We call it life.

When I headed to class this morning, I played a song called Colours by Grouplove. As I walked up towards campus, I remembered listening to the same song two months ago, and felt a sharp pang of... something somewhat more condensed than nostalgia. (I weirdly imagine nostalgia as sort of a mist, whereas this was more like a cold fist.) (Fun With Rhyming.)
I thought of sitting in the car with my mom on a weeklong trip down from my home in Kirkland, Washington, to a beautiful tourist-y town called Port Townsend. The windows were down and my hand was hand outside the car, riding the wind, and we weren't talking much but we didn’t need to. We sat happily while the song blasted in the car and I remember feeling content and relaxed, and yet beginning to fill up with an excited, sparkling anticipation for college. My hand sliced through the wind outside the car, and I remember thinking My Life is Beginning.

Thinking about that this morning almost made me almost want to laugh bitterly. Here I was, in college, walking to class, feeling utterly alone and homesick, wondering how I could have been so excited to leave behind practically everything I have ever loved. Music transports you, it messes with your senses, and today it made my stomach drop and my fingernails dig into my hands like knives.