My friendships mostly consist of one-on-one rapports. My friends are not close with one another, only with me. If all my friends were here for my birthday, it would make for an amusing party. Many would be meeting each other for the first time, not many group activities and conversation would take place, and I would be the central figurehead, the guy everyone flocks around because, well, I'm the only guy they know. Like when you had your 10th birthday: you're hot stuff, and everyone wants a piece of you and only you. Hey, open my gift first! Hey, I'm gonna sit by you! Hey, come here and talk to me!

This summer marked the long-term separation of me from many of my friends. They graduated with Hillary and Rebecca, they transferred like Chris and Josh, they got jobs elsewhere like Jason. When one of my friends leaves, it's not as though I'm part of a big group of chums sending off one of our members. It's an entire clique that's leaving, and I'm the last one standing. I am torn away as well. They're not the only ones left with a hole to fill.

When I was 14, my parents sold the house I had been living in for seven years. I remember protesting the move, being quite irritated that my parents did this without my approval. I thought that moving day would be depressing, that I would be uplifted from my comfort zone and thrown into some mystery land to start a new beginning. We sold our house after a few months on the market and had two months until we would say goodbye. In those final months, we were preparing for the next phase, tweaking floor plans to create the perfect house for us. The Dunns--- the family who bought our house--- came over and took apart our tile foyer. They wanted wood. I helped my mom scrape the wallpaper off my bedroom walls. I can't even remember what it looked like, but I doubt little Elizabeth Dunn wanted the room colors and patterns of a teenage boy.

By the time moving day came, the house looked nothing like the one I had called home for seven years. Old residents were leaving, new ones were arriving, and the surroundings evolved with the changing circumstances, not standing still just because I wanted things the way they were. Nothing stands still, no matter how frozen in our situation we appear. If nothing ever changed, it would be much harder to adjust when those times of movement and evolution had to take place. Everything was changing. Our move was the next natural step. It was not as hard to leave the house as I had thought because everything was changing around me.

I'm leaving Gainesville in a year.