I was asked not too long ago to pick a song that best described me. Because this is such an opened-ended topic, I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to find.
Yet I found myself sitting for hours, going through my CDs and my friends’ CDs, trying to find that perfect song that would describe me.
I racked my brain for songs I had heard on the radio. I thought for sure I would find my perfect song somewhere.
I can’t say I found that one song that describes me perfectly, but I feel I came pretty close for the time being.
The closest I could find was Matchbox Twenty’s “Hang.” For those of you who may not be familiar with the song, let me refresh your memory:
“She grabs her magazines. She packs her things and she goes. She leaves the pictures hanging on the wall, she burns all her notes and she knows, she’s been here too few years to feel this old… And we always say, it’ll be good to go away someday.”
Sounds kind of somber, I know. Yet somehow, somewhere it struck a chord inside me. This is how I left for college – leaving an old life behind me, starting a new one. This is me; I’m aching to get away. I’m so young and yet I feel so old.
With winter break almost within reach I find myself wanting to go home to visit family and friends I haven’t seen just about all semester.
In a sense I live a double life. The person that I am at home and at school is essentially the same, but in other ways, completely different. It’s hard to explain.
It’s hard living six hours from home, but that’s what I had wanted all along. When looking at schools I wanted to be away from home and be on my own.
I know six hours isn’t really that far, given the fact that I’m still in California. But I did have ambitions of going even farther away.
And I still do.
I’m realizing just how independent I am and how much more independent I have become while in college.
I know this because I’ve never really gotten homesick. Sadly I’m content going home only occasionally for holidays.
That’s what I’m worried about.
I have decided I want to go to graduate school once I’m done at La Verne next year. I have also decided I want to go somewhere back East or in the Midwest.
While I’m excited and looking forward to it, at the same time I’m scared.
I’m scared it may end up not being what I want and that I’ll be disappointed. I’m thinking maybe the dream is better than the reality.
Even more so, I’m also scared that I may end up not coming back. I pride myself in being a California girl, but there are often times when I know there’s something else that could be right for me.
Sometimes you just get tired of so many people and the fast pace of life that flies by you if you blink too long.
Sometimes you just get tired in general and need a break or a change in scenery. I think that’s the point I’m at right about now.
I know I have time to think about what I want. It’s all I’ve been doing – Thinking. Sometimes I think I think too much.
The beauty of it all is that I do have over a year until I will have to go anywhere. I’m not really in a rush.
“But if things don’t work out like we think and there’s nothing here to ease the ache, but if there’s nothing there to make things change, if it’s the same for you, I’ll just hang.”
Chrissy Zehrbach, a junior journalism major, is sports editor for the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at sqweet@aol.com.
