#usasia

my little lynchburg family is so beautiful.  the love the 27 of us have for each other is like nothing I’ve experienced before, even in my blood family.  It’s the same, but so different that it excites me.

yet, I know a great deal of people who are graduating from my little family after this next academic year. alyssa, anna, jenna, megan, jessika, marianne, abby... geez.  geez geez geez.  I sure hope I didn’t forget anyone. it’s hard to keep up with who is what and where and why and how many.

I’ve cried a great deal over people in the past, but without a doubt, I know that when these girls go, it will be the hardest I’ve ever wept in my life.  Honesty, just thinking about it now makes me tear up.  Knowing that this time next year, not only will it be possibly years before I see again, but also one semester before I go on my overseas internship for a semester (spring junior year) will be a hard concept to grasp.

and what’s more, when I’m on my internship, it’ll be some of my dearest friends’ last semester of college.  so when I come back for my own senior year, they’ll be gone. who knows when I’ll see them.  one of them, by this time next year, I will have known for seven years.  and when he leaves, it’ll have been eight.  this post is so hard to write. gosh.

when I started out overseas, no one told me how much I’d learn to love others and then quickly lose them when they moved, or when I did instead.  no one told me that there’d practically be no difference between giving up friends in high school and watching others depart in college.  no one told me how deeply and fiercely I would love, and just as much so I would lose.  why doesn’t anyone ever speak of these things?  why is it always about plastic storage bins, pencils, and lamps?  why is it always about cramming in as much knowledge as possible and becoming so stressed that I feel exhausted every second I breathe?  why didn’t anyone ever think of letting me know how much my heart would be affected?

it’s difficult, see.  I’ve allowed my heart to be affected by a great many things, so doing this again is hard.  at the same time, I cannot let myself become hardened to the important things in life and live as a boring woman in a boring house with a boring job, never adventuring into hurt and romance and friendship and happiness. that was a long sentence.  but you know what I mean.