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I love being back. I love knowing where I'm going, I love that feeling of familiarity and the comfortable exasperation with the ever-present "under construction" tape, this time circling a different area, but inconvenient all the same.

I love walking through the pecan grove and waving to people I know. This time last year I scurried to class and prayed people would like me. I was searching the crowds for the one familiar face I could claim as a friend. Eating alone in the cafeteria, or with my new roommate in a kind of weak companionship. Worrying if all the rumors about college were true.

Now, here I am. Catching familiar glances and waving with a grin. Exchanging a couple words about the summer and promising a lunch to catch up. Walking in long, efficient strides akin to the feeling of stretching after a long sleep. Never needing the book I brought to the cafeteria, because there's always someone I know or someone to meet.

I am me. And maybe it's temporary, but this is the me I've wanted to be. What do you wanna bet it's just a honeymoon period, but hell with what people say, I'll take it as it comes.

It's a bit strange, how I still would square my shoulders and carefully look away from the dorm where CB used to walk, as if expecting his shaggy-headed swagger to appear in my peripheral vision any minute. I still felt slightly sick, walking in to choir, until I finally realized, like a flower out of its bud, just realizing that the confinements have fallen away, and the sun is tapping on my petals: he is gone.

And I want to sing.

These are the years we spend so long wanting and so long trying to retrieve.

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