementary in, graduated high school in, and then left behind for college. You created so many relationships under this same roof. You had awesome friendships, relationships with your family, and boyfriends/girlfriends. But each time you go home, you start to realize how each one of these relationships you had in high school, tends to change.
You find out who's worth spending your only free day with, or even hour. Going home tends to be hectic as you try to make time for every single person left behind in your hometown. Spending time with your family is automatically the first thing you have/want to do. Let's face it, its the most important. Next, your old high school friends. This includes some people who never left and some in the same boat as you returning home from college on a holiday break.
You get so stressed trying to make time for all of these people, but ask yourself one question. How many of these people text or call me regularly and check up on me? How about reaching out to you to tell you how proud you make them, or that you're killin' the college game? How many of these people do I do the same for? Is it worth spending my only free hour with them? Or stressing about what they might think if I don't sacrifice my time to see them?
I'm here to tell you to not feel bad. If anyone, including family, wants to be a part of your life, they will make the time. Anyone who loves you and cares for you will make it known. Going home shouldn't be a time of stress, but a time to relax.
Relationships back home will continue to change, and feel less like they used to, but that's OK.
Relationships with people back home are just different than the ones you have with your college friends, and that's OK. They're different because we're all in different chapters of our life. It's hard to relate to someone who never went to college and talk about things they have no idea about. It's hard to relate sometimes to their lives as their much different that ours, and that's OK.
Just because you don't get to spend time with someone from back home over break, doesn't mean you don't care. As we get older, we get busier. Adulting sucks, but having friends who understand that just because you don't reach out to them every time you're in town because your busy with family, and that you aren't "mad" at them or care/love them any less, are the ones worth keeping.
These friends are the mature ones, the ones who understand that life is one big mess, and if you called them out of the blue one day, they'd pick up. People who make you feel drained or overwhelmed when a text from them pops up on your phone, let them go. Life is too short to feel stressed over someone taking up your time.
Going home will forever be different because of these relationships. I always say, it's not the place itself, but the people. Cherish the healthy, happy relationships you have back at home, and let the ones that are anything less, go.
