Being Who You (Think) You Have To Be

"College will be a fresh start." 

This can be such a dangerous thing to tell people.

As my first semester at University approaches its close, I can't help looking around at all my new friends and wondering who they really are. 

As I look over myself these past four months, I definitely don't recognize that girl. 

There are definitely aspects to my character that I have improved so well on, aspects I saw as my biggest flaws growing up. 

I can't help missing the girl who favored being alone, the girl who saw solitude not as loneliness, but as a way to delve into beautiful stories of fiction and lay on the floor, lost in a song. 

I miss the girl who lived for a game of basketball.

I miss the girl who favored long term accomplishment over moments of temporary happiness. 

I made a friend in September who I have been crushed out on, who I have wanted to crush, who I both love and hate, who I have seen lights of utter beauty but who has let me down again and again. A friend that can change my day with just a raise of his eyebrows and a stare into my eyes or for the worse with a lack of acknowledgment. 

He is struggling with his character, like the rest of us. He has this idea of who it is he needs to be, feeling as if he needs to leave what he was behind because it wasn't wanted by who he needed it to be most. I see glimpses of this boy sometimes; in a hand movement, in a gaze, as he drifts off to sleep, when he runs to his sisters, I hope he can find this person again someday. 

That person is good enough. 

The real you is good enough. 

Yes, I'm talking to all of you. 

you hear it all the time, but yet again, I will stress there is someone so near to you that wants the real you more than anything in the world. <3