once familar, now a stranger too

hello from new york city, babe !

i've attempted to throw many of my vast array of thoughts down over the past few weeks, but they are ever fleeting.

so what better than the present moment !?

i was a little emo tonight (a result of a long week & homesickness & hormones, oh my!) but i was sitting on my silly little twin xl mattress and wondering why this feeling felt new & different.

while a lot of my friends have moved into college and been through the whole shebang by this point, many of my closest california friends haven't moved in until this week or next.

and even though i've already left and started my new life, for some reason i was sad for them to leave.

sitting in this feeling for a bit longer, i realized that the life i left back home isn't just permanently on pause until i get back. i think i knew this, obviously it's not a very deep observation, but for some reason subconsciously i expected things to stay the same. maybe that's my fear of lack of control talking—being okay with leaving but not with the place i left leaving me too.

a few weeks ago my parents facetimed me showing the new configuration of my room.

what was once an oh so precious sanctuary is already a figment of my memory, only existent in my mind's eye.

change is weird !

and now my best friend is moved into her school and my sweet summer fling moved in today !

the places & people that were once so familiar to me have now grown to become strangers too.

i so serendipitously saw a poem about it this morning that perfectly described this nostalgia-adjacent emotion:

i yearn for all my

former best friends

talking about our periods at recess

first crushes

first kisses

first i-think-i-love-somebodys

i miss french braids

and reading cosmo before we knew

what anything really meant

there's something about friendship

that gives you hope for your future

a sibling by choice

but sometimes it doesn't rain for weeks

sometimes you move to new cities

you become new people

and when you come home

you realize the river you used to

walk in together has evaporated

- michaela angemeer

while i don't think the river has necessarily evaporated- what is it they say about how you never step in the same river twice? life is constantly moving and even if you return to the same physical place you once were, nothing will be exactly the same as it once was.

i think that's a whole layer of loneliness that people don't talk about when moving to college. sure, you hear about having to create your whole new group of friends from the start again and missing your family and being in a constant state of career crisis (me asf).

but rarely have do you hear mentions of not only your life changing, but everyone's life around you changing as well. while their everyday routines might not look so different, day by day, they are cultivating a new life while you do the same.

it can be such a depressing thought to have, but at the same time so human and delicate.

that's life ! fact of the matter.

i think that's my new era, the "fact-of-the-matter" experiencing things as they come and letting go of them once they flee—not to be the bitch who names every stage of life, but i am that bitch.

of course the time i'm the most present i've ever been is only when life forces me to be ! how stubborn ! i'm only capable of being in the moment when everything else is too overwhelming to even think about !

(okay overexaggerated for dramatic effect, but the feeling is valid nonetheless)

i think that's all i have to say for now.

i had a whole schpiel about being the same person as i was and expecting this dramatic change in my life & persona, but that's simply not what's on my mind anymore and that's what? fact-of-the-fuckin-matter !

miss u, TALK SOON !

eternally changing, always loving,

mia lorelei