i was never truly single in high school. i never was truly single in college either. it was until this summer that i chose to heal and experience all the things i should have done outside of a relationship. at the time, it didn’t look like a problem. i was fine with always being with someone because it’s what i got used to in high school. I dated the same guy in high school, got into a relationship right after that ended, and started talking to another guy a couple months after that relationship ended. I never set time aside to find out the type of person i was outside of a relationship, I hadn’t been single since I was 14, and I felt like I missed out on a huge part of growing up when i got to college.
Unfortunately, my first year of college, I blamed my hometown for all of the things that went wrong in high school, as if the geological location of where I went to high school had any part in contributing to why I never wanted to go back. With this being said, I only went back four times in my first year of college. To put in perspective, my hometown is four hours away. A completely doable travel time to go back as often as I wanted to…but I never did. I was afraid that going back would bring back all the feelings I had when I lived there or it would turn me back into the person I used to be when I was there (which I wasn’t proud of at all). I believed that the city of Tampa was cursed, and I made the decision to never go back unless I HAD to.
This mental wall I built up pushed away all of my friends i had in Tampa. I stopped regularly talking to them, I didn’t visit any of them for months, and, at the time, they were out of sight and out of mind. I feel extremely guilty about doing that to them to this day. None of the reasons why I hated Tampa was ever their fault, they just happened to be my friends during a challenging time in my life and I correlated those feelings to them, which was unfair to them.
I got an apartment my first year of college with a 12-month lease on it, meaning I could stay in Tallahassee over the summer and not go back home. I was completely fine with this. I had my dog, Jeff, I had some friends here that I could still hangout with, summer classes, goals that required my entire attention and focus, and, most importantly, I wanted to work on my independence.
God forbid I ever did anything alone before this summer. I would wait til my friends were free to go do grocery shopping, I’d only get gas while someone else was in the car, and I’d always go to the gym with someone. This was sad. I was 19 relying on the people around me to get regular errands done, and a part of me wants to blame it on the fact that I never did anything alone in high school either. My boyfriend would go with me everywhere, when he wasn’t available, my friends would pile in my car and run errands with me, basically, I WAS NEVER ALONE.
Once I realized this was a real problem, and not just something that I could push aside, staying in Tallahassee seemed like it was what was best for my own personal growth. It got lonely though. Who would’ve guessed, right? Spending everyday alone because my roommate had moved out in May, and the only person I relied on seeing everyday was Jeff. One week I decided to visit my mom, I packed my car and only wanted to stay that weekend because I had a bio lab every Thursday. That weekend turned into a week after visiting my friends and just realizing how much I missed being home. I went to breakfast with my best friend, Kat. My relationship with Kat is a story for another time (just like a lot of things in this blog lol), but Kathryn and I had become unbelievable close in the few years I knew her, and we still are to this day. That breakfast changed how I felt about being back all together.
Lucky for me, I had an amazing boss, Heather, when I lived back at home. Heather and I conspired for WEEKS on how I could make my time in town worth it to the point that I could stay and not go back to Tallahassee. Without Heather, none of this would’ve ever happened (thank you heather!). Heather offered me a job doing musical theater prop inventory with my friend Nick that allowed me to move back in with my mom but have wednesday nights and thursdays off so i could drive up to tallahassee for class and then come back down to tampa without it being a problem. Everyday, Nick and I would spend hours talking and catching up on the year we didn’t see each other. In all fairness, it was me doing most of the talking, but we had a good time regardless (sorry nick). These days I spent working became strangely therapeutic for me, we did a mindless task and it slowly built our friendship into what it is now. After a couple weeks, I broke out my iPad and we started binge watching Too Hot Too Handle on Netflix. Nick got so obsessed with it, he’d ask before hand if I was going into work to make sure id bring my iPad to watch the show lol, funny how closely i hold this memory to me.
Outside of work, I was able to get my buddy, Jordan, into the gym. It started randomly one week, just asking if he’d want to go with me after work. It was convenient because I worked at his house, I got off at the time id go to the gym, and he was eager to learn and start working out. Everyday we’d go, and, just like nick, catch up on all the things we’d missed out on in each other over the last year. Jordan and I made up for lost time, and after a while, it was like we had never spent a year apart (a lot of the things mentioned in this blog will one day extend into a blog dedicated to itself).
From all of this, I slowly started coming around back into the friend group I left 11 months before. We were back to hanging out, going out to eat, and talking for hours in a random parking lot. I got to volunteer with kids with my gal pal Nicole, who I missed so dearly. My friend and ex-coworker, Brendann, went out of his way to make sure I got out of the house and hungout with people. And Josh, continued to humble me way too much, but always did when it was needed. but new friends were made too!! I made friends with Michaela, Nick’s girlfriend who knows me as much as nick does at this point, and i consider her my friend just as much as i do nick (happy early one year anniversary you guys!!). Emma Schneider, a beautiful, coffee addicted soul who’s mind is bursting at the seams with creativity, and many more people that I can’t take enough times to thank!
I'm glad I moved back home this summer. There were bridges that needed to be rebuilt and a lot of healing that needed to be addressed. I named a lot of people in this blog, but every single one contributed to healing my high school inner self. I got to experience what real friendship is and how much I could rely on a group of people without them wanting anything in return. I was never single for a long amount of time in the past five years, but the past five months have made up for all the lost time and memories that weren’t made while i was in a relationship. Even though we're all moved away now, I am ecstatic to say that I’ve stayed in touch with everyone this summer. I still call nick and Michaela all the time when something inconvenient happens, I play fortnite with Brendan a couple nights week, Kathryn and I send each other an UNHEALTHY amount of tik toks everyday, Josh and I bond over Berserk almost everyday, I can always count on Jordan to boost my confidence on the days that feel gloomy, and i keep everyone up to date on my private story "d1 soldier".
If you’ve ever found yourself in the situation I was in a couple months ago, it's normal. It’s also scary to break those habits, “old habits die hard”. But I encourage you to find those people in your life that feel like home. The people in your life that you will call years to come and talk as if nothing has changed. It's a way to freeze time, a way to remember everyone young as time passes by, and before we know it, 20 years will have passed and we'll all still be the same people we knew as teenagers.
To my friends from back home, thank you for all you did this summer, I will never forget the kindness, understanding, and compassion I received from every single one of you over the last five months. I can’t wait to reunite with you once again!
with all my love,
♡taina
ps: before moving the college, I went by my first name, Taina, so i felt like it was only right to sign off with the name my friends from back home know me by;) hope you don’t mind hehe
Commentaires