With summer quickly approaching and finals underway, Ohio University students have started preparing their rooms for move-out day. The end can’t seem to arrive quickly enough for some, but others may be wishing time would freeze right in its place.
Many students choose between the two categories of “ready to go home” or “not ready to go home,” forgetting that there is a very large middle-ground of loving life in two separate places.
What isn’t talked about often enough is the fact that it’s OK to be happy and heartbroken at the same time. I am lucky enough to experience the middle-ground, but cursed to feel it so deeply.
I’ve never been good at goodbyes. Leaving one place I love to travel to another place I love brings pain, and leaving people I love to see other people I love brings even more pain.
I would tell you I’m done with sophomore year, absolutely ready to go home. I would also tell you I’m grieving a place I haven’t even left yet, preparing to temporarily pause the life I have spent two years building in Athens.
Two feelings can coexist at the same time, even contradicting ones, and that truth doesn’t make either emotion less powerful.
Mixed emotions are a natural response to life’s complex experiences, including transitional and stressful time periods. They represent a sign of emotional depth and an understanding of the full process of life. It is what makes us human.
Leaving Athens for the summer brings a wave of bittersweet emotions I never thought I could feel simultaneously.
While I’m grieving losing the sight of a fairytale scene that includes deer, squirrels and groundhogs mingling in a field together on my way to class, I smile when I think of seeing my dog jump at me when I first enter the door for summer break.
So many things patiently await my arrival at home. My family, friends, having coffee on the swing out back and my favorite running trail are things I have longed for, for months. Vacations, trips and talk about plans fill my calendar for the summer, and the countdowns I have created for those specific days are slowly dropping in numbers.
I couldn’t be more ready for home-cooked meals, evenings with family friends, my summer job and lounging at the pool. I’m eager to be stress-free from schoolwork.
At home, I have the luxury of waking up in my own room and opening the blinds, allowing the sun to enter without the worry of waking others. No more bunk-beds, random fire alarms or mandatory residential advisor meetings. That being said, I have one week left of sharing a room with my two roommates, exchanging late-night thoughts and getting ready for the day together.
My heart hurts as I’m ending my sophomore year, preparing to move out of a dorm for the last time, closing a specific time period that caused an abundance of growth and maturity.
The days left on campus are dwindling, and I can count them on my own two hands. Ceremonies, award nights and end-of-the-year celebrations are approaching. Grabbing dinner with friends one last time is becoming a plan in the making. There is so much good in this ending, which only makes parting with this place harder.
Leaving means saying goodbye to my best friends I see every day, exiting the rooms we filled with memories that will forever live there, but in a space that no longer belongs to us.
Moving out means leaving the beautiful scenery, the soft smiles from other students passing by on the sidewalks, Strouds Run on a sunny day, and the uneven bricks that make this place feel like home.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a million times more: I couldn’t imagine going to college anywhere other than OU. It’s a place that brings me joy and purpose, something I wasn’t initially sure I could find away from home.
To love the lives I have in two separate places, so incredibly different from each other, is something I will forever be grateful for, even if that means feeling two deep emotions at the same time.
Aleni Bender is a sophomore studying Organizational Communication at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Aleni about her column? Email/tweet her at ab285023@ohio.edu
