Thoughts on Beginnings and Ends

When I first created this blog (a year ago this week!), I was facing a pretty hefty beginning. I was leaving my native country for the first time to live abroad in a (not so) strange land and, lured by the apparent fame of travel and personal bloggers whose every spare thought is deemed credible by their legions of readers, I had high hopes for chronicling every detail of it.

As much as my time abroad was definitely a beginning, it was also an end. While the actual experience of studying abroad was far from the life-changing experience it’s touted to be (hence the lack of deep, insightful posts while there?), the time I spent there and the time I spent building up to that experience did change me. I began to spend slightly less time online, preferring to talk to people in “real life” instead; I began focusing more on “getting out there” and “experiencing my environment”; and most important of all, I made the decision to be more honest and open with the people around me.

I thought about that decision tonight as I waved goodbye and yelled after her, “Call me if you’re back early on Sunday!” She yelled back that she would as she crossed the street and entered campus proper. The girl in question and I have been friends since day one - the first day of freshman year. There was a time when we saw each other almost every day. Lately, though, with a plethora of excuses like “increased workload”, “job hunting” and “hectic schedules”, we’ve found it harder and harder to make the time. This sort of dodging defines our relationship - or at least my side of it. There have been times when I hoped we might become more than just friends, and times when I knew things would never work out if we were.

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