Homesick and without a cure

By Jennifer Lesnick

Every night I go to bed with a terrible sense of homesickness. Like many of many fellow students, I secretly long to return to my comfortable, perfectly personalized room back at home. No matter how hard I try to make my dorm room reflect my personality, I can't seem to do it. I miss the purple checkerboard I spent a week perfecting.

Even more than missing the simple comforts of home, I miss my family and my friends. I miss the comforts of their laughter and warm smiles while I embark on this bizarre journey where unfamiliar faces and extremely awkward situations surround me. I'm struggling to hold on to something concrete and stable in the sea of self-conscious acquaintances mixed with fast-paced classes and far too few hours of sleep.

Don't get me wrong, I love being in college. This experience is in many ways everything that I wanted. However, there is a strange empty abyss where my best friends from home once resided.

Distance is such a strange concept to grasp. It is an abstract idea that we can't touch or feel. Yet despite this lack of understanding, we can be deeply affected by the emotions of disparity and loneliness distance instills within the very core of our being.

Through numerous observations and my own personal interactions, I have discovered that college life provides many obstacles that stand in the way of students trying to create relationships that can survive.

Many relationships die after the quarter ends. Some struggle through the year and then slowly fade away during the summer.

It is times like these I pray for someone to invent a time machine so I can go back a year or two and run into the arms of my best friend, Zack, who was always equipped with the perfect advice to get me through all my difficult, stressful moments.

While I write him letters and we occasionally chat online, the fact of the matter is we are separated from each other. The bond that we once shared has been broken.

I am no longer a freshman in high school attempting to find myself. I've completed that phase of my life. Now, I am a college freshman attempting to find my purpose. I'm deciding what I am going to do with my life.

I am longing for something more. I want a friend who won't grow distant with time. I want to go back to the days when I consciously made time to call my best friend to see how her day was going, even when we weren't in the same class or the same school.

A companion who could stick around would be nice. Especially in this world where difficulties seem to lie around every corner. We need to make the effort to be there for one another because if we don't, who will?

Jennifer Lesnick is a freshman English major.