Make New Friends And Hope To Keep The Old

It's weird. Leaving, you know? They say you can never go home again, but I hope they are wrong.

I just graduated from high school in May and now I am getting ready to go to college. One of my friends is already at the Naval Academy. A friend came over after church and she is leaving for school today. All of my athletic friends are leaving this week to start their practices. By the second week of August, I will only have a few friends left that haven't gone away to school. And then I will leave.

I am a little nervous about leaving. Not because I am scared that I won't have fun or that it will be too difficult. I am nervous about leaving because it won't be the same life I've had for the past 18 years. I was fortunate enough to pretty much know everyone I graduated with, and I went to school with them for the majority of my life. It will be weird to not see them at lunch or pep rallies or football games or just in the hallway. And it will be really weird not to see my best friends everyday anymore. This will be the last time that I see most of them again. Well at least under the circumstances of being best friends.

I would like to keep in touch. But I know that I won't. Thank goodness for Facebook because that is probably the only way that I will talk to any of them again. I am not good with communication. Face to face? I can do that. I can respond to a text message just fine and carry on a healthy conversation. I refuse, however, to begin a text conversation unless I have something specific to say that illicits a response. I am for sure not one of those "Hey bro. Was up?" texters. I would never say that in real life, so I would definitely never put it in print. Overall though, texting is easy. But I get nervous to talk on the phone. Actually, no. If I am being honest, I do not get nervous about that; I turn into a freak. I can answer the phone and sound normal. And I can even call some close friends and family members, again only if I have something specific to say, and not sound befuddled. But actually placing phone calls? To normal people? No, I am sorry. I just cannot do that. It takes me at least ten minutes to get the nerve up to call someone that I am not close to. Like when I want to get my hair cut or order a pizza or call my next door neighbor. And by the end of the conversation, I can feel my throat closing up. I told you that I was a freak. So, I know that I will not keep in touch.

I hope that at Christmas break and next summer we can all be friends again. I am scared that we won't be. I have seen it happen to too many older kids. I just hope we can be different. We will all go off to our schools and change into the people that we are going to be for the rest of our lives. I want my friends to make good decisions about the people they become. But most of all, I hope that I don't disappoint them with the person I become.

Have you ever read The Catcher In The Rye? It is my favorite book. Holden Caulfield tells his sister that he often has a dream where he sees all these children playing in a field of rye, except they don't see the cliff they are about to fall off of. He wants to stop them. He wants to be the catcher in the rye. Also, his favorite place to go is the museum because no matter how long it has been since the last time he was there, it is always the same. Everything is in a glass box and never changes.

I want to be the catcher in the rye. I want to put all of my friends in a glass box so that they never change. Yes, I want them to grow up. I want them to be mature. Settle down. Get married. Have kids. But I want them to be my friends forever. I know that I am naive. I know that is not fair for them nor is it realistic. But it is what I want. I want to come home again and for things to be the same. Obviously in my mind we would all be more fabulous, but otherwise the same. This is what I want.