MONO NO AWARE

During the summer before my sophomore year of college, I spent a month living with my best friend from high school. Up until that point, it was the most fun I’d ever had in my life, and yet still a sense of sadness lurked. In spending that month with my friend, I'd sacrificed a month with my family, as they were in Michigan – not yet fully settled after moving there from Connecticut the previous fall. I had stayed with my grandma so that I could finish my senior year, and it all felt like college had came early: away from my family, in a new room, and with a roommate (except my roommate was my grandma). Once I graduated high school and joined them in Michigan, my summers home from college consisted of existence in a Michigan town where I knew no one, and intense fomo (fear of missing out) as I watched party plans coalesce in group chats of my high school friends. I’d fantasize about booking a flight and surprising the whole party with an unexpected entrance, but that dream never came to be. However, that month I spent sleeping on my friend’s pullout couch was a soothing balm to all of my fomo stress, but I felt guilty and frustrated that it wasn’t my family I was sitting down with and having dinner with each night. Even so, that guilt didn't stop me from dreading my drive back to Michigan, and the night I'd spend alone in a random Pennsylvania hotel room at the halfway point to a place that didn't yet feel like home.

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​So that fall, in a creative writing class, I tried to put everything I was feeling into a poem. 

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Familiarity With Goodbyes

living in one place but wanting to be in another

living with one family but missing the other.

my lot in life means I’m made to pick between. 

 

living out of a suitcase, and on the generosity of others.

birthday cake in July instead of June.

watching friends hug their moms while mine misses her boy.

sisters’ voices distorted on the phone instead of rolling down the hallway. 

petting friends’ dogs while mine puzzle at my disappearance.

 

one summer month on a pullout couch in a friend’s basement 

was perhaps the happiest I’ve ever been. 

but how can that be so 

when I cheated my family of time spent together?

how can I dread going home

while still missing everyone in it?

how many more memories

have to be warped by the heartache of leaving?

 

my lot in life means I’m made to pick between

time spent with one is time lost with the other.

and no matter how familiar they become,

how is it that each goodbye hurts more than the last?

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Returning to this poem was an odd experience, both in how I feel about it three years later and its current relevance to my impending graduation. Michigan feels more like a home now – the last time I visited Connecticut was two years ago, and it felt like just that – a visit. Summers aren't so treacherously full of fomo now that group chats are filled with replies that cite work making them too busy. I revel in every moment spent with my family, and in the moments when I do get to see my friends from high school, like when I visited my best friend Luca at Penn State (a year after he'd come to visit me in Ann Arbor). In the time since writing this poem I've learned to accept and adapt to the situation that caused me so much distress.

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But now, I’ve been steadfastly ignoring the fact that graduating college means I’m one step closer to jumping right back into something similar. Moving out of the house in Michigan that finally feels like home is something I want. But at the same time it inspires a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach that reminds me of when I’d lie awake in my friend’s house, wondering how everything at home was going and sending long, rambling post-midnight texts to my parents and sisters about what I was up to. College was the first time I’ve ever needed to make an effort to stay connected to my family: calls while I’m walking home from class, texts about fun things I’m doing, requests for photos of our dogs, or Tik Toks that made me think of them. And in my first taste of what life might be like once I’m moved out, that sophomore year summer, I both loved it and wasn’t ready for it in equal parts. I've grown since then, but I don't know if I've grown ready. And I'm not sure if there's any way to find out but to try. And maybe fail. Or succeed. But regardless of the outcome, this poem was a reminder of the effort I need to give my family and my friends once I eventually do move away from home. I do feel more ready now, but that doesn’t mean I’m quite willing to go just yet.