As the dispersion begins

When I think of my closest friends, I am forced to consider the great physical distances that are suddenly between us.

The individuals most dear to my heart are now spread out across the country: caravaning around California, being a clothing line maven in NC, continuing their education in Illinois, and back home in New York and New Jersey. While texts, phone calls and letters (you remember those, primative versions of the email) are great, its not the same experience as sitting across from those near-and-dear to you.

I am terribly proud of my friends as they disperse and plot new courses in their lives. However, while my wonderful friends are moving away and moving their lives forward, its difficult not to feel like I'm (physically and emotionally) standing still. Still in college, still in Charleston, still single.

As a fifth year senior at the College, I have become one of those students that parks, goes to class, then heads straight back to the car and out of downtown. Gone is the constant girlpack chatter to-and-from class, lunches with friends that have to been s-q-u-e-e-z-e-d into our small overlapping pockets of free time, and impromtu bike rides/runs through the historic district. I have little interaction with my classmates -- honestly, I don't know any of their names yet -- and I pop my iPod earbuds in and crank the volume the moment I step out of a building. I have even caught myself walking along the periphery of our beautiful campus, and consequently missing my favorite downtown Charleston moment for weeks at a time: the smell of cut grass in the Cistern yard.

With this unfortunate realization of my newfound loner-dom, I am going to make an effort to cut it out.

Promise that my following posts will not be centered around complaining :/