Family Versus Friends

This is less of a philosophical post than previous ones, I'm trying to figure out why home has become so dreary since college started, and I think I have come up with an adequate answer. The answer is a social life, I finally got one and every break(Quad, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring, Easter, and Summer) I desert my social life for my family.

I suppose this is putting it a bit drastically. I mean, I love my family, I would not have ever survived my childhood with any other family(they would have killed me). But there is something about friends that make life more interesting, they make life, at least my life, worth living. I have found that I am more free to be who I want to be when I'm around my friends than when I'm with my family. When I go home for breaks I go back to who I used to be, to some degree, because I'm placed back under the direct authority of my parents and the expactations of my family. They expect me to be the same person I was when I left, and while I still am for the most part, there is change and I like the change.

Like I mentioned, I now have a social life. Before college, I had friends at school(not many mind you), friends at church, and once upon a time friends in my neighborhood. But I never really hung out with anybody outside of those areas. Most of my time was spent at home, playing videogames by myself or watching tv or some other mindless activity. When I went to college, I got to experience what it was like to go hang out with people whenever and wherever. Spur of the moment trips to Starbucks or just about anywhere off-campus, latenight movie nights and Claymore runs. I got to hang out with people my own age, schedule my own time, and do essentially whatever I wanted to do. (Of course I still had hw and stuff I had to do.)

Going home, while there is no work to be done(homework-wise), there is no one to hang out with either. I get to spend time with my family, but its just not the same... And since I totally just lost my train of thought, I'm going to say that the new Pirates movie was freaking awesome and end with that...

P.S. The whole point of this post is to say that I miss my friends, and its only been two days for some of them... If any of you are reading this(though you had better not be, because that means you are probably following me), I miss you.