The 7 Emotional Phases of Going Home for Summer

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Summer_main There’s a certain point at the end of the semester when you look up from your beer, observe the pulsing, pitch black basement around you and realize that you’re actually pretty sick of this shit. Visions of your hometown hang out and home cooking dance through your head, and you realize that you are actually so fucking pumped for summer. Hanging with your high school buds, having mom cook and do your laundry... it’s going to be GREAT. Once you actually return to the hallowed halls of home, though, it only takes a few short weeks (or seconds) to realize everything sounded a lot better in your head. Here are the phases we go through after returning home for summer vacation.

1. You walk through you’re front door and are SO pumped to be back in your old stomping grounds and can’t figure out why you ever left. Everything is just great. Mom and Dad want to take you out to dinner every night and buy you all your favorite snacks. Your younger siblings argue over who gets to hang out with you cause you’re just so freakin' cool. You are the most popular person in the living room and it’s awesome.

2. Your hometown is your oyster — you’ve been getting upwards of 10 hours of sleep a day and have never felt more relaxed. You and Mom are doing daily yoga and you’re even considering taking up croquet and book club purely as hobbies. You’re starting to get a little nostalgic for your Euclid digs, but hey, summer is just a few short months — better enjoy the peace, quiet, and vacuumed floors while you can.

3. You’ve been home for a few weeks, or maybe just a few days, and all the love from the fam-bam is starting to be a little much­. But, might as well let them appreciate your presence while they can. You may find yourself volunteering to go to the grocery store and then doing laps around the parking lot to avoid having to go back and actually answer questions about your plans for the next three months.

4. The questions about your summer plans are getting serious. Mom can’t help but let it slip that Bobby next store will be spending his summer working an internship with Goldman Sachs. You reply that it doesn't matter because Bobby sucks. You actually let yourself be dragged out to a party with your high school friends, and end up crying in a corner because it’s so lame and all you want in life is to get belligerent at Lucys.

5. You have become the least popular person in the living room. Your family may cringe slightly when you walk into a room because they know you’re about to start making passive comments about how badly the place they chose to raise you in sucks. Your texts to your Cuse friends now read somewhere along the lines of “SAVE ME.”

6. You are now on the verge of getting kicked out/running away to the same spot in the park that you did when you were 7 years old. You answer questions like “what are you doing today?” with “LIVING MY LIFE, OKAY?” No one understands the suffering your highly intelligent collegiate brain is going through being stuck in the cultural abyss that is your hometown. Your phone is counting down the seconds until your sweet sweet return to 'Cuse.

7. You decided to pack your bags weeks in advance ­­– there is no way you are chancing being even a second late for that plane back to school. You’re literally daydreaming about Natty Lite and Frat houses. And finally, when THE day arrives, it’s all you can do to not scream “PEACE OUT, SUCKERS!” before literally sprinting to your departure gate.