the past always looks better from a distance. the past always makes sense from a distance. i know someday i will look back from the distance, and i will think what great times i was having now, how much i grew, how much things were all coming together or were about to, at least. but i am in n-o-w, and now is so much messier when you're in the thick of it. i loved seeing my little circle of closest friends, misty and jen and kathryn, and our little part of the hall, my world, was still there, almost just like i left it. that part of homecoming was wonderful. but there were a hundred details that reminded me that no part of life is without it's thorns. the past few weeks i've felt a little down, and i think i've figured out why. i expected moving from one place to another to change things, and it does, but it doesn't change ME. and while grove city was familiar, and philly is less so, i remain the owner of all the same stupid fears, the same hopes, the same issues. i thought maybe i'd leave them behind. i thought, after the comfort of senior year, that maybe i'd left them behind already. but i hadn't, and i haven't, and going back, i understood that the thought of having conquered them at gcc was also an illusion, a beautifully distanced facade. in one case i was surrounded by familiar faces that padded the times that life was rough, and here, the rough parts stick out more. same life, different faces. i miss the faces, but i am slightly relieved to remember that my "new" struggles are not new at all, just the same stuff recycled. same problems, different faces. and the process of conquering them begins again.