As I was going out with my pal LJ this past weekend I found out that he was moving away this fall to start Grad school at Penn State.
He was only the latest in a wave of friends that will be moving away this summer. My friends Sarah and Falkor are moving to Atlanta as Sarah starts school at Emory and my friend Wendi will be starting law school somewhere in Boston, she hasn’t decided yet but it looks like the local option might not happen. One of my roommates is also moving away this summer.
I didn’t move to Northern Virginia without that fear. That fear of starting life over. Sure I had to find a job and a place to live but neither one of those tasks measures up to the thought of making friends and building up a whole new social network. For the first time in a long time I was starting over from scratch. Sure you could say college was like starting over but the environment of college lent itself to making friends and I had no trouble with that- which is why I was somewhat confident I’d be ok in DC after college… but only somewhat.
In my three years here I’ve been extremely thankful that I have been able to make many friends here. However I’ve had to say goodbye to quite a few in these years. One of my most trusted friends in the area recently told me her five year plan- and how it didn’t include a prolong stay in DC. It makes me sad to think about it.
Washington DC is known for being a transient city as people come and go as often as Presidents and lawmakers. But here’s the thing- I love DC. I love where I live, where I play, where I call home. It makes me really sad when I hear how another one of my friends decide to leave the place I love so much. I don’t know why that is, life is different for everyone and the winds of change will take different people on different paths, some away from here and away from me.
Sometimes I feel like I have this selfish want, the want for all my friends just stay here with me and we can all have a good time. However at the same time I do love my friends enough that I want to see them happy- and for some that means moving away from me.
So why am I really not looking forward to this Autumn? Maybe it’s the realization that my circle of friends will shrink a little bit and I walk a bit closer to returning to the place I was at when I first set foot in this state: alone.
I don’t want to think about having all my friends leave me but I do know one thing- if I did it once, I can do it again. In the big picture my network of friends will only grow larger as it has from day one. Just because my friends aren’t close by doesn’t mean they aren’t my friends.
So what will this fall by like? I don’t know.
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I know what you mean. While I understand DC is a transient city, I never thought ahead that that meant *my* friends would be transient and *I* would stay. I didn’t think it would happen to me. The first 2 years after graduation were one big party of 20 somethings, but more and more of my friends are “done with dc” and are moving to grad school or back to their home town too. sigh.
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We need to be here for each other!
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Totally understand. I’ve been in DC for almost a decade after insisting I’d never stay. A lot of other people meant they wouldn’t stay. Apparently, I didn’t.
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