Unfamiliarly familiar. Day 196.

I never realized how much I missed the companionship of my college town, the ability to walk down the road and recognize the faces of strangers. I use to hide inside of the thick cement walls of my dorm room, and in later years, the drafty cardboard box I called my apartment. I would hide myself beneath layers of blankets, in unreserved comfort. I would snuggle down and cover my head beneath the sheets filling my cocoon with hot breath and emotions. I would lose myself in my cocoon, sometimes even crying myself to sleep, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, after lunch. It never mattered when. After, I would peel off each layer, not fast like a band-aid, but slow and painful, like torture, but each time I was renewed. Willing to face the outside world again, willing to see the eyes of the passing strangers.

I never realized, even as I was running from it, how consoling it felt to have someone pass you on the street each day. Since I have moved, I think about those people often. What if I had said hello or offered to buy them a cup of coffee on a snowy day? What if I had somehow changed the norm and asked that familiar stranger their name? What if I had offered the guy with all those books, a hand? Or maybe if I had just said 'hey, we're heading in the same direction, would you like to walk a ways together?'.

I live 7 hours away from the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, my college town, the place that I have called home for the past 5 1/2 years, and all of the faces that oddly enough became recognizable. I think this is why I could never live in a large town. I'd miss seeing the unfamiliarly familiar.

It's a lonely place. It's not something you realize when you are surrounded by peers who are in a similar place as yourself. I know, it's hard to believe, you think you're different. You think no one else could feel like you, think like you, search for answers to questions like you. But in reality, we are all searching. And if we're all searching, why are we all so lonely?

I'm lonely here, surrounded by my parents who have raised me, cared for me, nursed me. How can you be lonely when you are surrounded by the two people that love you the most? But I am. Each night, I crawl beneath my covers and make my cocoon. Each morning, I come out new again, ready to face the day. But I'm not new enough. I haven't changed enough. And each night I search for something more.