College is a fresh start. You finally get to leave those four awkward high school years behind and become the person you really want to be, whoever that is. You get to move to a whole new town and create another world for yourself - one that is completely and totally yours. You will laugh and cry and tear your hair out during finals, but most of all you will fall in love. Not just with that one person that makes your head spin, but with anyone and everything. You will be in love with your life, and for the first time in what feels like your entire existence - you will belong. Here are the people you will fall in love with in college.
You Will Fall in Love With the Person at the Party
It will be a party that you go to after the kind of day that makes you wonder what the hell you are doing with your life (these days will happen far too often, prepare for them accordingly.) You will fall in love with this person for one night and one night only. One minute you are dancing barefoot on a friend of a friend's carpet floor and the next you find yourself staring at the most beautiful eyes you have ever seen. You will need this; everybody needs this kind of love. And when the morning comes, when the coffee pot is empty and your head is pounding, you will be left with a feeling of longing. You will be wishing this person could have stayed longer, for one more cup of coffee, for one more kiss. Deep down you know that it would not have worked. No great love story starts with a shot of tequila.
You Will Fall in Love With Your Roommate
This will be the person that will see you at your very best and very worst. They will be your first friend, and if you're lucky, your best one. You will drink wine in a cramped room and laugh together on a Tuesday night. You will laugh so much that you can't breathe. You will be each other's diary, a person to complain about your day to. They will be the face you see when you first wake up, and you will be theirs, so remember to be kind to them too.
You Will Fall in Love With Words
The ones whispered softly at 4 am. The ones yelled at the top of your lungs, while the wind whips your hair behind you. The ones drunkenly slurred at a noisy bar. You will use them to build people up, to let them know just how much you care. Be careful with them too, for words can break a heart just as easily as they can make it whole again.
You Will Fall in Love With the Person You Meet Abroad
They are as foreign to you as you to them. They represent the excitement of being in a new city. You will miss your family, your friends, but this love will soothe that heartache and warm the soul. It will be passionate and adventurous, filled with memories of coffee by the canals and pastries in the square. If you go back - and you will want to go back - their name will be written in every street corner, every cobblestone will hold yet another fading memory.
You Will Fall in Love With Your Professor
Not a professor but the professor, the one that makes you excited about education. They will be the type of professor that every student needs in their life, one that reminds you just how lucky you are to be exactly where you are. They will be the proof of life beyond college, one that actually incorporates your interests.
You Will Fall in Love With the Weekends
You will grow to love the sleepless nights you spend, breathless and in astonishment of the life you have created for yourself. These will be the nights that make you feel alive, so alive that you never want to kiss the stars goodnight. The days will be spent lazing around, sipping tea and looking out the window. On the weekends, it will be acceptable to push back an approaching term paper, or an imminent midterm, that's what Mondays are for.
You Will Fall in Love With Your Friends
This is the most important love. This is the kind of love that surpasses any temporary romance or passion. It is a love that never fades. Here, you will meet the friends that will become family. They will be the kind of friends that love you all the time, no matter who you slept with or how many shots you had the night before. After all those sleepless nights, staring at stars and dancing under the moonlight, you will wonder how you ever lived without them. They will make you feel young, and infinite. Even after years have passed, when you finally come together again, you will find that nothing has changed. They are the ones in the stories you tell your kids about the "good old days." They are worth all the heartache. Hold on to them.
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