so this is the new year?

"What is the feeling when you are driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?  It's the too huge world vaulting us and it's goodbye, but we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the sky." Jack Kerouac

Ugh I hate the end of things.  Today was not only the end of the "Holiday Season" but the end of 24 hours of fun and mayhem shared amongst friends from Illinois College.  Jordan, Claire, Kim, Juliane, Anne Marie, Ann, Jacob and Nikki all came together at my dad's house to celebrate the new year at Don's, the undergrad hangout.   It was so wonderful to see everyone and catch up on everything--there was so much genuine happiness surging through the air it was catching.  The group next to us said once "Man, the party is over there."  After the bar we all took the drunk bus back to the house and some of us kept drinking until five am.  Today wasn't very pretty but Dad cooked a buffet brunch and we napped a bit and spent the rest of it talking before everyone had to leave and go back to our little corners of the globe (some as far as Alaska and Japan).  Oh it is fucking depressing and I hate it.  I am never good with goodbyes and I never handle the end of things well.  It isn't just an emotional response, my entire body gets involved in it.   I feel sick, anxious, my stomach is flipping around, and there is a tightness in my chest.  

This is the same feeling I had when I tried to go to Germany, when I went to and came back from Paris and when my undergraduate career ended.  It is nice to know that these past twenty four hours rate up there among those experiences.  Good friends can change one's entire outlook.