A Weekend Away

Sometimes I wish I had gone to college. For the experience alone. Something about being away, on your own, yet not alone at all. Living on a campus of other people all going through this part of life together. Something about being in close quarters with people so alike yet so different. People not from your past. Possibly your future... but right now? New.

I never lived on my own. Or with a roommate for that matter. I have always been with family. First the family I was born into, and then the family I created together with my husband. Both wonderful families. Absolutely essential to who I am... but there is something about getting that taste of "alone" now and then. It is crucial for those hybrid introvert / free-spirits like myself.

These weekends away feed something in my soul. The long drive. The unfamiliar streets of a town I don't frequent enough to know. Feeling lost, and at the very same time found.

It's not school itself I feel that I missed out on... it's the environment. Something unique to college that I feel I sit on the outskirts of... dipping my toes in the water but never jumping in. Something that I experience as an observer. The idea of it likely far more romantic than the actuality of it.

...Still. I feel the pull.

This place. It has magic in it's walls. In it's classrooms and dorms and networks of sidewalks and hallways through which the experiences are facilitated. In the air. It fills my lungs anew.

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