I went home over the weekend and it was kind of a disappointment. It was great to see my friends, but the two I wanted to see most weren't there. It's weird and it made me think a lot. I don't really know where home is anymore. It used to be in Walpole, MA, a town only notable for its maximum security prison. It was a boring town, and I spent a lot of time bitching about it. Now when I go back to Walpole, it seems like a shell of what it used to be. Without the people I grew up with, it feels empty and hollow.
When I first got to UMass, it didn't feel at all like home. I hated it at first. All I wanted to do was go home. Now when I do go back to Walpole I want to be back here. It feels almost like I don't have a home anymore.
If I was alotted a moment to think back to my roots as an emo kid, I would say this: there is one thing that connects me to who I used to be, and that is music. Right now I'm listening to Blink182 and Billy Talent, and all I can think of is the stupid shit from two years ago that I hated at the time but miss so much right now. My whole high school career was spent wishing I was in college. Now that I'm in college, I realize how easy high school is, and what an awesome time I had.
I'm never going to have friends by circumstance again.
I'm never going to have to stay friends with someone just because I always have been.
I'm never going to come home from school and shoot the shit with my parents or have them nag me about my school work.
No more proms. No more film festivals. No more skipping study halls.
I loved it all more than I'll ever be able to admit.

I had a wonderful Chinese food dinner for faculty chats last night. It was with the chair of the theater department, I forget his name. His name is inconsequential to this story. In any case, we were sitting around, enjoying mediocre Chinese food from Panda East (I suspect it was not in fact real panda, but rather imitation panda, i.e. chicken with water chesnuts.). We were conversating and I felt kind of like I was eating dinner at a friend's house, trying to make polite conversation, trying to be entertaining without being offensive (something which is becoming more and more difficult each day). At some point, Mr. Theater Chair (T.C. I will call him. There was a cop in my town that everyone called T.C. and he seemed like a pretty good guy.) asked us how we liked UMass. The collective response was that everyone LOVES it here. Except for me, apparently, who sat at the end of the table trying to shovel rice into my mouth with chopstick. (Earlier I had threatened my roommate that if she did not opt for the chopsticks, I would go through her stuff when she wasn't in the room, so I couldn't be a hypocrite.) T.C. asked us why we loved it so, and again I mumbled "I don't". Everyone else started to say the people, the party scene, the excitement of not knowing whether or not you'll be stabbed when you go out on weekends. In any case, I started thinking. Then I stopped because it hurt. But then I started back up again, and I realized it isn't as bad here as I once thought. I also realized I was being a pansy for not saying what I really thought. But whatevs. I might not be able to do film here, but I can deal. As long as I don't take a screwdriver to the temple, I'll be okay.